23. Are you Vicky’s carer?
Are you Vicky’s carer?
Vicky
“How much did you pay him?” Mum hissed at me after the photographer had arranged us where he wanted us all to stand.
“W-what?” I whispered.
“That man. How much did you pay him to be here?”
“I-I didn’t?—”
“Now, ladies,” the photographer interrupted. “Eyes to me, please, and big smiles.”
I turned away from Mum and looked towards the camera, trying to force my mouth to cooperate so that the corners would turn up even whilst my stomach was churning with nausea.
“Lady in the pale blue?”
I blinked and looked from his camera to him.
He smiled at me. “Yes, you, beautiful. Can you try for a smile?”
“Fucking freak,” I heard Rebecca mutter.
Darrell chuckled next to her, and my mother elbowed me sharply in my ribs.
I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a semblance of a smile. Thankfully, it was enough to satisfy the photographer, because after another couple of minutes, we were done.
“It’s my wedding day,” Rebecca snapped at me once the photo was over.
“Yes, I know,” I said, looking over her shoulder to search for Mike, but he’d been intercepted by two bridesmaids.
Lucinda and Fiona were Rebecca’s friends who took particular pleasure in being mean to me.
Fiona was leaning into Mike now, and she had her hand on the lapel of his jacket.
My throat felt too tight. Mike looked so handsome in his suit.
I should have expected this. I should have expected women to be all over him.
I tore my eyes away from the three of them.
Fiona was very beautiful and very charming. If she wanted to take Mike from me, she could. It was na?ve of me not to think of this before.
Mike and I had only just started dating, and I was already proving to be hard work. I knew that. Everyone always said what hard work I was. So it stood to reason that eventually, he would be taken from me by someone like Fiona.
The hurt and jealousy I felt at that thought was almost enough to trigger another meltdown.
I had to get it together.
“If you know today’s important,” Rebecca continued, her voice still dripping with disdain. “Could you try and be a little less of a freak? I mean, how bloody difficult is it to smile?”
“Right, yes, I’ll try,” I told Rebecca automatically, taking a small step back.
I was really hoping this exchange would be over soon. Usually, once she’d called me a freak or a weirdo and made it clear how much I annoyed her, she would leave me alone.
When we were very young, things had been different. We would even play together as children, all of course directed by Rebecca, as playing wasn’t really one of my areas of strength.
Even after I stopped speaking, it was years before Rebecca started being openly unpleasant.
But then, as we grew into our teens, Rebecca began taking her lead from our mother more, and our interactions became far more adversarial.
Things would escalate if Rebecca didn’t get the reaction from me she wanted.
I didn’t cry easily, which often led to protracted name-calling and nastiness from Rebecca, who would go on to enlist her friends, Fiona being the main offender.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca was furious now as I took another step back.
I shrugged. “I assumed this interaction was complete.”
“I’ll say when I’m done with you, freak,” Rebecca said. “Don’t you dare?—”
“Come on, Becs,” Darrell put in as he slid his arm around her shoulders. “Chill out. She’s here, isn’t she?” He turned to me, and I felt my body tense with the perceived threat. “Hey there, sis. Let’s hug it out. We’re family now.”
He took a step forward, and I panicked.
Running backwards in heels in a graveyard is not a good idea.
One of my stilettos stuck into the soft grass, the back of my knee hit a gravestone, and before I knew it, I was sprawled on the grass in between two graves, with Darrell smirking down at me, and the sound of the bridesmaids’ laughter all around me.
When he took another step towards me, I scrambled back further, uncaring about the stains I knew would now be all over my dress.
I held my hand up to ward him off, but then suddenly, my vision was filled with a frowning Mike.
Relief swept through me as I breathed in his now familiar, woodsy scent.
“Hey, love,” he said softly. “You okay if I lift you up?”
And there it was.
The consideration my family never showed me.
Always checking before he put his hands on me. The irony was that Mike didn’t even have to check now. His touch was so familiar, that I didn’t need the warning anymore.
I nodded, and he put his strong hands under my arms, lifting me up and setting me on my feet as if I weighed nothing at all.
When I was upright again, he stood in front of me, blocking my view of Rebecca and Darrell. “You alright? Wanna get out of here?”
“I can’t leave,” I whispered at his feet.
“Hello?” Rebecca snapped from behind Mike, and his shoulders stiffened. “Who are you?”
“I’m Mike. Vicky’s boyfriend,” he said, turning towards Rebecca, keeping me slightly behind him, just like he’d done with my mother. He offered his hand to her. “Congratulations. You must be Rebecca.”
Rebecca stared at Mike with her mouth hanging open for a long moment, not taking his hand, which was annoying as you were supposed to shake hands—even I knew that, not that I could often bring myself to do it.
Luckily, my stepdad came to the rescue.
Gareth joined the group and took Mike’s hand himself.
“Great to meet you, Mike,” Gareth said with a smile and a firm handshake. “You’ll have to excuse my daughter; the whole day is all a bit overwhelming. I was so glad when Vicky told me she was bringing a plus one.”
I heard giggles behind us—the bridesmaids again, no doubt.
“Vicky,” he said to me after dropping Mike’s hand. “It’s good to see you, cariad.” I stepped around Mike, and Gareth walked to me, hesitating until I gave him a nod, and then hugging me quickly, and with just the right amount of pressure.
“Daddy,” Rebecca whined from behind us. “Do you mind sorting the cars instead of fussing over her? It is actually my wedding day.”
Gareth sighed as he released me.
“Good luck, man,” Mike said to him, clapping him on the shoulder in that manly-I-respect-you kind of way.
Gareth smiled at him. “Cheers, I’m gonna need it.”
“Daddy!”
Gareth rolled his eyes and then gave me a warm look and a wink. “I’ll see you later, Vicky,” he said before ushering his daughter, new son-in-law and wife to the waiting cars.
Darrell was eyeing Mike with annoyance as he walked away.
When he caught me looking at him, he raised one eyebrow and smirked, and I felt a cold shiver run down my spine
Mike’s hand went to my lower back, and he guided me across the graveyard to his truck. On the way there, we had to negotiate my aunt Teresa, who spoke to me like she always did—as if I was mentally challenged.
Her shock when Mike introduced himself was palpable.
“A boyfriend, dear?” she said, looking Mike up and down, her eyebrows in her hairline. “That’s a bit of a turn-up with your, er… difficulties.”
“What difficulties are those?” Mike asked with an edge to his voice. “Her wildly successful career? Her intelligence? The fact she’s the most beautiful woman in any room? How kind, funny and generous she is?”
Aunt Teresa gaped at him for a moment and then, with a vague noise intended to excuse herself, made her escape.
“What’s her deal?” Mike asked me when she was out of earshot.
“What do you mean?”
“Why does she speak to you like that?”
“All my family think I’m a bit… well, my Uncle John would call it ‘touched’ or ‘a few pennies short of a pound’. I wasn’t an easy child, and, as you know, I didn’t speak for many years.” I shrugged. “It’s what Mum told everyone to explain it.”
“Bloody hell, your family’s a bunch of dicks, and your mum is queen of the dicks.”
“Queen of the dicks?” I repeated, feeling my lips twitch, and then something happened that I wouldn’t have thought possible on my sister’s wedding day, a day I’d been dreading for weeks…
I laughed.
It started as a nervous giggle, but by the time we made it to Mike’s Land Rover, I was laughing so hard, a tear had made its way down my cheek.
Mike opened the car door for me with a huge smile on his face.
Once I was sitting in the seat, and my laughter had subsided, he swiped my tear away with his thumb and kissed my still-smiling lips.
“Think that might be my new favourite thing to do,” he told me softly.
“What?” I asked.
“Watch you laugh.”
His gaze scanned my face as my smile faded.
“Just got to figure out how to make it happen more often, is all.”
Then he gave me a firm, closed-mouthed kiss before he moved back to close the car door.
I tried, but I couldn’t hold onto the light feeling that Mike calling my mother the queen of dicks gave me as we drove to the reception.
I was back to staring out of the window in silence. I didn’t want to be silent with Mike, and I knew it was a bad habit to slip back into, but the prospect of this much time with my family was simply too overwhelming.
“Your stepdad seems like a decent guy,” Mike said. “Even if the rest of your family are really fucking questionable.”
I shrugged. “Gareth is kind.”
Mike huffed. “It’s not kind to greet your stepdaughter with some semblance of affection. It’s bloody normal.”
I hummed in a non-committal agreement. I just wanted to get this whole day over with.
Luckily, when we arrived at the reception, and I checked the table plan, Mike and I were the furthest we could possibly be from my immediate family.
Mike didn’t seem to think it was lucky.
“What the fuck?” he growled as he plucked a champagne glass off a passing waiter to give to me, then asked for a pint of beer for himself. “First the church, and now this. Vicky, what is going on with your family?”