24. Last time?
Last time?
Vicky
“S-s-stay away from me.” I’d meant my voice to come out strong, but it was so small, it was only above a whisper.
His eyes flashed as if relishing the challenge.
“Tell me,” he said in a conversational tone as if we were having a normal chat, and he wasn’t stalking me with intent. “Are you still a little virgin like your sister told me you were? Or has the Incredible Hulk in there managed to fuck the ice princess out of you?”
“You shouldn’t s-s-speak to me like that,” I said. “I’ll tell my?—”
Darrell let out a bark of laughter. “Who will you tell? How did that work out for you last time?”
He lunged forward, and I wasn’t quick enough to get away.
Freezing was the most useless human defence mechanism.
I wished I was a runner, although I wasn’t sure how far I would have made it in those heels, and I had a suspicion Darrell would enjoy the chase.
He had hold of both my arms now and dragged my body flush with his.
I struggled for a moment, but then he gave me a hard shake, which was enough to make me freeze again.
He took advantage of my lack of movement, dragging me across to a free patch of wall in between two of the portraits, and pinning me there.
Claustrophobia enveloped me, and I started to struggle for breath; my head was swimming, and then it was like I had left my body altogether. Like I was floating above Darrell and me, watching as he yanked up the hem of my dress to my hip.
Deep in terror now, knowing I couldn’t fight him off, I hung in his arms and closed my eyes.
But then a vision of Mike’s face swum into my consciousness: Mike hesitating before he touched me, Mike holding my hand, Mike telling me he liked me, Mike finding out exactly the type of sandwich I can eat.
How fucking dare Darrell touch me?
I wasn’t his, I was Mike’s .
And so I took a deep breath in, and I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“You crazy bitch,” Darrell snapped in horror as he tried to cover my mouth with his large hand whilst grappling to keep me pinned to the wall with the other.
But I was no longer frozen. I was fighting, and I remembered Ollie’s go-to advice: Always go for the balls, Vicky .
I brought my knee up and smashed it into Darrell’s crotch.
He howled in pain, the hand over my mouth dropping to his groin as he used the other hand to grab my hair by the roots and smash the side of my face into the wall. But then, suddenly, he was gone.
To be more precise, he was actually flying backwards through the air.
Mike had grabbed him by the back of his jacket and shirt, and literally lifted him up and off me, as if he weighed no more than a bag of flour.
Darrell tried to get away. His arms were whirling all over the place in his attempt to escape, but Mike just held him at arm’s length, suspended slightly off the floor by the scruff of his neck, like he was a naughty kitten.
“What the fuck is going on?” Mike shouted, giving Darrell a rough shake. I was a non-violent person, but it did feel good to watch Darrell get a taste of his own medicine.
“She was asking for it,” Darrell, very unwisely said. “She’s a little fucking tease. All that ice princess stuff is just—” Darrell broke off because Mike punched him in the face, and he crumpled to the floor at Mike’s feet.
“Er… sorry to interrupt,” the wedding planner—I knew who she was because I’d had to go onto her website to pay her for her services—said from a few feet away down the corridor. Her wide eyes were fixed on the three of us.
I realised that my dress was still up around my hips, and I jerked it down.
Mike’s eyes flashed with fury when he saw me do that.
“B-but the speeches are about to start and?—”
“Go and get the bride and the mother and father-of-the-bride and bring them here,” Mike snapped at her. “Right fucking now.”
“Oh, er… okay.” Wedding planner lady seemed relieved to be making a hasty exit.
Meanwhile, Darrell started scuttling back from Mike. He was bleeding from his nose, all down his pristine white shirt and that horrible salmon pink tie.
“Oh, no you don’t,” muttered Mike, striding over to him and grabbing him by the scruff of his neck again to lift him up onto his feet. “You’re not going anywhere, mate.”
“What the hell is going on?” Mum stormed down the corridor, her face puce with rage, followed by Gareth and Rebecca.
“Oh, Darrell!” cried Rebecca when she saw her new husband.
“What’s happened? Baby, are you okay?” She walked to him, and her hands fluttered around his bloody face—there was no way Rebecca would risk blood stains on her dress, no matter how badly her new husband was hurt.
“What have you done to him?” she accused Mike and then turned to glare at me. “What have you both done?”
“I knew this would happen,” Mum said in a hysterical voice. “I knew you’d come here and ruin everything. You can’t just be bloody normal and let everyone else live their lives? You have to sabotage everything. Just like you did my entire life . Just like you’ve always done.”
“Janet, shut up!” Gareth snapped, then turned to Mike. “Er… Mike, maybe you could put Darrell down for a moment, son?”
“Gladly,” Mike said gruffly, dropping Darrell abruptly so that he collapsed onto the floor, before staggering to his feet, looking wildly between Mike and me.
“That bitch kneed me in the balls and then Arnold bloody Schwarzenegger here punched me,” he said in a high whiny voice, which came out very nasal due to the blood still pouring from his nose.
“Oh my God,” said Rebecca, glaring at me. “You’d do anything to ruin my day, wouldn’t you? I just knew you’d be lying in wait to pay me back. I just knew that?—”
“Pay you back for what?” Gareth asked. There was some steel in his voice now that I’d rarely heard before as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Nothing, Daddy,” Rebecca waved him away dismissively, but I saw a flash of panic in her expression.
Darrell was slowly edging backwards again.
“Stay where you are, you piece of shit,” Mike snapped at him, halting his progress towards the exit. Then, ignoring everyone else, Mike strode over to stand right in front of me.
“Okay, love?” he asked softly.
I gave a shaky nod as he reached up to my hips slowly then gently pulled my skirt fully down. There was silence in the corridor now, and when I glanced around, I realised that they were all watching us.
“Let me see, okay?”
I nodded and his jaw flexed as he gently tilted my head to the side to look at my cheek, which was feeling tight and achy now.
“What else did he do, love?”
“He pinned me to the wall,” I whispered. “But he didn’t… er, he didn’t have the chance to… do what he did last time.”
Mike’s whole body tensed, pure and absolute fury flitting through his expression now.
“Last time?” he growled.
“Listen, Vicky’s always making up stories,” Mum started to tell Mike. “She’s not normal. She has mental health problems. Whatever she’s told you, she?—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Mike snapped.
I flinched with the force of his words and the anger behind them.
“I just saw this evil fucker assault your daughter. Her skirt was pushed up round her hips. She was fucking terrified .” Mike was turned towards all of them now, yet again, shielding me.
I reached up and laid my hand on his arm, feeling the bunched muscles there trembling with suppressed rage.
“Mike, honestly, just leave it. I tried to tell Mum and Rebecca the last time it happened. It’s not really worth?—”
“You told them?” He turned to look at me.
“Well, yes, but?—”
“She told you?” he shouted at Mum.
Mum, very, very unwisely, rolled her eyes. “Vicky was just trying to get attention and I?—”
“What the fuck did you do, boy?” I blinked in shock as I saw Gareth grab Darrell and shove him up against the wall, his face a mask of rage.
“Daddy! What are you doing?” Rebecca shrieked.
“Stay out of this, Becky,” said Gareth. “I’ll deal with you in a minute. My fucking son-in-law is going to tell me what the fuck he’s been doing.”
“Gareth, language!” Mum breathed in a scandalised whisper.
“Janet,” Gareth said in a low, dangerous voice. “Why am I paying for a wedding so that a rapist can marry my daughter?”
“I didn’t rape her,” spluttered Darrell. “For fuck’s sake. I barely touched her this time, and last time, I…” his bloody face drained of all colour as he realised what he’d revealed. “Well, I didn’t actually rape her,” he said in a weak voice.
“You’re not even paying for most of the wedding, Gareth,” Mike put in. “I know for a fact that Vicky is paying for the wedding dress, the alcohol, the band, and most of the venue. I’ve seen her pay the balance for that stuff.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gareth clipped, still pinning his son-in-law to the wall, but now wearing a broken expression.
“I’ll pay you back, cariad,” he said to me, then turned to his daughter, his voice dropping to ice cold.
“I told you we couldn’t afford a big wedding.
I knew you were lying to me about the costs. ”
A mutinous expression crossed Rebecca’s face.
“Why should I have to have a shitty reception in a village hall? It’s not fair that she’s got all this money, and we have to scrape around for the bare necessities.
We had to put up with her all those years when she was being a bloody weirdo.
Why shouldn’t she pay us back now? Her dad will have left her a ton of cash and?—”
“I did not receive a large inheritance from my father,” I said. “And after my father died, I continued the payments he used to make to Mum out of my own money.”
Rebecca snorted. “As if the bloody duke wouldn’t have set up a trust fund for you.”
“I only had a small trust fund, which I used for university.”
“How have you got all this money then?”
“She earned it, you spoiled brat,” Mike snapped, then turned back to me. “That’s why earning money is so important to you, isn’t it? You needed it to get away from this lot?”
I shrugged. “Money gives security. I needed to feel…” I trailed off, looking down at my feet.
“You needed to feel safe,” Mike filled in for me. “Did you hear that?” he said to my family. “She needed money to feel safe, from you .”
Mum snorted. “You’ve no idea how difficult she was when she?—"
“Janet,” Gareth snapped, cutting her off. “She didn’t bloody well speak. Even when you and our daughter put her down again and again, she didn’t say a word.”
“Because she’s a freak,” spat out Rebecca, her face bright red and furious.
“What did you do to her, young lady?” Gareth said, turning on his daughter. “What did you think she was going to pay you back for?”
Rebecca’s hands bunched into fists at her sides as her face screwed up into an ugly scowl. “This is my fucking day!” She stamped her foot. “She’s ruining my day, and you’re letting her!”
“Right,” Mike said, pulling me close to him and tucking me under his arm. “I’ve had enough of this shit. Good luck, Gareth—you’re going to need it. Vicky and I are going to make the long overdue, it seems, trip to the police station to report this assault and the previous one.”
“The police aren’t going to be interested in—” started Darrell in a panicked voice, but Mike cut him off.
“Oh, they’ll be interested. Aside from the physical evidence?—”
“What physical evidence?” Mum asked in a high voice.
“The swelling on her face and bruises that are already coming up on her arms.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mum snapped. “She’s always bruised very easily.”
Mike froze, and it was like all the air was sucked out of the corridor.
“Please, tell me that what you just said doesn’t mean what I think it does?” His tone was so threatening that Mum took a step back towards Gareth. “My God,” Mike breathed in disbelief. “You evil bitch. You put your hands on a child?”
“I-I-I you can’t speak to me this way. Gareth, tell him he can’t?—”
“Shut up, Janet,” Gareth said in what now sounded like a completely defeated tone. “Just please shut up .” He turned to Mike. “Can you take her out of here, please son?”
Mike nodded and started to move past them, with me still held close to his side.
As we passed Gareth, he reached out to catch Mike’s arm. “You’ll look after her?”
Mike nodded again, and then Gareth turned to me. “I’m sorry, cariad,” his voice was hoarse now. “I should have said that a long time ago, but I am sorry.”