Page 61 of Outlier

“Mum, I paid for her wedding dress. It cost ten thousand pounds, and it’s Oscar de la Renta. Nobody is upstaging Rebecca. It would be impossible.”

“Just don’t wear anything flashy.”

“Listen, do you want me at the house before the ceremony? Gareth said that?—”

“No. The house is only for the bridesmaids and close family.”

“Right,” I whispered. “I’ll… um, see you at the church then?”

“Hmm,” Mum hummed, non-committedly.

“Listen, Mum,” I said, trying for a completely neutral tone. “Honestly, if you’d rather I wasn’t there, I don’t mind. I know I annoy you and Rebecca, and?—”

“Oh, God. Stop with the martyr stuff again. Spare me, please. You have to be at the bloody wedding. It’ll look strange if you’re not. Just try not to speak to people too much. And for God’s sake, don’t mention hedgehogs, or any other of your little obsessions.”

I nodded, even as my heart sank. I was really hoping that she’d let me out of going. But she needed me there. People knew she had two daughters. She was right; it would look strange if I wasn’t at my sister’s wedding. But the thought of a whole day with people who didn’t like me made me feel like there was a heavy weight on my chest, and for a moment it was hard to catch my breath.

Rebecca’s friends had never liked me, either. They teased me, but not the good kind of teasing. Even as a child, I knew it wasn’t the good kind.

“Okay,” I whispered, but she had already put the phone down. My hand was shaking when I transferred my phone onto the granite in front of me.

“That didn’t seem like a very fun conversation,” Mike said cautiously.

I shrugged. “It’s about my half-sister’s wedding.”

“I didn’t know you had another sister.”

“Mum married Gareth three months after she had me. They had Rebecca a year after that.”

“Was your dad ever with your mum? I know he left Margot after you were born. He never married your mum?”

“Oh no, dadhatedher. He never lived with us. I was a mistake. He told me that I was her attempt to trap him, but he wasn’t having any of it.”

“Hetoldyou that?”

Mike sounded angry now. Maybe this wasn’t such a good subject.

“How old were you when he told you that?”

“Six, I think.”

“Your father told his six-year-old daughter that she was a mistake, and the result of an attempt to trap him?”

Oh dear. His voice was rising now. I didn’t want Mike getting angry, so I told him the facts in an effort to calm him down.

“Well, it was the truth, and Dad knew I liked the truth, and that I wanted people to be honest in their dealings with me. It was only facts he was relaying to me.”

Mike closed his eyes slowly and took a deep breath in and out through his nose. “You don’t relay those kind of facts to a fucking six-year-old, Vicky.”

“No, you don’t understand. He?—”

“How old were you when you stopped speaking?”

What on earth? Where had that question come from?

I blinked at him.

“How old, Vicky?”