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It was all a big case of “wrong time, wrong place.” Alan B’Stard was in the car park of one particularly annoyingly needy mistress when his phone rang.
He physically grimaced once Sarah’s number appeared on the screen.
Still, she’d only be more irritable if he pressed the little, tempting red button and declined her call. So, semi reluctantly, he answered. He answered with a fake, sugary, husbandly smile and a little cooing tone to his voice. “Sarah! How funny, I was just coming home.”
He heard her little knowing snigger on the other end. “I thought you might be… We have a little bunny in need of a lift home. Victoria, to be exact. She’s down at that dreadful little club around the corner from Melissa Allen’s house, your little plaything as of last week…”
“Sarah, if you think I would even think of–”
“They’ve been calling here twice, in any case, for someone to come and get her,” Sarah went on, without a beat. “And I considered you’d be near enough anyways, and I’m sure Victoria would just love her daddy dearest coming to her rescue.”
Alan ground his teeth together. She would. Oh, she would…
Victoria Margaret B’Stard had been a daddy’s girl since day one–after some maid had all but dropped her at Alan’s doorstep, and a paternity test had been the damning evidence he couldn’t just claim abandonment (though, as far as all the papers and general public knew, she was actually the very-much-in-wedlock, no-added-adultery child of him and Sarah). It had been endearing at five, if a little draining–her wanting to be near him all of the time–though her always cooing up at and batting eyelashes at him all of the time made a good image of him in all the papers. It was also a good ego stroke for him when she became a teenager, and now more of a young woman (when sober… or at least as sober as she got these days), independent enough but still agreeing with everything he told her, hanging onto every word.
A drunk Victoria, however, was her child self in her far too grown body, as if she had a complete regression after a glass of wine… or two… or five. And that was as much irritating as it was embarrassing.
“I know where you are Alan,” Sarah reminded him, with a teasing lilt to her voice. “And, in any case, I’m sure the tabloids would have a field day about the retired MP who left his daughter in the cold while she was barely conscious enough to–”
“Alright, alright,” Alan huffed, running a hand over his face, briefly blocking himself from the bright light of a nearby streetlight. “I’ll go grab her. Don’t bother herself having to… you know, call another driver to fetch her or anything.”
He heard Sarah giggle. That was just the point, wasn’t it? She wasn’t really asking Alan to pick Victoria up for any real convenience, or even concern. That Sarah herself would rather drop down dead than drive her squealing, intoxicated little not-daughter home, just as much as him. It was purely, and simply, for his torture.
Still, here he was, car sat and thrumming and already having spotted her outside, in a little baby blue number and in the hands of a bouncer. “Would you get your… big fat sausages off my arm? Do you know… who my– Daddy!”
He barely hid his groan as the bouncer walked the barely upright, over-excited young woman over to his car front door. He slid down the window from the driver’s seat. “Mr. Bastard?”
“B’Stard, thank you.”
“Whatever. I think this–” He gave Victoria a little shove towards the car, letting go of her all too quickly. “–belongs to you.”
He stomped away. Victoria was still staring at him, all blown out pupils and mascara streaks. Her usual dirty blonde ringlets–not unlike his own, in his youth–were now twirling around in all directions. She was staring at him like he was some Prince Charming coming to save her.
It was oddly nauseating, actually.
She opened the door, but before she could crawl (more fall) into the seat, he held out a hand. “Now, wait a minute, wait a minute! Have you everything out of your system? I’m not having you spew all over my good leather interior.”
“No, don’t worry Daddy,” Victoria slurred, having to clutch onto the hood of his car to steady herself. “I’ve just been sick on Carla Brown. You remember? My old school friend? We were in the student union together for three years? The chubby one? Well, she's a feminist now (no real surprise there), and I overheard her saying she thought you were an ‘old, corrupt windbag,’ so… That’s why I got kicked out, you see?”
Alan blinked at her. “Right. Well… Very good, I suppose. Get in, get in, then.”
With a little giggle, and a very unladylike amount of stumbling and wriggling just to get into the passenger seat, Victoria was sat comfortably next to him. A little too comfortably. The second Alan had started the car, she had wrapped her twiggy little arms around his left one. God, she was practically purring. With a start, he stopped the engine immediately to jerk his arm out of her grip. “Victoria, what have we said about all this… touching.”
Victoria made the noise of a particularly disgruntled squawking bird, but flopped away from him all the same. She turned, instead, to look out the window at nothing in particular, as the car eventually started moving.
He almost thought to ask her exactly what alcohol she had consumed that had let her get to this point… Then reasoned that it may very well not even just be alcohol, and decided it was best not to ask.
If she didn’t wake up tomorrow morning, that wasn't his fault.
Despite not really wanting to speak to her, or look at her, or deal with her, and only doing so due to object obligation, he was the first to break the silence minutes later. “Why do you do all of this, Victoria?”
It was more a question of curiosity than any real concern. It's not as if he's unaware of the fact he’s a less than half-decent father—not like he took her in to be anything but. He told her, when she was just a little lump of swaddling in a crib, that all she’d get out of him was a trust fund and a few good life lessons if she was lucky. Still, he didn't like his own mother, and while he wasn't the model teenager or anything, he was never this bad to his own knowledge. Part of him did want to know at exactly which point he'd fucked up so spectacularly to get her in his car, barely cognizant.
“Dunno,” Victoria mumbles, helpfully. Her face is half-smooshed into the glass, pale pink lipstick greasing up the pane. That'd need meticulously washed off in the morning. “I had some've Sarah's wine at a party once… and then half the bottle. And then I just liked the feeling of it.”
“When was that?”
“No clue, but I was thirteen, so it must've been something boring.”
Alan groaned inwardly. Great. He had a nineteen year-old girl who drunk herself into oblivion on a basically nightly basis just because she “liked the feeling of it.” He liked the feeling of plenty of things that he couldn't just go off and do as routine, openly; mostly general sadism.
“It’s still a bit ridiculous, Princess,” Alan grumbled, not meaning the pet name in any way endearingly. “And not a good look for absolutely anyone involved… Maybe I should have just hit you as a child. Or, better yet, had someone do it—”
“You did once.” This came out outstandingly clear, in comparison to her earlier slurring. Still thick with the effects of alcohol, but jarring all the same.
Alan sniffed. “I don't remember.”
“I was upset with you for flirting with little Katherine Hutchinson,” Victoria rambled on, though he really didn't want her too. “Y’know, that best friend I had back from when I was little. Anyways, you had to slap me to shut me up…”
Ah. He did remember that. His twelve, nearly thirteen year-old daughter screaming at him for giving her friend a little too much attention for a preteen… Not because she had had any moral objections, of course. Victoria just hated that someone else was taking her father's affection.
“Good thing I told everyone in school she was flirting with you and had HIV,” she mumbled to herself now, with a snicker. “She didn't come back after that year… Stupid bitches, all probably thought you could get it by cuddling anyways.”
She started giggling to herself then. Cackling, really. She didn't stop until Alan had already parked both of them back home.
He stepped out and flung the door open on her side. “Alright, get in.”
No such movement was made.
“Victoria—”
“Carry me.” Her arms outstretched from her seat, towards him. Her tone was petulant again, in that grating way.
He really did not want to carry his nineteen year-old daughter into the house—he barely carried her as a child, what made her expect him to start now? But saying no would mean standing out in the cold and arguing with this drunken mess in the shape of his daughter was an only less admirable fate, so… he picked her up.
Carrying her bridal style (princess style, as she had called it as a small child), he walked her into the house with her legs draped over his shoulder. He saw her bare feet and wondered what happened to her pricey high heels—a seventeenth birthday gift—before feeling them kick him in the back, hanging from her fingertips from where she had her arms around his neck.
She mumbled something into his chest. “Speak up, please, Victoria.”
“I love you, Daddy…”
A servant was at the door, likely the one thing Sarah did organise for Victoria's “rescue,” other than call him. Relieved of his fatherly duties, he set her down (a little too quickly) to almost fall atop the woman who was, fortunately, just as used to this behaviour as everyone else in the house. She caught Victoria. Victoria batted her off, but reluctantly let her take an arm to be led upstairs.
“I trust this one will be fun to deal with in the morning?” the maid asked, in her nasally voice.
Alan sniffed, trying to hide how smug he was he was usually out of the house long before Victoria was awake—though, after nights like these, that wasn't a hard time to make. “More the afternoon.”
He looked to Victoria herself. She was still looking at him, the way she always did. When she was drunk, when she was twelve and desperate, when she was little enough to believe that he held up the sky, moon and stars. This little lost puppy look that made something in him twist in something gross and unfamiliar he could only recognise as discomfort and annoyance. She was awaiting a response.
“Goodnight, Victoria.”