Erin skips up onto a little clump of rocks and hops down onto the wet sand. She half jumps and walks backwards, sees the moment her footprints change direction as if two different people have walked towards each other and embraced.
‘Having fun?’ Amanda calls over to her from up near the cliff where she’s more sheltered from the wind.
‘I cannot tell you!’ Erin says as she turns round and walk-jogs towards Amanda, falling in step with her fast pace. ‘A walk, with another adult, not having, you know, that weight on me. This is better than sex!’ Amanda smiles but there’s a hint of an embarrassed blush that reminds Erin she probably doesn’t know Amanda quite well enough for that sort of comment. She could be religious.
‘I’m amazed you and your mates aren’t out here all the time. What a place to bring up a bubba.’
‘It’s always talked about but never really happens.’
‘I’d have thought everyone would want to go for a walk with a famous Insta-mumma – that is what it’s called?’
‘Insta-mum, usually. I don’t know, it’s – I don’t hang out with my followers, that’s not how it is.’ Erin hears a note of sadness in her voice. She probably knows north of fifty mums locally and there are many, many more that know who she is, she can tell by the way they look at her, but she still wouldn’t really call any of them friends, apart from Caz, and they met the old-fashioned way. ‘And he – he can be so hard. I find it more stressful being with people when he’s kicking off, you know, them seeing me, not calm.’ Amanda gives her a sympathetic smile, this morning on the grassy bank implicit in her words. Amanda was wonderful when she stepped in to help and hasn’t mentioned it since, no judgement. Seeing so much of other people’s approaches to motherhood through the window of social media, Erin has started to forget that there are people in existence who don’t judge.
‘Have you not got family close?’ Amanda asks, Bobby reaching an arm out of the sling and leaning on it so he looks like a Lothario cruising for girls in his soft top. He is cute, crazy cute. Those dark, dark eyes, all that hair, tiny Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin. All Raf, Erin sees none of herself in her baby boy, maybe it would be easier to forgive him for his screams, for his need, for his desperation if she could.
‘My mum’s in Croydon, my brother lives in west London.’
‘Is that far? London’s not too bad, is it?’
‘Not too far. But we’re not that close any more. Mum really didn’t want me to move away, and Alex, my brother, he and I have drifted apart.’
‘That’s so sad.’
‘He’s quite down the line, you know? Good job, capable wife, perfect kids. He’s happy with how everything’s turned out and I get the impression that he and Beth, his wife, find me a source of unnecessary drama.’
‘You are an actress.’
‘Exactly. Beth’s very, partner in a law firm, power suits, you know, “lean in”, that sort. Probably thinks I’m a bit of a joke.’
‘No!’
‘Anyway, it was getting me down, and Raf, level-headed as always, said that it would be best to accept that we were in different places in our lives, so we made the decision to just –’ Erin makes a cutting action in the air.
‘And with your mum?’
‘I think she thought I’d live a five-minute walk away from her forever. For months after we moved, every time I rang she’d make me feel so awful and, I don’t know, her and Raf, she’s always been pretty rude to him.’
‘Really?’
‘She has this thing about Australian men, thinks they’re all machismo.’
‘Couldn’t be less like Raf.’
‘I know. She never made much effort to get to know him and, he never mentioned it, but I know it bothered him, so I stopped ringing and she was far too proud to be the one to reach out. Makes me sound stubborn.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I was always an obedient little girl, teacher’s pet, those roles from when we’re kids, we’re expected to be like that forever. Families! Fuck.’
‘It won’t be forever. These bonds we have, especially ones from when we were kids, they don’t just end. They’re part of us, they develop in our genes, in our DNA. All of you are still connected here.’ She touches her heart like Erin’s seen yogis do and she hopes Amanda’s right. Erin misses them. Her big brother’s the only person that could ever really make her belly-laugh and she misses the euphoria of that. But every time she’d leave their beautiful Victorian house in Richmond after a visit, with its vast basement kitchen and its two well-adjusted if a little obnoxious children, her life choices, all those bad decisions would run around her head like a miniature train set for weeks afterwards. They’ve barely seen them since they moved to the seaside, and although Erin’s mum came down to meet Bobby when he was born, she made a point of not staying and hasn’t been back since. She used to be supportive of anything Erin did but she couldn’t understand why they were moving away, just at the time that they might need her help, and because it was Raf’s idea to move, she’s childishly taken it as Erin choosing him over her. And with everything going on in Erin’s head, the constant shame she feels for still not loving her baby enough, the financial drain she’s become on Raf, no sight of a career on the other side of this year of nominal maternity leave, she just didn’t have broad enough shoulders to bear her mother’s disappointment as well. She’s learned that sometimes you have to make difficult decisions, to end difficult relationships, just as a form of self-preservation.
‘I’ve not spoken to my ma for nearly twenty years,’ Amanda offers, eyes fixed on the horizon, ‘but I still think about her every day. And I know she does me.’
‘Do you have other family?’ Erin asks, up near the cliff now, feeling the chalk dry-rub onto her hand as she runs it along the sheer face. Amanda leans her head to the ground slightly, only for Bobby to shove a hand up under her chin. She laughs.
‘Not family, no. There’s a – there’s someone,’ she says, smothering a sheepish grin, ‘someone significant, who’s come back into my life recently.’
‘A boyfriend?’
‘It’s not –’
‘Sorry, that’s so nineteenth century of me. Girlfriend? Dolphin-friend? Sorry, I shouldn’t even be asking. Just ignore me. I’m a nosy bitch.’
Amanda laughs at Erin’s flustering. ‘No, it’s – it’s fine. It’s just there’s a lot of water under the bridge, so, you know. We’re taking things slowly.’
‘Well, I think you’ve pulled a seriously flair move,’ Erin says, mushing a waterlogged pebble of chalk between forefinger and thumb.
‘Oh yeh?’
‘Flying halfway across the world from him is the ultimate in playing hard to get.’
‘Guess that’s right.’
Erin stares at the side of Amanda’s face, those cheekbones like cut crystal.
‘I needed to leave Oz to, to know, you know?’
‘Time apart, get some perspective.’
‘Things between us have always been complex and I can’t have that energy coming back into my life without knowing that this time things can be different.’ Amanda must feel Erin staring at her because she whips her head round to her, the suggestion of a tear at the corner of her eye. She smiles it off, reaches a hand out and grabs Erin’s wrist, squeezes it and then lets it go. ‘It’s so lovely to be here. The colours.’ She thrusts her arms out wide, the action shocks Bobby and he puts his Puffa-coated arms back in within the wrap. ‘It’s so beautiful! I love it!’ Amanda shouts out to the sky. It prompts Erin to look up at the vast blue above, makes her see the golf-course green tops of the brilliant white cliffs, and it makes her grin and throw her arms out as well and she almost, almost whoops along with Amanda. When the moment dies and their arms are back down by their sides, they both notice Bobby glaring at Erin. His unsmiling mouth seemingly more fixed in an angry pout than ever at these two women enjoying life so much when he has no intention of seeing anything positive about it. And spontaneously the two of them
guffaw into laughter until it dies away and they look at each other and something passes between them, a quiet wave of mutual satisfaction at having each other in this place, in this time Erin feels a warmth spread in her stomach like she’s just eaten a bowlful of stew on an icy day. And for the first time in a long, long while she feels nourished.
9
‘Can you not take Bobby with you?’ Grace Fentiman asks, her voice made nasal by the speaker on Erin’s phone.
‘To London?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Er … ’ Erin stands in front of the kitchen sink, watching thick rain obscure her view of her garden. Bobby’s hit-or-miss in the buggy and trying to manage a two-hour train journey, the Underground and a sodden metropolis with him in the hip-crippling sling is an impossibility. ‘He’s got a chest thing, if it wasn’t raining … ’
‘Course.’
‘Shit. This is so annoying.’ Erin scours away a patch of mucusy sick from the top Bobby’s just been wearing with scalding water. She flicks her wrist under the stream and wrinkles her nose at the pain.
‘I could suggest you call in, but don’t think Ally’s producer would go for it. I had to do a big pitch for them to go for you.’ Erin and Grace haven’t yet formalised their working relationship, but when someone called the agent from Ally Thornton’s MotherBoard podcast saying their guest had dropped out and they needed someone to step in, Grace had put Erin forward. Ally’s a hip, young radio presenter and her guests are usually celebrities and mega-influencers, so, as Grace has now said three times, this could be a huge thing for Erin’s profile. She’s called Raf a few times but he’s not picking up. He’s having to take freelance projects on top of his agency work to cover the mortgage so she couldn’t ask him to take time off anyway.
She hears a bump and looks over to see Bobby has keeled over on the Winnie-the-Pooh blanket he’s playing on. Mercifully, he’s avoided the minefield of loose building blocks and doesn’t seem to have hurt himself.
‘What can I tell them? Their recording session’s running until six.’ Erin spots a figure in white emerging from the studio at the end of the garden. Amanda lifts her head to the rain, it looks like she’s drinking the water. She’s holding an orange bucket that Erin recognises from their garden shed.
‘Give me two minutes,’ Erin says to Grace. ‘I’ll call you back in two minutes. Less.’ Erin goes to right Bobby and finds him a cuddly butterfly with various rubber and plastic appendages that he can shove into his mouth. She clicks open the door and sprints out into the downpour as she sees Amanda walking out the back gate.
‘Amanda, I need the biggest favour ever,’ she shouts after her, no time to dice in niceties. Amanda comes back down the alley behind their house. Erin runs under the cover of the studio’s porch where their house guest joins her.
‘We just don’t get weather like this at home. It’s New Moon, crazy low tide, it’s elemental. I was going down to see what beasts came out in something like this. Crabs, oysters, muscles. I thought I could cook. You guys want to come down?’ Erin creases her eyes. Amanda can’t have heard her.
‘Can you do me the hugestest favour ever?’
‘Sure,’ she says, a hint of ambiguity in her inflection.
‘Can you watch him?’
‘Bobby?’
‘Yeh.’ A globule of rainwater pools into one of Erin’s eyes and she blinks it away. ‘I’ve got to go and do a thing in London. Last minute. I’d never normally ask but it could be a pretty big work thing for me and you’ve worked with kids.’
‘Is he on his own in there?’
‘I don’t mean to spring it on you.’
‘We shouldn’t leave him.’ Amanda heads over the muddy grass towards the house as Erin stepping-stones her way across the patches of paving behind her. She glances at her phone, trying to do the sums of timings and trains and Tubes. Erin needs to either go or stay and she has minutes to decide. As they get in, Bobby swivels to see them.
‘Have you spoken to Raf?’ Amanda asks, going to the kitchen and drying herself with the tea towel before throwing it over to Erin.
‘Not been able to get him.’ Erin dries off the bottom of her hair. There’ll be photos at the podcast. Ally Thornton has a black bob with a white-and-red David Bowie streak on one side of it. She always looks immaculate. Amanda blinks her long eyelashes and cocks her head to the side. ‘I’ll text him though. He won’t mind if it’s you.’ Amanda looks at something in the garden and Erin can’t make out her expression. She feels edgy with the need to be somewhere else, like getting stuck behind a tractor on a single-lane road. Bobby’s brow creases and he grizzles at being ignored for so long. Erin picks him up and takes him to Amanda. ‘It’s so much to ask and I wouldn’t dream of it if I didn’t know how totally amazing you are with him.’ Bobby reaches towards Amanda as she twists her hair into a bun. ‘And look, he’s sick of me anyway. Give you some time to get to know each other.’
‘All right,’ Amanda says, ‘no worries.’ She takes off her slick winter coat, letting it fall to the floor. She’s in one of her tunic tops, this one a pale blue. Bobby holds his arms open to Amanda and she takes him to her chest, cuddling him like a much tinier baby. ‘How can I say no to you, eh, my darling boy?’ Erin smiles at them, gives Bobby an affectionate pat on the head, touches Amanda’s elbow and then she’s off upstairs where she tears her clothes off and tears on a new outfit, does a thirty-second make-up job, before tearing back downstairs to the hall.
She rifles through her £400 #gifted baby backpack and finds her keys, phone charger and headphones and puts them in a green glittery clutch before giving herself a moment to look in the hall mirror. The vintage trench she got from the Cancer Research shop opposite the station makes her look tall, powerful, her hair up, professional, the forest-green eyeshadow, fun-loving and it goes with the bag. For a two-minute job, it’s pretty bloody good, she thinks. She grabs a wide-brimmed black hat from the shelf above the coat hook behind the door and tries it on. It looks great but in the rain could give her the appearance of a wader so she puts it back.
This feels like a step up and she’s ready for it. She can still see the thin tributaries of stress that crease around her eyes through her foundation but there’s more light in them than there’s been for months, not the sparkles she tries to generate for her photos, this is real, shining excitement. She taps the shabby-chic hall table three times with the tips of her fingers and turns back into the living room. Amanda’s stood exactly where she left her over by the sink, Bobby still cradled in her arms like a newborn. He’s quiet, calm, and they’re just staring at each other. Erin feels spit catch at the top of her throat and a shard of envy at the effortless calm Amanda seems to have with Bobby splices into her enthusiasm. A tiny sound, Amanda singing, humming, an ancient sound, drifts across the room. She was going to go over and give Bobby a kiss on the head, the sort of thing she’s seen on a thousand television shows and films. A mother’s parting gesture of love, of propriety, but she decides it’s better not to upset the apple cart by making it too clear that she’s leaving him.
‘Good luck,’ Erin says weakly. ‘I’ll be forever in your debt for this.’
‘Happy to help,’ Amanda says in a theatrical whisper, before restarting her song and turning back to Bobby.
Erin picks up an umbrella from the stand and strides out into the deluge, leaving Amanda inside clutching her baby boy.
10
BRAUNEoverBRAINS
372 posts 39.7k followers 1,377 following
ERIN BRAUNE
Mum to Bobby. Salty sea-dweller. Bright up your life. Reformed thespian.
This is my podcast pantsuit. Because we did a podcast.
ALLY THORNTON IS A DREAM. We had a hilarious chat. Well, tbh, cos Ally is so bloody good at her job it wasn’t just a thrill ride up the lollercoaster. We talked how hard it was giving up acting, keeping things Zen on two hours’ sleep, the anxiety that comes with getting a biblical deluge of DMs, and a whole lot of other
shiz. But most importantly, we provide you with the definitive guide to what different condiment combos work best on toast and plans for our Carbicide Cookbook. SPOILER ALERT: Ally has a penchant for a rice sandwich.
BUT. Who is that standing next to Ally and me? If you don’t know her or her extended prosecco-drinking pinky finger, this is the pocket rocket that is Grace Fentiman. Grace is agent extraordinaire and THE Svengali of the influencer world. And she’s offered to represent me! I couldn’t be more delighted to be working with this wonderful woman. She’s a positivity-head too and as soon as we started chatting – about the worthy topic of how we managed to survive before the invention of four-minute microwave mug-cake – I could tell she was full of great ideas and integrity. I’m so excited about working together and everything the future holds.
Also. Promise to stop posting pictures of me boozing. I’m a good mum and my baby does see me every now and again. Honest, guv.
#i’mnotdrunkyou’redrunk
#BRAUNEoverBRAINSmegaglobalworldtour.net
#notarealwebsite
#ifitwasarealwebsiteweneedtofirethebrandingperson
#doineedawebsitenow
#grace?
#doi?
#seriously
theparentalist this is HUGE. @bubbleagent is a FORCE. Instagram better reinforce its walls cos you guys are gonna tear through it like a Scud missile.
Annamaitron SHIT THE BED. This is mega. My two favourites under one roof. Snuggles?
jeremyforbes wow. drinking. groovy. you must be such a laugh.
bubbleagent I have no words. After a turbulent pregnancy and a pre-birth freak-out, @Brauneoverbrains was terrified of succumbing to post-natal depression, but she took action and took control. She dressed bright, exercised and tried to laugh through some tough times with her gorgeous baby boy. And Instagram has taken her to its surgically enhanced bosom. Erin is such an inspiration and I’m so proud to be working together. Besitos supermum.
The Family Friend Page 4
