‘Is this about him smiling?’ he says, picking the towel up from the floor and backhand-tossing it into the laundry bin.
‘It’s about the fact that we have your friend staying at our house and we have no idea how long for.’ He flicks his eyes up at her from beneath the canopy of his thick eyebrows. He’s got that disappointed look in his eyes that makes her feel like a child and around a thousand times more irritated than she was before. ‘I mean, has she told you, in any detail, what she’s actually doing here?’ He strides over to her and presses his index finger onto her lips, stopping Erin saying another word.
‘She’ll hear you,’ he says through a clenched-teeth whisper. Bobby begins to rankle, an arm reaching towards Erin’s neck. Raf hands him over to her and she takes him, shocked at the abruptness of what her fiancé’s just done. It felt aggressive and that’s not Raf at all. ‘Do you know what she’s doing here, Erin, most of the time, what she’s been doing since she’s been here?’ He hasn’t moved, face angled to the floor, voice just above a whisper. ‘Looking after our baby when you’re in London. That’s what she’s doing. That’s why I don’t feel that comfortable saying to her, “Hey, Amanda, how long you staying, mate? Gonna think about slinging your hook? Who’s gonna look after Bobby when you’re gone? No idea really, his mother doesn’t seem to have much interest.”’
Erin opens her mouth and closes it again, like a child’s impression of a goldfish, as Raf stalks over to the window and opens it. The cold air swirls into the room like a phantom. She can’t remember a time that he’s spoken to her with such cruelty, so the first thought she has, a thought that seems to become more and more valid as she computes what he’s just said, is that she must deserve it.
She sits on the bed. Bobby’s crotchety, hungry, so she pulls up her top and presents a breast to him. He turns his head like she’s just revealed a bright light, lets out a shrill wail, bats at her sore nipple. Erin shoves his head onto her boob and after the briefest resistance he begins to nurse.
‘I’m, I’m sorry, that was not kind,’ Raf says, ‘speaking to you like that.’
Erin gets her phone out and starts scrolling through Instagram. More than a hundred new followers. An overwhelming number of messages to respond to. But her fiancé’s just said what he actually thinks and it feels like being stabbed in the throat. Excruciating pain followed by the feeling of having all the wind sucked out of her. He turns to her, spots the phone. She can see him deciding not to comment as he comes over to sit next to her.
‘I saw a bit of that speech you did the other night. You going on about how lonely it is being a mum, how lonely you were, and I just, I thought, I’m working my arse off every day, to put a roof above our heads, time I’d love to be spending with my son and, and you’re not doing it anyway. Amanda is. Even though you know that someone else looking after my son is something I never, ever wanted. I barely remember the time before my mum left, any care I got from Dad has probably fucked me up for life, I just wanted things to be different for Bob.’ He flicks a finger at one of Bobby’s toes. ‘She’s staying here, probably longer than she wanted, because you’ve pretty much asked her to. How many times have I heard you tell her she’s a “godsend”, a “lifesaver”? Maybe she’s desperate to get back to her life but she probably doesn’t feel like she can.’ As if in response, Amanda clatters a heavy pan into the sink.
‘What do you want me to do then?’ Erin looks at Raf before shifting a cushion under Bobby’s bottom. ‘Tell me what you want me to do?’ He sighs so audibly that Bobby opens his eyes and looks up at his dad.
‘I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Everything I’ve done since we met, all I’ve been trying to do.’ He can’t hold Erin’s look and stares away from them, down at the floor. It’s true, Erin thinks, since they first met her happiness has been so much more important to him than his was to her. ‘But nothing seems to be enough, the life I’m trying, working, to give us, it’s not enough for you.’ Erin doesn’t know how to respond, so she leaves his words hanging in the air. ‘I don’t want Amanda living here,’ he says, ‘not really. I want it to be just us. A family. A new chapter away from the city, like we planned. So if you want me to ask her to go, right now, I will happily do that.’ His voice is frail, broken, almost on the edge of tears.
Erin’s phone buzzes and it snaps Raf from his thoughts. She glances down at the screen, an email from Grace. Perhaps it’s about the contract. Every time her phone does anything she hopes it might be the contract from Phibe Digital, the money finally that step closer to her account. She tucks the phone under Bobby, conscious of the optics of checking it now.
‘You’re right about the smiling,’ she says. ‘It should have been me. I’m feeding him.’ Bobby pulls his head away from her nipple before Erin clamps him back on. ‘I half ruined my body giving birth to the little bugger. I thought he’d smile first for me. It’s not Amanda’s fault he didn’t.’ Erin thinks of the email, thinks of the day a week she’s agreed to be at the Phibe offices for the next couple of months. She thinks of the chain of London hotels Grace said have expressed an interest in her hosting a monthly influencer’s dinner. She thinks of Fearne Cotton’s podcast, the four other less esteemed ones she’s been invited to be on in the two and a half weeks since Grace’s been her agent. She can’t bring Bobby and she can’t turn it down. They need the money, she needs the money, some of her own. If she can’t honour all these commitments, if she can’t keep raising her profile, keeping herself in position as Grace’s future superstar, she might not get anything. Erin needs Amanda to stay around for a while longer, just until she can start to be a bit more picky, make enough to show Raf that he can start turning work down. But what Amanda said about her in the cafe, the topless cuddling with her baby, the way she gripped Erin’s arm when she caught her snooping in the studio. She had seemed so lovely, Erin thought she might have a friend, a confidante, but now she just can’t shake the feeling that she might not be able to trust this woman.
‘Food’s done, guys.’ Amanda’s call comes up to them, muffled by the carpet on the stairs. ‘I’m hitting a class with the girls. Don’t wait for me to eat.’
‘Have fun,’ Raf calls back, not shouting but loud enough to be heard in their small house.
‘We have to find out what her plans are,’ Erin says. ‘For her sake as much as anything else.’ Raf nods, puts a hand on her bare knee and squeezes it. ‘You’re right. It’s not fair to make her part of the family then ask her to leave. We need to find out what her intentions are.’
‘Yeh,’ he says, scratching at the hair on the back of his neck. ‘Otherwise she might be with us forever.’ He makes a funny face, something to lighten the mood that says God forbid, before getting up and going into the bathroom.
Erin looks down at Bobby, his eyelids are drooping closed and then popping open again to suckle some more food every few moments. She experiments with holding Bobby closer into her, pushes the pillow up to support him. He reaches his free arm around her waist, tickling the skin under her vest top. A pulse of warmth runs up her back. The front door clicks shut as Amanda leaves for the evening.
27
6 February 1999
We’re here! We made it! We have a flat together like a real husband and wife! AND AND AND
WE MADE LOVE.
We got a taxi from Palmerston bus station in the middle of the night and arrived at our apartment by the Darwin Marina. And there, that first morning, before we’d even unpacked our bags, he took me in his arms, carried me to the bed and made love to me. It was like he’d unleashed all of the emotion that had been brewing within me. I wept and wept and wept and he held me in his arms. It was almost too wonderful. He was quiet afterwards, but when I asked if it was OK, he smiled at me and said I was perfect. Then he got up, got his pencils and began to sketch me just as I was, lying naked, there on the bed.
Before, back home, he always said he was scared, scared of piercing the energetic bond between us, even af
ter our marriage ceremony at Nourlangie. He said that desire could do strange things to spiritual bonds like ours and he was scared it might irreversibly alter what we had. But as he drew me, he seemed so much happier than I’d ever known him to be, so much more relaxed. He looked up from his pad at one point and said, ‘Now we can really be. Be how the universe wants us to be, just us, together forever.’
And that was when I knew I’d made the right decision. In the night-time cab ride I’d been scared. Leaving my mum, leaving school, being a fugitive from the only life I’d ever known. It wasn’t until the car got to the outskirts of Darwin that the profundity of what we’d done, what I’d done, really hit me. And I can admit, to this blank page, that I had doubts.
But now I don’t. We wrote a note for Mum to tell her not to follow us, to be happy for us, and to try and move on with her life without me. Donny said that one day, when I’m older, when they’ve had some time to get perspective, they’ll see that I had to get away. It came to me like an epiphany that Craig’s feelings towards me aren’t healthy, his trips to my room, talking to me about sex with boys, it’s not appropriate. Donny didn’t like the way he looked at me. He said he saw hatred in his eyes, and something else. He’d hit my mum before. How long before he hit me, or something much, much worse?
The apartment is tiny, dirty, and a little damp. Donny’s been out most of the time, at Richard’s gallery, but I’ve been cleaning and doing as much decorating as I know how to do on my own and, even though we only moved in three days ago, it’s starting to fall into place. I’ve cleared the balcony and I want to plant a herb garden there. I told the woman next door I like crystals and she’s given us this beautiful smoky quartz, and I cleaned its energy and polished it up. I was going to make it the centrepiece on our coffee table, but then I thought Donny might want to know where I got it from, so now it’s under the sofa.
I want to make our home perfect for him. I’ve been reading in magazines about how to please him in other ways as well. He’s sacrificed so much for me. I know, with a little work, I can be everything he needs me to be.
Sometimes I pinch myself hard, hard enough that it leaves a mark, just to make sure I’m not dreaming.
28
Erin turns the corner, past the small stone fortification that sits atop the promenade, and spots Amanda in the distance. She’s leaning on the metal pole that blocks toddlers from falling into the sea, head on her forearms. She could be stretching but she’s not wearing her yoga pants. As she gets closer she sees Amanda’s shaking her head. She slaps the metal with one hand, then grips it, legs wringing around each other. She’s upset, Erin thinks.
There’s part of her that wants to walk on, Bobby’s looking sleepy, and having spent the morning doing a live Instagram Q&A with the whingeing baby locked to her hip, she’s desperate for an hour or so’s peace, and stopping to chat to Amanda could jeopardise him nodding off. But she’s never seen Amanda anything but upbeat so she can’t just leave her.
‘Hey,’ she says as gently as she can muster. Amanda wheels round, blinks eyes puffy with past tears, and sighs out a smile.
‘Erin, hello. Hey, baby.’ Bobby, eyes half closed, on the edge of sleep, acknowledges Amanda’s greeting with a lurch to the other side of the sling.
‘Are you OK?’ Erin asks. Amanda does a strange nod, like her head’s dipping under a set of waves.
‘Boy trouble,’ she says, voice gravelly, shaking it away as if it’s nothing. Amanda notices something, cocks her head at Erin. ‘You’re so, so beautiful.’ Her voice almost catches as she says it. ‘Stand there, give me your phone.’ Erin crinkles her face in confusion but Amanda’s insistent, she positions her to stand against the barrier, a twenty-foot drop down to the beach below, and reaches her hand out for Erin’s phone. There’s something manic in her eyes, whites too big like an anxious animal. She comes up to Erin, hand still stretched out for the phone. Erin sees the drop down to the rocky beach below out of the corner of her eye and hands the phone over, Bobby enlivening at the activity. Amanda takes a few steps back and holds up the phone and frames Erin and Bobby up in its camera.
‘Picture-perfect,’ she says, followed by the artificial sound of a camera shutter opening.
29
BRAUNEoverBRAINS
431 posts 65.8k followers 1,712 following
ERIN BRAUNE
This is my loved-up face. Cos I’m in LURVE.
THIS PLACE. THIS BOY. SPREAD MY HEART ON TOAST BECAUSE IT HAS MELTED.
Been such an exciting month, but I’ve missed this boy more than I can say and having him snuggled up to me, in sunshine like this! It’s not always easy-breezy looking after a bubba but what they say is true, value every moment you have with them because the time is so precious. And, as if you don’t already think I’m a smug twad already, LOOK AT THAT VIEW.
But wherever you are, whether they’re sleeping or awake, love your bubba like they love you. Because, perish the thought, they might not always feel so ardent!
30
Erin concentrates on the ridges of black rock as she steps over them. Five minutes ago she turned her foot on one and it sent a jag of pain drilling into her left hip. Amanda stops ahead, allowing Erin to catch up with her.
‘Whose idea was it?’ Amanda asks, her schoolgirl-style duffel coat not quite covering the hem of her dress.
‘Whose idea was what?’ Erin asks, still trying to talk quietly so Bobby doesn’t wake even though she’s slightly out of breath. They’ve only been walking for five minutes but Amanda’s raced ahead and it’s hard going. There’s a path at the top of the cliff that leads all the way to the chalk needle on Jessup Bay, but Amanda wanted to walk along the beach. So it’s been mostly sucking sand, slippery rocks and knee-deep piles of drying seaweed that Amanda’s treating like nature’s obstacle course.
‘Having a baby,’ she says, slowing to allow Erin to catch up.
‘It was a joint decision, I suppose.’
‘Hm,’ Amanda says.
‘I felt rudderless, I was blaming Raf for it. I was becoming a bit of a nightmare to be honest. I think we both thought it might bolster things between us.’
‘It has.’
Erin gives Amanda a quizzical look. Her tone wasn’t questioning, she was telling Erin she was right, that having a baby has brought them closer together, despite having only known them as a couple for a matter of weeks.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Erin asks. ‘You were – you seemed upset, up on the prom?’
‘Just, this guy back home.’
‘You spoke to him?’
Amanda nods. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to work.’
‘Has he got impatient?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You being here, is he not happy to give you space any more?’
‘Something like that. I shouldn’t be telling you all this.’ She dismisses herself with a shake of the head, frustrated, that edge of mania creeping into her eyes.
‘It’s fine, honestly. If you need to talk to someone, you’ve helped us so much, it’s the least I can do.’
‘Look, I don’t know. He – he needs me, I know he needs me, but he can’t see it.’
‘He’s broken things off?’
‘He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s a conundrum.’
‘Shit, one of those?’
‘It’s so draining.’ Amanda looks at Erin with a wan smile. ‘But I can’t seem to –’ she tenses her two hands into claws and then releases them into the air – ‘tear myself away from him.’
‘He sounds like a dick.’
‘He’s not.’ Amanda’s jaw tenses, she’s suddenly defensive.
‘No, I just mean, he’s probably not half as complicated or interesting as he wants everyone to think.’ Amanda’s face creases into a tight grin. Erin’s phone buzzes and Amanda notices her attention drift into a different universe. The buzzing in her pocket has been almost constant for the last few minutes. The short buzz of Insta notifications, the two pulses
of vibration for a WhatsApp, the longer one of an email. She’s so used to these mini-shocks of engagement that she hasn’t thought to look, but even though she doesn’t know what they are, they still give her a little starburst of happiness. The photo Amanda took up on the promenade was lush. Erin was kissing the sleepy Bobby’s head, strands of hair blowing artistically in the breeze, the sun reaching through a particularly photogenic band of cloud. Amanda captured something, the vastness of the landscape behind making the moment between mother and child both intimate and essential. She’s loath to involve Amanda any further into their lives, but Erin’s feed could do with that sort of photography all the time.
She gets her phone out, hoping that it’s Grace with some news – she’s fishing around a production company that are considering Erin to front an Internet kids’ show and, although she’s being blasé about it to Raf, she’s inordinately excited about the prospect of being on-screen, even if it is just online.
Trying to reach you. Going to voicemail. Please call me now.
It is from Grace. On the email icon she sees she has twenty-three new emails come in. She has forty-plus WhatsApps. And Instagram has gone insane, more than two hundred notifications. Something’s happened. Her chest clenches and, despite the wintery air, she wants to take her coat off.
Up ahead Amanda jumps up onto a crop of shining wet rocks and throws her arms up, causing a flock of seagulls to fly up in the air over Erin. She ducks down though none of them are very close to her. Bobby shifts to the side but doesn’t wake.
The Family Friend Page 12
