‘Fuck sake,’ she says under her breath, brandishing her phone in front of her like a lit stick of dynamite. Grace’s tone does not commute good news. She needs to call her immediately but she can’t risk waking the baby. Erin’s first thought is the video of her shaking the buggy. They never found out who ‘Ali-Crow’ was so there was nothing to stop them from reposting the video.
She goes into Instagram, clicks onto her notifications, scans down the list as fast as her phone will load them. Messages from handles she recognises, but most she doesn’t. Then the words: You have been tagged in four photos by Leister-worcley. She clicks onto the ‘Tagged’ icon. There they are. Four photos.
Erin at the brasserie on the end of the harbour, Bobby on her breast, a pained look of disgust on her face as she looks down at him.
Erin dead-eyed at the church hall baby group, ignoring Bobby as he holds out a block to her.
Erin, face into the buggy, contorted in anguish on the patch of grass near the beach, a still from the video from before.
She’s not in the last photo. It shows Amanda, sat on a sofa somewhere Erin doesn’t recognise, Bobby cradled in her left arm, drinking a bottle. Amanda pouts a big kiss to the baby and Bobby’s eyes are shining.
Amanda’s there, next to her, and Erin flicks the phone away from her so she can’t see the screen. She bends down to the level of Bobby’s head, adjusts his hand that’s become trapped.
‘The stack’s just round the corner,’ she says and Erin gawps at her. ‘All OK?’ The heat on Erin’s chest from Bobby being on her feels excruciating now.
‘Can you, can you take him?’
‘He’s asleep.’
‘Can you get him off me?’ Her voice harsh. When Amanda doesn’t act immediately, Erin begins to tear at the back of the wrap, desperate to get the weight off her. Bobby begins to crotchet but she doesn’t care. She yanks at the knot on her back, pulling the wrong part that abruptly tightens it, waking Bobby with a start.
‘Let me.’ Amanda goes round the back and unties the wrap and takes Bobby into her arms. Erin walks away from them, looking up at antlike figures on the cliff above. Is whoever it is watching her now? she thinks Because someone is following her around town, taking pictures of her. Someone is trying to make it look like she hates her baby. Like she’s a terrible mother. Then rounding it off with a picture of him drinking a bottle, she meant to do a post about him combi-feeding but kept putting it off, but worse, drinking that bottle with sparkly-eyed Amanda, a nanny in all but name that, again, she hasn’t even begun to mention on social media.
Amanda disentangles Bobby from the wrap and drops it onto a patch of rock. He’s fully awake and not happy to be so. She bounces him up and shows him the sea to try and bring him down from his ratcheting grumbles. Erin stalks further up the beach towards the cliff face, stumbling on patches of seaweed, rage swirling within her like a tempest. She doesn’t deserve this. What has she done to be targeted in this way? She’s about to phone Grace but she stops and sits down on the wet sand. She goes through the pictures again. The blankness behind her eyes. The joy in Amanda’s. She flicks down the comments. ‘Inauthentic’, ‘bullshit’, ‘breast is best’, ‘hot nanny’, ‘betrayal’, ‘dishonest’, ‘exploitative’. Incendiary words boom out of each tiny sentence. She can hear Amanda singing ‘wheee’ as she swings her baby boy into the air. Erin’s eyes begin to water, but she’s not upset, it’s the anger leaking out of her. She turns her phone to face herself and presses the record button.
‘Fuck you, you fucking coward,’ she says to a picture of her own angry face on the phone’s screen, the red record button blinking to the side of her. ‘Sneaking around taking pictures of me and my baby. If I look bored, if I look pissed off in them, maybe it’s because I am bored. Maybe it’s because I am pissed off. Yeh, I’m giving him a bottle sometimes. How else do you think I can go to events on weekday nights? Should I have declared it to the world? If people don’t like it they can unfollow me. I don’t give a shit.’ But then the words catch at the back of her throat like leaves in a drain. She stops the recording and puts the phone back in her coat pocket. Bobby shrieks with joy up ahead. Erin puts her head between her knees.
31
‘So, I’m feeling very sad and very, as you can see from the panda-eye mascara debacle going on here, very upset about what’s happened today. Someone intruding on me and my family in this way feels very personal and I’m feeling attacked. It does feel like an attack. I know that lots of people with far fewer followers than me have to deal with some of the most despicable abuse online, death threats, rape threats, etc. And I’ve had a few of those and they’re awful when you get them and are one hundred per cent not OK at all, but we’re taught to dismiss them as trolls and ignore them. And the fact that society has just said that that’s sort of fine is a pretty horrendous thing, but I’m not here to talk about that today. But yeh, the fact that the pictures are of me and Bobby and one of our friends is, it’s very personal and worrying. Whoever it is has been near enough to take a photo. And that is not on, at all. So please stop. Stop taking these photos. However, um, this is really hard to say right now but, these photos have actually been a wake-up call to me about what I choose to post and a reminder that I have a responsibility to be as open and transparent as I can possibly be. I should have made it much more explicit that I’m no longer exclusively breastfeeding. For the last three or four weeks, I’ve been pumping breast milk and Bobby’s been having it in a bottle. There it is. And, to be honest, he’s not been great on the boob recently so we might have to think about him starting on formula and that is totally cool, and if it ever seemed like I made a big deal of him being exclusively breastfed, then it was never my intention to shame those that chose not to. Most of the reaction has been about the bottle, but people also want to know who the lady with Bobby is. She’s called Amanda. She’s an old friend of Raf’s and she’s been amazing helping me out with Bobby when I’ve had to be in London for work. She’s not a nanny that we’re paying, she’s not a #gifted childminder from an agency, she’s just doing us a good old-fashioned solid. I didn’t want to feature her because she’s not on social media and doesn’t want to be. But again, mea culpa, if I ever gave the impression that I was doing everything I was doing while always looking after Bobby, then that was a false impression and I apologise for it. What these photos have taught me is that I am not perfect, my life is not perfect, and I don’t always love all aspects of being a mum. I never thought that my feed was saying that I did, but some of your responses to the photos have made me reconsider my own output. I want us all to be the best caregivers, the most loving parents, the most satisfied and fulfilled people that we can. If my Instagram feed EVER made anyone feel inadequate or in some way, not ‘enough’, then I’m filled with remorse and if there are those that now feel I’m some sort of fraud, I want you to know that I’m not. But if you choose to unfollow me, there are some wonderful women out there who I’d love you to fill the void with who I’ll link to in the next few frames of my stories.
‘I love you all and hope that you’ll be patient with me as I take a day or two to get over the intrusion into my family’s life. It’s been a very difficult day. I am going to drink gin. Because that is how middle-class women have been brought up to cope with all varieties of distress.’
32
‘I thought the album you posted last night was inspired. Tonally, a perfect reaction.’ Grace Fentiman jingles a teaspoon around her mug, fishes out a green tea bag and puts it on the edge of the untouched plate of ginger nuts that rests on Erin’s dining-room table. At ten o’clock last night, Grace had helped Erin craft a video response to the pictures for her ‘stories’ and Erin had the idea of posting a selection of blooper photos that she’d taken while trying to make content for her Instagram feed. Bobby writhing around while she tries to take a selfie of them, her with sick all over her top, Bobby incandescent, head thrown back, screaming at her. The sort of photos that seem like a mission st
atement of authenticity moving forward but nowhere near as questionable as the ones posted by her unwanted paparazzo.
It’s late afternoon, the day after. Grace’s come down on the train. She wears a Barbour padded gilet over a crisp white shirt with dark fitted jeans, all pristine. It looks like she might have ordered the whole ensemble from Net-a-Porter last night in preparation for a rare trip to the provinces. She’s so well put-together she makes everything in Erin’s house seem shabby in comparison. Raf plonks a brown teapot with a chipped spout in the middle of the table and sits down next to Erin. She’d been desperate not to tell him about the photos last night but lots of people they know would have seen them so she had no choice. He’s put on a veneer of concern, but she can tell, the shortness of his sentences, the way he can’t look at her for too long, that he’s angry she’s invited this into their lives. He smothers her hand with his.
‘What do you suggest we do?’ he asks Grace, tone businesslike.
‘We’ve informed the cyber-bullying team at the Met and I think you should report it to the police down here.’
‘You think they’ll do anything? I mean, you get burgled over here and the coppers hardly bat an eyelid.’ Erin gives Raf a look. He’s barely spoken to Grace since he got back from work but now he seems to want to take out his anger about the situation on her. Erin tried to get him to stay at the studio but he’s said he blames himself for not taking more of an interest in her Instagram so he insisted on meeting Grace. ‘I was googling it last night. There’s nothing threatening about the photos that would tip it off as stalking or harassment or whatever else this bastard is up to. So what can they do?’
‘Listen,’ Grace says, pushing the handle of her teaspoon on the table from six o’clock to nine. ‘You are right. The police probably won’t do much. There’s an assumption that things on social media are harmless, because mostly they are.’
‘Mostly –’
‘Which is why we’ve got our guy, Xavi, on it. We’ve booked him for the whole of this week to work on this. He’s the best in the business.’
‘What’s his background?’ Raf asks, too curt.
‘He used to work for the Spanish government. The point is, and it’s really important that both of you understand this, the point is that we’re taking this very, very seriously. There’s nothing more important to me than my client’s well-being.’ Raf releases Erin’s hand, shifting in his seat. ‘Erin, is there anyone you can think of that could have taken those pictures? Do you want to go through them, all of us, try to work out where you were for each shot, if there’s someone you saw at those places?’
‘Um.’ Raf and Grace both lean in. Bobby pulls away from Erin’s boob, pawing at her nipple, turning his nose up at it. This whole set-up is excruciating. Something from a nightmare. But she’s also breastfeeding. She shoves Bobby on but he must not be on right because it’s painful as he feeds.
Erin has done exactly what Grace’s suggesting. She’s visited the spots, tried to rack her brains about who was there, what the weather was like, where everyone else was. Lorna was at Colvin’s, the brasserie where the ‘mum-summit’ was, but so were about fifty other mums. Amanda’s identified the picture of her and Bobby as being at a cafe called Stornaway, but she’s been a few times, so she couldn’t narrow down when the photo was taken but there’s no reason Lorna couldn’t have been there. And she was nearby at the time the video was taken. But the day the picture from the church group was taken, Erin’s certain it was last week because of the jumper she was wearing, Lorna’s Instagram indicates she was in Maidstone all day visiting her sister so that seemed to discount her. Amanda of course was there at the time of the video, she could have been at the other locations, Erin didn’t know how long she’d been coffeeing with Sophie and her pals on the day of the ‘mum-summit’, and Erin had sat near the window so the picture could have been taken from outside, but firstly, she was with Erin when the troll posted these photos and the video from the mound that they managed to take down and, more pertinently why would Amanda post a picture of herself?
Every rational deduction has led to a dead end which points to it being someone she doesn’t know. The terrifying thing is that she has tens of thousands of followers, names on a screen that represent real people she knows nothing about, who see what she does every single day. Erin’s never posted her address or anything stupid like that, but it’s not a stretch to find out where she lives. She’s googled some of the landmarks that have appeared in her feed, the beacon of the lido, the alternate purple and yellow beach huts, and an image search brings up their town’s name immediately. Hang around for a day or two and someone would be sure to see her and Bobby in town.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, ‘I can’t think of anyone that would do something like this really.’ She glances out of the front window, as if the culprit will be standing out there taking pictures of them now. ‘Could it be some sort of incel guy? Anna Mai –’ Grace nods, acknowledging the name – ‘said that she’d been having lots of very aggressive sort of “get back in the kitchen” type stuff on her feed. Stuff about how a mother shouldn’t dress the way she does.’ Anna’s a gym-buff and hot with it and doesn’t baulk at showing off her body on ‘the Gram’. ‘She said there’d weirdly been a massive increase in that sort of online abuse in the last two or three months. Maybe someone like that?’
‘After your speech, you mean?’ Raf says. Grace narrows her eyes. ‘Calling out the patriarchy can be pretty inflammatory to certain stupid arseholes.’ Grace waves her head from side to side as if balancing out his suggestion like ingredients for a cake. ‘Have you had to deal with anything like this before?’ Raf asks.
‘Not exactly, not personal photos like this,’ Grace says, adjusting the starched cuff around her left wrist, keeping her eyes fixed on Raf so as not to be watching the breastfeeding. ‘But I’ve had a few clients who’ve had some pretty horrible stuff. Death threats, threatened sexual assault, torture. I suppose the most similar is a presenter I had whose address kept getting posted up online. She got sent some odd things, but nothing happened really.’
Erin’s about to ask what ‘nothing happened really’ means but Bobby screeching cuts her off. He arches his back away from her chest. He doesn’t want her milk. He hasn’t wanted her milk for a week or so now. Not from her breast. Not from her when she pumps it and tries to give it to him in a bottle. He doesn’t want anything from her. She feels so hot she wants to put Bobby down on his mat and walk out into the rain. Grace gives her what must be her sympathetic face, but it’s not hard to tell that she’s not much of a baby person.
‘Can you –’ Erin stands and expects Raf to stand with her and take Bobby, but he remains seated, picks up his phone and calls someone.
‘Could you just come and give Bob a bottle for a minute?’ he says. ‘Yeh, that’s right, yeh.’ He puts his phone back on the table. Erin looks through the thick lines of rain that hammer onto the mud-green lawn to see Amanda duck out of the studio and skip towards the house and she’s surprised to feel grateful. Even though she’s loath to let Grace see Amanda charm Bobby into silence she could really do without him scratching and screaming at her while she has to endure this conversation.
Amanda breezes through the door, wet hair twisted into a lock and swept over her shoulder, an embroidered bag hanging from one arm.
‘Come here, babba,’ she says, taking the screaming Bobby from Erin. ‘Hello,’ she says to Grace in the polite way a cleaner would acknowledge their employer’s guest as she moves past the table towards the kitchen and flicks the kettle on.
‘This is Amanda.’ Erin realises she doesn’t know how to refer to her. ‘Our friend.’
‘Erin tells me you’ve been a godsend?’ Grace says, cocking her head.
‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways,’ Amanda says without turning round. Grace takes her time examining Amanda’s lacy purple dress with its billowing sleeves as she warms Bobby’s bottle in a bowl of hot water.
‘
What’s the plan of action with threats like this? With your presenter client, what did you actually do?’
Grace swings back round to face Raf. She nods, grimaces into a smile.
‘There’s no set protocol. With the presenter we reported it all but ultimately just had to let it blow over. It’s a horrible part of having any sort of public recognition. Are you feeling frightened at all, Erin?’ Grace asks.
‘No, not frightened, no. They’re only taking photos.’
‘So far.’ Raf’s smartly clipped nails scratch at an old scar on the surface of the table. Grace side-eyes him before returning her laser focus to Erin. She can see how Grace’s got to where she is. Her eyes are swimming-pool blue and when she looks at Erin it makes her feel like a significant person, someone who should be listened to, yet conversely, she has such effortless authority, Erin always finds herself deferring to her entirely.
‘The reason I ask is, the Phibe thing is a pretty major contract that I’m still trying to hash out, but it does require you to commit to them, set number of posts per week, days in the office, all that stuff, over a nine-month period, as discussed.’ Erin spots Raf’s hands ball up on the table. He knows about the job with Phibe, knows about the time commitment. He’d been happy for her, but, as always, she could tell he was thinking about how it would impact them as a family. ‘I’d hate to get it all over the finish line,’ Grace continues, ‘and then for you to decide, totally legitimately, that you’re going to have to duck out of Instagram for a bit and for us to have to pay back all that money.’
‘I’m not going to leave Instagram,’ Erin says, with a vehemence that causes her to check herself. Raf pushes his top lip out with his tongue. ‘I just hate the idea of letting whoever it is win.’ Raf takes her fingers in both his hands.
The Family Friend Page 13
