The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  Bobby throws the xylophone’s beater into the air and it hits the stem of a plant on the coffee table, scattering soil onto the floor. He begins bum-shuffling towards the mess and Erin gets her phone ready. She kneels down, framing up the shot and watches the screen as Bobby puts a chunk of soil in his mouth. He spits it out, makes a disgusted face and Erin snaps him. She has the money shot, the first image for her Insta-stories for today. She looks at the photo. She’ll have to put a caption about how she found him like this otherwise people will be asking why she wasn’t stopping her son eating soil, but it’s perfect. Funny, relatable, authentic, some nice colours from the bookshelf in the background.

  Bobby hauls himself up on the coffee table and knocks some coasters onto the floor. Erin glances outside to see that it looks dry and, not being able to handle the screams of wrestling Bobby into the buggy, decides to endure the pain, throwing him in the sling before she heads out for town.

  As she walks along her road towards the front, with Bobby enjoying the fresh air and the closeness of her body, she wants to get her phone out and edit the photo, but she keeps seeing neighbours and doesn’t want to be seen on her phone when she’s with Bobby now. With the sun threatening to break the stranglehold of cloud, she goes down a ramp towards the promenade, finding it thankfully empty.

  The sea is blanket-calm and as Bobby waves his arms in the air at a swathe of seagulls that fly out towards the horizon, Erin breathes in the seaweed air and starts to feel something close to calm. She stops, lets her smartphone fall to the bottom of her coat pocket and gazes out at the water. Eighteen months ago, on the day trip that first gave Raf the idea to move down here, they’d stood somewhere near this spot, his arm around her, and looked at this view together. He’d said something about how much bigger than us it was, how it made you think about what your priorities were. She knew that was a nod to her, a dig almost. Whenever she got frustrated with her career, with another audition that didn’t lead anywhere, he’d tell her that she just needed to adjust her priorities. This, the scenery, the peace and quiet, is why they moved here, this is what Raf wanted. A simple life by the seaside, not having to work too hard to pay London rents, being a family. But she hasn’t been able to surrender to that and now things feel anything but simple.

  Bobby grabs at one of her fingers and grips it, he turns his head up to try and look at her but he can’t see past the mass of hair. Perhaps that’s the answer. The contract with Phibe isn’t signed yet, she could call Grace and say she’s leaving Insta, she could suggest Amanda might want to get back home, try to make a go of things with her complicated man, Erin could dedicate herself to Bobby until he goes to school then she could get a job down here, something that wouldn’t take her away from home too much. It wouldn’t be exciting, it wouldn’t be what she ever wanted, but Raf’s not doing what he wants to do, most people don’t get to do what they want to do. Perhaps that’s what growing up means.

  Erin gets the sense that someone’s there. She swings round sharply, but the promenade is empty. Nothing but a beautifully rendered white-chalk angel graffitied on the concrete lip at the bottom of the cliff. As she gets her phone out to take a picture she senses movement around the brush at the clifftop and looks up. No one there, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched.

  She turns and strides towards town. Whoever has taken those photos hasn’t just chanced on her. They’ve been where she and Bobby have, several different locations, Amanda and Bobby as well, and that’s just the pictures that have been posted. Even though the town’s not huge, whoever it is seems to know exactly how to find them. Is she being followed? Is whoever it is watching her all the time? She hasn’t ever noticed anyone, but people look at her a lot now and she just accepts them as her Insta-followers. She hasn’t seen anyone taking photos of her, but it’s so easy to do inadvertently with a smartphone.

  The clouds have smothered the burgeoning sunlight and as Erin rounds the corner into the bay that leads up towards the harbour and the esplanade of colourful houses, the grey promenade seems oppressive by comparison. She searches the cliffs ahead for some way of getting back up to the headland but the nearest ramp up is five minutes’ walk away. If someone is following her, if someone means her harm, she shouldn’t be trapped somewhere so isolated.

  She moves towards the ramp, speed-walks almost. The bumpy motion begins to lull Bobby to sleep. She keeps glancing over her shoulder at the top of the cliffs. There’s no one there. It must have been a seagull. Some pensioner’s dog dicing with death in the search for salty-sea smells. But she doesn’t slow her pace. She looks at the picture of Bobby eating soil and types out a caption:

  Organic. Vegan. Sustainable.

  Soil-based is the new plant-based.

  She wrinkles her nose. It’s not amazing but it’ll do. She’s about to post it when she notices the edge of the painting of the woman in the desert-like landscape at the side of the frame. She zooms in slightly to crop it out and gets a strange sense of déjà vu. This is not the first time she’s edited it out of her Insta-content.

  She stamps onto a patch of broken beer bottle as she turns up a path that leads away from the sea and up to the town. She feels certain that she’s manipulated two or three of her photos before to remove the painting. She finds it creepy and assumes others will so she didn’t want it featuring and she remembers editing down video clips for her stories to make sure it wasn’t in the background. So how did Amanda see the painting she remembers from Raf’s dad’s house, the thing that spurred her to visit them, if Erin’s never posted it online? Erin stops in front of a dark tunnel that leads under the road into the bustle of the town. The floor around the entrance is littered with plastic packaging, a scrunched nappy, mulching leaves. Bobby’s arm flinches in his sleep.

  She glances up at the cliffs one last time before she heads away from the beach, half expecting to see Amanda’s hair flaming above the brush but there’s still no one there. No one watching her. That she can see. But it could be her, Erin thinks, this, the trolling, started after she arrived. She steps over the litter and braces herself for the smell of urine as she walks into the darkness and the safety of civilisation at the end of the tunnel.

  35

  19 April 1999

  I’ve done something I shouldn’t and I feel so so stupid.

  This is the first time I’ve written in here for some time. Donny thinks it’s childish writing a journal and I’m sure he’s right. But today, I’m so low, so alone, that I feel like I could just drink a schooner of bleach.

  The first couple of weeks here felt like a honeymoon. We made love every night. When Donny went off to the gallery he’d leave me Post-its with page numbers for poems, he drew studies of me he’d done while I slept in sharpie on the mirror, the Madonna, he loved to draw me like a Renaissance Madonna. It was his joke to me. He’d get groceries sent up every couple of days and I’d always have dinner on the table for him. I felt like a housewife from an old movie. ‘Hi, honey, I’m home,’ he’d say.

  I started doing exercise videos in the flat. The library was just across the street so I snuck out and got books about yoga, calisthenics, meditation, recipe books. Jean, our neighbour, showed me a mail-order directory you could order crystals from. I didn’t tell her I didn’t have a bank card in case she clocked how young I was, but I’d still have a good time looking at the pictures, reading up, making lists of the ones I’d buy once I could get a job and have some money of my own.

  I got lonely in the days. Someone Donny knew at the gallery knew a guy that worked with Craig and said he was on the rampage looking for me. It proves how obsessed he is with me, so it’s lucky we got out when we did, but Donny didn’t think it was safe for me to be out of the house on my own. The thing is, I endured those boring days because I knew how wonderful it would be when he came home to me. And it was, it really was, he made me feel like a goddess.

  But then, after the first month, his mood’s changed, he’s tetchy, cold in a way he
never has been before, and he’s started coming back later and later. When I ask him what’s wrong it irritates him. It’s the pressure, he always snaps, the pressure to support us. He never told me at the start but the rent on the flat is astronomical. He says he only got the sea view for me but that it’s ruining us. He says he’s working for Richard in the gallery, spending his evenings trying to network at private views in order to try and get people to buy his work, to get backers for the exhibition. And he says he can’t draw any more, he can’t paint, there’s no time with all the stress of having to make money for us. I offered to get a job but he told me I was being ridiculous. We still make love but it’s different now, fast, not gentle like it was, sometimes it hurts. And I know it’s because he blames me. I wanted to be the perfect muse for him. I can’t believe it’s my fault that he can’t create any more.

  I started leaving him Post-its like he used to for me. Quotes I got from books he has about Van Gogh, Picasso. Something to try and get the creative juices flowing. I’d find them crumpled up on the pavement outside our apartment block. I know he doesn’t mean to be so cruel but it hurts so much to see him turn away from me.

  In a moment of weakness, I nearly called my mum two days ago, but luckily there wasn’t a cent in the house so I couldn’t use the payphone. I thought I had some coins stashed away in a bag somewhere but Donny must have known I might be tempted. I miss her, that’s the thing. I miss school. I miss sitting next to Lily in maths, I miss the stupid songs she’d make up about Mrs Francis’s comb-over. Everything feels so serious all the time now.

  And then last night I did something and I’m not sure he’ll ever forgive me. But I was trying to make him happy. I swear it. I thought it would make him happy. He was furious when he got home, something about Richard not paying him for a mural he’d done. And, I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day and I blurted it out, what I’d been thinking, the thing that might be a solution for us, the thing that might stop me annoying him so much, that might give him the motivation, the inspiration to become the great artist I know he can be. It was something he’d talked to me about, something he’d always painted me with. I thought it would make him so happy.

  I told him I wanted us to have a baby.

  He stormed out and I haven’t seen him since. I want to go and look for him but if he sees me out of the flat it will only make him more angry.

  But I do want us to have a baby. I’ve thought about it every day. It would give us something to live for. Something to bring us together and fight for. No bond is stronger than a child.

  But maybe he’s right. Maybe I am just a stupid little girl.

  36

  BRAUNEoverBRAINS

  473 posts 78.8k followers 1,758 following

  ERIN BRAUNE

  This is my contrite face. Because I am stuffed with contrition like a Christmas turkey cushion.

  Better half doesn’t like me sharing too much of our relationship on here. But I’ve been reflecting on some mistakes I’ve made in the last couple of weeks. It’s easy to put yourself at the centre of things, particularly when you’re tired, busy or when exciting life things are happening. But I’ve really learned this week that forgetting those around you, family, friends, your support network, not putting them at the heart of your decision-making, is the worst thing you can do. Being a parent is hard. Being a partner as a parent is harder. But I’m lucky to have found a man to spend my life with who can look past some pretty stupid, immature behaviour from me and not get angry, not lash out like I would, but who takes time away and always comes back and forgives me. Which in itself is hard because I just want to have a blazing row and hash it out. But I know his way is better.

  Take a minute then today to think about them. Think about baby. Think about partner. Think about your parents. Because, and I’m guiltier than anyone of this, it’s so easy to cloud your experience of life through your own narrow perspective.

  #theguruwillseeyounow #selfishallergy

  #imab•tchimaloverimachildimamotheretc

  @trudibell44 THIS. Tiredness is a killer. Since I’ve had Bodie I feel like everything I do is SO incredibly selfish even though I never seem to get any time to do anything for me. So good to know I’m not the only one.

  @ggheorgh you like your baby yet?

  @aniiieclarkson QWEEEEN

  @periodicalprudence Where are you in your cycle? I often make strange decisions in the week before my period is due. Maybe you can get your husband to track your cycles with you? It’s important you don’t blame yourself. Be kind. It sounds like your partner is. (eventually)

  @leisacrowd where do I find me a man like that?

  37

  ‘Manuka honey? That the stuff that’s meant to cure all ills?’ Caz says, giving her son Stanley a leg-up onto the stern of a wooden pirate ship in the Viking play park on the seafront. Erin nods. ‘Bobby’s had a bad chest for weeks, hasn’t he?’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Erin snaps, glancing round at Bobby who’s picking up clumps of sand and then brushing it violently from his hands. She went through Amanda’s kitchen this morning and found a black pot of Manuka honey under the sink and recognised it as the object she saw her stuffing away in her shoulder bag a few nights ago.

  ‘Just wondering if she was trying to help his chest.’ Caz clears her throat. Stanley clatters up and down the wooden floorboards of the empty ship, while Imogen toddles towards a wall of rope netting. The winter sun makes the view out to sea so clear, Erin can see a gunship in the distance.

  ‘Are you telling me you’d be fine with someone putting honey in Imogen’s bottle without asking you?’

  ‘It’s twenty quid a pop that stuff, even in Aldi it’s a tenner. Why not use 50p runny stuff if she’s trying to turn Bobby against you?’ Most of the time Erin loves Caz’s brusqueness, her challenging honesty, but right now she wishes she’d just accept what Erin thinks and agree wholeheartedly. Since the pictures were posted, it seems like everyone she’s spoken to now doubts her every word. She goes to rescue Bobby who’s struggling to scrabble his way out of the sand. She picks him up and walks him over to the baby swing. When she tasted the sweetness in her milk it seemed to confirm what had been at the back of her mind for some time, that perhaps Amanda wasn’t just being a helpful Mary Poppins wonder-nanny, but that in fact she wanted to make Bobby look to her as his primary person instead of Erin. The skin-to-skin cuddling, the spiritual songs, the special games with special smiles, and now this, all of it designed to make Bobby like her more.

  ‘Honey is on the NHS list of things you’re not meant to give a child under twelve months, I looked it up,’ she says.

  ‘They also say you have to cut up a blueberry into about fifteen pieces just in case the baby chokes.’

  ‘Why are you sticking up for her?’

  ‘Look, no one should be tampering with what’s going in your one’s wee body, no one,’ Caz says, plonking Imogen into the swing next to Bobby. Ten in the morning and the playground is deserted. ‘But I guess, if you let someone look after your bairn you’ve got to accept they might not do it exactly like you want, you’re not paying her or anything neither.’

  ‘I don’t care how she’s looking after him. She’s worked with babies for years, I’m sure what she’s doing with him is much better than me. But he’s rejecting my milk.’

  ‘Oh, babe, that’s horrible.’

  ‘The only thing I ever felt like I was doing right was breastfeeding him and now he won’t, and it’s because of what she’s done.’ Imogen keeps saying something that sounds like ‘more’ so Caz goes behind the swing and begins pushing her higher. Meanwhile, Bobby clings to the swing’s restraint, concern etched into his brows.

  ‘You sound a bit –’ Caz hesitates, unable to look at Erin.

  ‘A bit what?’

  ‘Na, listen, forget it. It’s not on, you’re right.’

  ‘What do I sound, Caz?’

  Caz winces, sucks air through her teeth. ‘You sound a bit paranoid, wh
ich I totally get, you know? If I had some prick taking pictures of me, I’d be paranoid too, but Amanda, I just don’t understand why you’d think she’s trying to turn Bobby against you.’

  ‘She hasn’t got a family, there’s some old flame back home who seems to be messing her around, she’s spent her life working with children, she obviously likes them, she’s of a certain age and she doesn’t have them. Women in that sort of situation have done much more “mental” things.’

  Caz sighs, turns away from the swings and walks towards the chain-link fence that divides the playground from a mini-golf course that’s been allowed to overgrow into disrepair. Erin huffs out a dragon-puff of condensation in the air. She thought Caz would side with her, but she’s seen the pictures, she’s seen images of Erin looking like she can’t stand her own child. In her trial by social media, even her best friend has chosen to believe the photographic evidence. Erin glances all around her at the thought of the troll, feeling like prey searching the landscape for a predator. After being accused of paranoia the thought of telling Caz she thought she was being followed a couple of days ago has rescinded firmly from Erin’s mind.

  Bobby begins to cough. It’s horrible hearing the phlegm on his tiny lungs. She picks him up out of the swing and wraps the collar of his coat tighter around his neck. Raf said he was up a lot in the night and she can see it in the rawness in his eyes. Stanley tumbles off the roundabout in the far corner and Erin watches Caz turn quickly and efficiently, grabbing Imogen out of the swing as she hurries across to attend to her boy. She rights him, gives him a cuddle and he runs off towards the slide with Imogen waddling behind him. Caz sits on a bench and pats the space next to her.