The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  ‘I’m sorry, babe,’ Caz says as Erin sits down next to her, Bobby perched on her knee. ‘I’ve got about eight followers, no idea what it must be like for you. But have you tried talking to Amanda about it.’

  ‘Raf’s so angry still, I think if I start throwing accusations about … I don’t know.’

  ‘We had a coffee last week, after Joy’s.’ Joy’s is a gym and singing class run at a soft-play centre in town. Erin looks up at Caz, remembering the overheard conversation Amanda, Sophie and her friends were having and trying to suppress the feeling that Amanda and Caz were engaged in a similar form of latte-laced betrayal. ‘I asked her why she decided to come here in the winter. She told me she’d been struggling back home. Felt stuck with her life. She’s estranged from her family and has this horrible stepdad who’s trying to get back into her life. I didn’t want to pry but it felt like she’d seen some shit, you know? She said that when her and Raf were friends, it was the last time she was happy really. Sad.’ Erin clenches her jaw, nods. Is the stepdad the man she’s talked about as some sort of on–off boyfriend? That would certainly explain how guarded she’s been whenever Erin’s prodded for details. Bobby’s turned to her and is giving her the shy smile that he’s now wheeling out more often and Erin can’t help but be heartened by it. ‘Sounds like she’s been struggling on her own for a long time,’ Caz says. ‘I don’t know, maybe she’s just so delighted to be part of a normal family. She’s overstepped the mark, for sure, but maybe she’s just trying too hard to make you all like her. I’ve got a mate who’s a singer in a wedding band and she absolutely swears by that Manuka stuff for colds and coughs and that.’

  ‘She tell you about how she found us?’ Caz shakes her head. ‘She saw a painting in one of my “stories” which she recognised from Raf’s dad’s house from when they were kids.’

  ‘No, she didn’t mention it.’

  ‘She said “Mercury was in retrograde” and thought it was a sign. You heard of that, Mercury in retrograde?’

  ‘People blame it when everything’s going tits up.’

  ‘I’ve never put that painting in any of my stories.’ Erin looks at Caz, challenging. Caz keeps her eyes on Stanley who’s trying to drag Imogen up a small hill towards the baby slide.

  ‘That right?’ Caz crosses her arms.

  ‘I hate it. It’s in a dark corner of the room.’

  ‘The pink one with the person in the cloak?’

  ‘I’ve actively edited it out of posts before. So how did she see it?’ Caz looks at her Casio watch. Imogen can’t make it up the hill and Caz stands as if she’s about to go and help her but she doesn’t move. ‘How did she find us if she’s never seen the picture, Caz?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ez, I don’t know. Look, I’m sorry about what someone’s doing to you with these pictures. It’s fucking foul. Maybe you can take a break from the “Gram” for a bit, let the whole thing settle down.’ Erin’s phone buzzes in her pocket in retaliation and she stands up as if to defend its honour.

  ‘If you two are such good mates now, maybe you can find out why she lied about how she found us?’ Caz looks down at the rubbery fake woodchips below her feet. She bites her bottom lip, trying to disguise her irritation. She’s only about five foot two but she’s got such presence.

  ‘How many Instagram stories do you post every day? Five, ten? How many of those are in your front room? Half of them? How long have you lived there? A year? Eighteen months? That’s hundreds of pictures, hundreds of videos you’ve posted, that you have no way of looking back through, and you are certain, certain enough to make up some conspiracy about Amanda, the nicest person most of us have ever met?’ Erin’s breath shortens and she shifts Bobby from one arm to the other. ‘I’m not trying to be cruel, babe, I’m, I’m here for you, I am, I just can’t bear to see you put two and two together and make fifteen like this. I get that you’re angry, you’re right to be angry, I’m fucking furious on your behalf, and talk to her about the honey. Definitely. It’s not on. But, all this – all this paranoia, it’ll make you unwell.’ She puts a hand on Erin’s upper arm before moving off to help her daughter up to the top of the slide.

  Bobby swipes at Erin’s shoulder and begins to groan up into a cry so she plonks herself down on the bench and, without even considering trying to breastfeed him, gets the bottle of premixed formula out of her baby bag and gives it to him. He pushes it away, probably not sweet enough for his newly tampered-with taste. She shoves the teat further into his mouth. She looks at the walkway above the beach that butts onto the play park. An old gentleman walking a dog that looks too strong for him smiles at her as he passes. Erin blinks, shakes her head to banish the constant feeling that she’s being watched. Caz keeps one eye on her as she catches Imogen at the bottom of the slide. She throws her a sympathetic smile, abject concern lingering in her eyes.

  38

  ‘All right, pal, it’s Caz. You’re probably having a beer with Wolf from Gladiators or some such shite so don’t worry about calling me back, but listen, about earlier, you didn’t need me telling you that you’re being paranoid or whatever. I should’ve listened to you and I’m sorry but here, I’ve WhatsApped you a link to a photo. Was on Facebook wasting my life scrolling and I saw this photo of Claire Porter. She was in town taking a photo in front of that crap local museum no one goes in. Well, Lorna fucking Morgan is in the background with her kids. And it’s the day you thought she was in Maidstone, the day the photo was taken from the church group. Anyway, have a look. Thought I should let you know.’

  39

  Erin pushes the buggy along Wilkes Road. Bobby is covering himself in orange corn dust from one of those terrible Wotsit-looking carrot sticks that are meant to be healthy. Wilkes Road is Lorna’s road, two away from her house, and Erin’s not one hundred per cent sure what she’s doing here. Since the video was first posted on her Instagram she’s felt like she’s a character in a computer game, a simulation where she’s not fully in control of anything she’s doing. Perhaps she’ll just pass by the house, give Lorna a little glare through the kitchen window, the sort that, if it were her that was the troll, might be enough to say ‘I know what you’re doing’. And if it wasn’t her, could be explained as the smack-arsed expression of someone who’s had a long, hard morning.

  But Lorna’s in her garden pruning perfect flower beds in the small front garden outside her prefab while the twins, presumably, sleep in the covered double buggy behind her. She looks up and gives Erin a wave of her secateurs.

  ‘How are you coping?’ Lorna says, voice full of hollow sympathy, eyes fixed on Bobby covered in radioactive carrot dust.

  ‘Saw the pictures then?’ Erin says, mouth barely open with her jaw tensed. Why would she ask a question like that? Does she want to know that her devious plan to dethrone Erin is having a harrowing affect?

  ‘Er, yes. Afraid I did. How awful.’

  ‘What, the person doing it or how I feel about my son?’ Erin bites the inside of her lip. She’s sure someone’s following her, someone knows where she is at all times, Lorna could have been in the locality on all the occasions. Why post something on Instagram saying you were somewhere else when you weren’t if not to cover yourself?

  ‘No, of course, the man doing this to you.’

  ‘A man is it?’ She wants to accuse Lorna, even though she’s still not convinced. Perhaps because she can’t confront Amanda about the honey, she feels a need to lash out, to get some answers, to find some clarity in her head that’s swimming like a pool of frogspawn.

  ‘Oh, I –’ Lorna looks round at her buggy, feeling the fire radiating from Erin. ‘I suppose I always thought Internet trolls were men. Sure, women can be just as horrible though.’ She shrugs a laugh out.

  ‘You tell me.’ Erin realises she’s doing an impression of the sort of a detective from the sort of shows she had auditions for when she first left drama school.

  ‘Have you got something you want to say?’ Lorna says, putting the secateurs on
her garden wall and squaring her shoulders.

  ‘You don’t go to the church group any more.’

  ‘It’s very busy.’

  ‘Heard you were saying I’ve ruined it for you?’

  ‘Well –’ Lorna juts her chin out – ‘as it happens, it – I do feel like it’s been taken over. I set up that group.’

  ‘So we’ve all heard.’

  ‘And now it’s – Well, no one talks to me, it’s sort of cliquey. Not what I wanted to create for the community.’

  ‘One of the photos was taken from the group. Last week.’ Erin feels her hands tighten on the handle of her buggy. She’s doing it. Why is she doing it? ‘Someone in the lobby outside must have taken it – as you say, it’s so busy at the group, someone would have noticed it being taken.’

  ‘The twins will be up soon, I’d really like to get this –’

  ‘But you wouldn’t know anything because on the day of the group, the day that photo of me was taken, you were in Maidstone visiting your sister.’ Lorna looks away, scrunching her nose. ‘Or at least that’s what your Instagram says, but there’s a photo of you on Facebook that tells a different story.’ Lorna’s lips purse into a tiny ‘O’. Erin can see that her tolerance has come to an end and the conversational gloves are on the verge of being taken off and she now seems more intimidating than the sparrow-like woman Erin’s always thought her to be.

  ‘I haven’t been to see my sister in over a year.’ Lorna crosses her arms. Erin was expecting her to be shocked to have been caught out but she seems unabashed.

  ‘On Insta—’

  ‘My mum just joined Instagram. Sister and I aren’t speaking and she doesn’t know. Mum smelt a rat so I put up an old photo of us. So I could have taken the photo of you at the church group and put it up online. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? Well, yeh, I was about. But I don’t go to the group any more because it’s packed with up-themselves wankers. I know none of you like me. I know I’m not as glamorous and smug as you. I’m not cool. And does it piss me off that I don’t feel welcome at the group that I started for the sake of my community, for the sake of the mums who’d lived round here years before any of you turned up, who had nowhere decent to go to get their kids out of the house? Yeh, it does. Makes me sad, actually. But has it affected me so much that I’ve started following you around, taking photos of you, posting them on the Internet? Why would I, do you think? To bring you down a peg or two?’ She intones the last phrase in inverted commas. ‘Truth is, I wouldn’t want to waste the energy on someone as self-involved as you. Now, if you don’t mind.’ She grabs the secateurs off the wall and turns to the back of her garden. Erin stands stock-still watching her, seeing a slight tremor across the line of her shoulder blades. That cost Lorna. She didn’t enjoy having to be so overt, but she felt impelled to do it. Why? Overcompensating because she’s guilty of what Erin was on the road to accusing her of? But it was so vehement, the passion of someone who’s just had the final straw placed on their back. If Lorna is lying to cover herself, can she really be that good an actor?

  Erin opens her mouth to say something but neither another question defending herself nor any sort of callow apology seems to be worth it now. Lorna bends down to her flower bed and decapitates a clump of dead flowers leaving Erin no choice but to turn on her heel and head back home.

  40

  The wheel of Bobby’s buggy sticks in a hole in the cobblestones outside the Cupcake Society in the old town’s minuscule market square. Erin’s jaw tenses as she tries to, very gently, ease it back onto the pavement. Bobby screamed for ten minutes before going to sleep and she can’t have him wake up again.

  As she glides the stroller past the old-school tea shop, the former library that now sells second-hand books and the place that looks like an airport bar on the corner, she feels the eyes of the town burning into the back of her head. She used to like the idea that people were watching her, talking about her. She got frustrated with actors who moaned about the extra trappings of celebrity. She’d always known that when she made it she’d enjoy the feeling of being a person who incited curiosity, who carried their mystique with the elan of someone whose lifestyle is envied. It’s the exact sort of flagrant self-involved thinking that Lorna accused her of yesterday. Because now, walking around today, the first time she’s ventured into the heart of town since the pictures were posted, she can see what the A-listers are complaining about.

  She wants to go into the handicraft shop where she sees the owner point her out to an older customer and tell them that she loves her baby, that being a new mum is hard, to ask them how they’d feel if pictures of them at their most fallible had been secretly posted online to create some kind of false narrative to tens of thousands of people. It’s not like she can run away from it, take time away from Bobby to sleep, take a break from Instagram so she can think about what it’s done to her, to her relationship. The contract with Phibe is signed, payment should be imminent. Their ‘Tinder for mums’ app launches in six weeks and they’ve just sent her the schedule of posts she has to craft and there’s a lot. To her surprise, her number of followers has increased in the aftermath of the trolling, but in light of her ‘positive mum’ tag being reassessed she feels more pressure than ever to respond to the deluge of messages and comments that she’s getting every day, and the joy she used to feel making these connections has now curdled into a heavy duty.

  Up ahead of her, Sophie Delauney emerges from Phoenix Wines with Mercedes, both without children. They’re in big padded coats, Sophie’s electric blue, Mercedes’ white, over gym leggings. Erin tries to up her pace to catch up with them. Mercedes spots her and says something to Sophie who turns to look. Her permanent expression, somewhere between a grin and a pout, drops when she sees Erin. She looks incredible, Erin thinks, her face has filled out a bit with the due date approaching which suits her and the new orange tint to her pixie cut seems to emphasise her pregnancy glow. She puts out a flat hand to Erin, somewhere between a greeting and the gesture for stop, before giving an empty smile as she turns back the way she was going. Mercedes creases her brow in some kind of apology at their not stopping then follows her friend up the hill away from town.

  Erin swallows and turns down a side street, feeling like the whole county has just witnessed the snub. She’s just been on the receiving end of the sort of fickle shallowness that’s driven Lorna away from her own toddler group and she starts to feel sorry for the woman. She’s replayed the conversation they had over her front garden wall many times since and it just didn’t seem like she was lying. She could have done it, of course she could. She doesn’t like Erin, she doesn’t like anything she stands for, but she seemed so upset to be accused, there was no furtiveness, no defensiveness. On the other hand, she is a gossip, she has got a reputation as someone with a streak of cruelty to her, so perhaps that was all for show. Perhaps she’s at some other baby group she’s started, talking to her old mates about how she’s sticking it to the middle-class dickheads who’re trying to take over their town.

  She flicks onto Sophie’s Instagram, hit by the thought that they might be off to meet Amanda. There’s a new post, a picture of a flat-white, oat milk probably, with the caption ‘Caffeine kick before HotPod launch’. Erin didn’t know there was a new HotPod yoga class starting. Clearly no one’s felt she should be invited.

  She’s had so much support online, hundreds of people sharing their stories of how they’ve shouted at their kids, how bored they’ve found themselves – many have posted selfies of them looking numb as their baby cries or feeds or plays. There was a hashtag that went around for half a day or so after she made her apology, #boredlikeBraune. The responses haven’t all been positive, some of her followers feel as if they’ve been lied to, but Erin’s been relieved that so few people have voiced their disapproval. But the real people, the mums and dads she half knows who she sees every day at the various groups or playgrounds, can’t seem to get over the revelation that someone they looked up to
as an aspiration of easy-breezy parenting is actually a fraud. Perhaps they’re embarrassed, having bragged to their friends about being on first-name terms with someone who’s been revealed to be a liar, or possibly it’s more personal to them because they feel some collective ownership over her online celebrity and so its tarnishing feels like a deeper betrayal. Whatever the reason, their smiles are strained now; she spots clusters of whispering faces in her periphery and it stings like seawater in a graze.

  She walks into the shade of a narrow street, wanting to get away from the busyness of the old town. As she gets down towards the seafront she hears steps behind her and turns, certain someone’s following her, but no one is there. She looks in the reflections of destitute shopfronts, hoping to spot a glint of humanity, but the street’s deserted. The chill from the sea seems to flood in through the collar of her coat so she heads towards the warmth of the nearby supermarket, trying to stop herself from turning round every few steps to see if whoever it is she senses is really there.

  She’s tried to apply logic to work out who it is that’s doing this to her but perhaps that’s where she’s been going wrong. There’s nothing logical about the sort of people who choose to plague other people online. And Raf’s right, there’s no doubt that the troll’s activity has become more brutal since her crusading speech at Claridge’s, so that does point to it being some resentful misogynist, but to what end? Whether it’s Lorna, some other jealous local mum or any faceless incel malignity, what would any of them actually gain from doing what they’re doing?

  Just as she pushes Bobby through the automatic doors into the heat and fabricated bread smell inside the supermarket, she sees something out of the corner of her eye in the car park to her right. A floating flash of aquamarine in the blanket of concrete grey. She reverses back out of the shop and begins to follow the black parka and grey woolly hat as it disappears down the ramp towards the lower level. Erin gets to the top where a silver car has to slow abruptly on seeing her as it turns the spiral of the ramp, the driver giving her a look that asks what the hell she’s doing pushing a sleeping baby down a ramp made for cars as it ambles past. She sees the black coat moving through a gap in the concrete pillars and rushes down the ramp to follow it. When she gets to the underground level she sees the figure up ahead, step quickening as they jink between cars. She wants to shout after whoever it is but it’d wake Bobby. The person makes for the exit towards town. Maybe she’s imagining it, Erin thinks, maybe this person isn’t following her, perhaps it’s one of the many slightly dodgy folk who hang around this car park.