The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  A white van swings round a pillar and she has to pull the buggy back towards her quickly to avoid it. The person in the parka crosses into a patch of sunlight and Erin sees a glint of burnt orange coming from below her hat. Erin’s eyes drop to the bottom of her coat and she sees a thin band of blue, the aquamarine that caught her attention at the supermarket’s entrance, poking out from underneath.

  ‘Amanda,’ she calls out, halfway between a shout and a whisper. Bobby stirs in his buggy. The woman stops. She doesn’t turn round immediately and it looks to Erin like she might try and run but eventually she turns, cheekbones rendered sharper by the shadows from the spotlight of sun she finds herself in, and raises a hand in greeting.

  Erin observes the dark grey yoga pants she wears as she walks over to her.

  ‘Off to Pilates at Phoenix?’ Erin says, trying to sound casual. Amanda looks at her watch, eyes Bobby still sleeping in the buggy. ‘I saw Sophie in town on her way over.’

  ‘Yeh, that’s right,’ Amanda says. ‘I’ll be back home later if you want me to do some food.’ Erin puts her head to one side and stares at her, trying to drill into her lie, but it just makes Amanda smile wider. She spots a large tote bag hung over Amanda’s shoulder.

  ‘Can I have a look in your bag?’ Erin asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to have a look in your bag – can I?’ Erin crosses in front of the buggy. Amanda steps back, holding the bag further into her body.

  ‘Um, why?’ Amanda laughs.

  ‘You’re following me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re following me. You’ve been following me. For how long? A week? Two? Since you got here?’

  ‘I’m not –’

  ‘Sophie and Mercedes are going to HotPod yoga. There’s no Pilates at Phoenix today.’

  ‘I haven’t been following you.’

  ‘Show me what’s in your bag?’ Erin thrusts her hand out in front of her as she hems Amanda into the corner of the underground car park.

  ‘Shall we –’ Amanda points down the ramp that leads into town. ‘Doesn’t feel safe having Bobby here, the cars.’

  ‘Were you there, at the top of the cliffs yesterday, looking down on me on the prom?’ Erin knows she’s right. It’s Amanda. Of course it’s Amanda. The trolling started just after she arrived.

  ‘Erin, shall we just go down to –’

  ‘Someone’s been posting photos of me, videos of me and my baby on the Internet to make me look like a shit mum, to make me look like a fraud, an absolute psycho. And now you’re following me?’

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘So you are following me then?’ Amanda opens her mouth as if to speak then closes it. She smiles, ducks her head under the shade covering Bobby to look at him sleeping. Erin finds herself so enraged by it that she grabs at the handle of the bag on her shoulder. Amanda looks at her scared, both hands clutching the body of the tote. She looks around, for help perhaps, but the car park is deserted. Erin doesn’t care who sees. Amanda’s been following her. She’s practically admitted it. She’s the troll and Erin knows the proof is in the bag. It’s so heavy. There’s a camera in there. A lens. A massive smartphone at the very least. And she’s going to force Amanda to show her what’s on it, what pictures she’s been taking of her today ready to post up anonymously to besmirch her reputation further.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Amanda says, sliding the bag off her shoulder and into Erin’s hands. Now she has the bag it strikes her how aggressive she’s just been. All her certainty that Amanda is the troll has vanished as she rests the snatched bag on a low wall. Bobby shuffles around in his buggy and Amanda pulls his footmuff up so it covers his hands.

  There’s no telephoto lens in the bag. Erin moves a pair of woollen gloves, a thin thread of a scarf, but most of the bag is dominated by a black velvet sack, clearly not a camera case. Erin swallows air as she pulls opens the string of the bag to reveal a mass of pink and white stones.

  ‘Rhodochrosite,’ Amanda says, standing over her shoulder. ‘I bought them from Marjoram’s shop. Keep looking though, see what else you can find.’ Erin sees an old flip phone at the bottom of the bag, but little else apart from a packet of what look like hippie throat sweets. She hands the bag back to Amanda.

  ‘Sorry,’ Erin mumbles.

  ‘Do you want to get home before he wakes up?’ Amanda asks, hoisting the bag back onto her shoulder, sadness in her eyes. Erin nods, riddled with shame. There was fear in the woman’s eyes. Erin knows that if Amanda had withheld the bag from her for another moment, she might have done something, pushed her, snatched it roughly out of her hand. Amanda starts to push the buggy and Erin doesn’t stop her.

  ‘I shouldn’t have lied about Pilates,’ Amanda says as they emerge into the light. ‘And I – you’re right.’ She stops next to the main road and lets several cars past. ‘I have been following you. For the last few days. But I’m not taking pictures of you. I haven’t even got a camera, there isn’t one on my phone, you saw.’ They cross the road together, onto an expanse of grass that leads down to the sea.

  ‘Why then?’ Erin asks, fists balled in the pockets of her mac.

  ‘I think, after Raf saw the video … he said he was worried about you.’

  ‘He’s always worried about me.’

  ‘He was worried about, about you with Bobby.’ Amanda’s words seem to block the top of Erin’s throat. ‘He said he might have to take some time off, to be with you and Bobby, during the day. He was really stressed about it, said you couldn’t afford for him not to be working at the moment. If it makes you feel any better he did say he was probably overreacting.’

  ‘Feel much better now,’ Erin says, belittling herself with sarcasm. She feels like she’s had three double espressos, vibrating from grabbing at Amanda’s stuff, accusing her of something she has absolutely no evidence of. Erin doesn’t know what’s happening to her, doesn’t recognise this rash, suspicious person she seems to have turned into since the pictures were posted just a few days ago.

  ‘I think he wanted me to keep an eye on you, so I have been.’

  ‘He asked you to follow me?’ Erin bites her upper lip.

  ‘He seemed so worried about Bobby’s safety.’

  ‘He thinks I’m going to hurt my baby? The father of my child thinks I’m going to hurt my baby?’ Erin says, but it’s to herself as much as it is to Amanda. A hit of cold wind punches them both as they round a corner onto the front. ‘Is that what he thinks?’ Erin has to shout past the sound of the wind. Amanda shrugs, expression filled with pain. ‘That I’m a danger to my son?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Erin,’ Amanda shouts back to her. Another wave of wind hits them and Bobby’s buggy begins to blow back towards them. Erin grabs at the handle to steady it, inadvertently barging Amanda away with her other hand. Amanda gives her a look of shock. Bobby wakes up and his scream pierces through the wall of sound.

  41

  She scours the local council website for the names of childminders. As she clicks through their profiles she sees all of them have between four and five children a day. That’s too many for Bobby. Bobby wouldn’t be able to handle three other toddlers prodding him and screaming and demanding their caregiver’s attention. It would be the same at nursery, Erin’s decided.

  After they got home, Bobby outright refused her breast milk and, based upon the tiny quantities Erin’s been able to pump recently, she fears that she might have to give up on it completely. He also refused the bottle until she buckled and put a tiny bit of honey in it. Erin can’t understand how she’s got here. Feeding him was always her favourite bit. A time she could look down at her beautiful little boy and know that, however inadequate she may feel, however conflicted, she was doing something right. So as she watched her baby hungrily gulping down the sweetened breast milk before putting him down to bed, she felt the anger building inside and she made a decision. Amanda has to go. She may not be the person taking photos of her, but she is the reason
her baby doesn’t clamour for her, she is the reason that every single day Erin feels like the only mother in the world whose infant doesn’t want to be held by them. Amanda offered to help with Bobby’s bedtime, offered to make dinner, but Erin said no, so now she’s skulking in the studio at the end of their garden. It’s not sustainable. Erin can see that it never was.

  So now she has two options. Put Bobby into childcare or tell Grace that she’s going to have to delay many of her commitments for the next month or two. The PR person from Phibe has got her doing two or three events a week for the next month including quite a few evenings. She knows that trying to get out of them, just as the app’s launching, could be terminal for her hopes of getting more big-brand work so she’s going to have to make the childcare route work. There is a third option. Raf could take some time off. Although she’s never got too involved with the details of their family finances, the Phibe money, whenever they deign to pay her, must be enough to pay the mortgage and their day-to-day expenses for four or five months, at least. But Erin knows that she invited Amanda deeper into their lives, she was the one that set up their unconventional childcare arrangements, and she doesn’t think, in light of recent revelations, that she’s in a position to demand that Raf switch from being the primary breadwinner to the primary caregiver instantaneously.

  She snaps her laptop shut and almost throws it onto the bottom shelf of the coffee table before slurping from her glass of wine – a perk, at least, of not having to breastfeed in the night. She glances at the wine bottle in the kitchen. There’s only about a glass left in it and she should probably ease off before Raf gets home.

  She’s tried to keep her mind busy, tried to keep it rational, logical. Because ever since Amanda told her that Raf wanted her to follow her, she hasn’t felt particularly level. As she gave Bobby his cumin-spiced sweet potato, she had to smile at him through the molten oil of rage in the pit of her stomach, she had to sing the saccharine Disney melodies during Bobby’s nappy-off playtime with more gusto than she ever has to try and push down the anger that sits in her breastbone like heartburn. As she frothed his Olly Octopus in the bath she had to swallow back the medicinal bitterness at the back of her throat at the thought that her fiancé, the father of her son, thinks she’s such a bad mother, so dangerous to her own child, that he has to employ his lackey to follow her about. Why? So that she could intervene if Erin looked like she was going to throw Bobby off the cliff?

  The key turns in the lock and Erin gulps the rest of her glass of wine down before going to the kitchen, rinsing the glass and putting it and the rest of the bottle back in the cupboard.

  ‘Smells good,’ Raf says, referring to the pasta bake bubbling in the oven as he comes round the corner to see her stood by the sink. His eyes dart out to the lights of studio. Erin grits her teeth, they’re going to talk about this and she’s not going to lose it. ‘You OK?’ He still has his big coat on, woolly hat still in place. He looks expectant, tentative, as if he can sense she’s anything but ‘OK’.

  ‘Yeh, tired.’

  ‘Me too. He wasn’t up for ages last night but it was the frequency, you know?’ He crosses past her, goes into a drawer to get mats out for the table.

  ‘Done it,’ she says. He wheels round, sees the table set and smiles, a surprised smile. He surveys the room.

  ‘Place looks great.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. He doesn’t look out the window but she knows he’s thinking that Amanda must have cleaned today, but she didn’t. The moment lingers between them. He waits for her to ask about his day, to tell him something about hers, something about Bobby. But she doesn’t. She keeps her arms crossed so Raf can’t see her hands balled into such tight fists that she can feel her nails leaving dents in her palms. The oven beeps. Raf gets oven gloves out of the drawer and heads towards it.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she says, ‘you sit down.’

  ‘It’s fine, I’m here now.’

  ‘I’ll do it, I said. I made dinner so I’ll do it.’ She thrusts her hand out for the gloves. Raf gives them to her before moving over to the other side of the room, expression split between a smirk and perturbed.

  ‘Was Bobby OK today? Are you OK? You didn’t text or anything. I hoped that meant you were managing with him but, but you seem a bit, I don’t know, stressed.’

  ‘“Managing with him”,’ Erin says, almost to herself as she gets the bubbling-hot dish out of the oven.

  ‘You haven’t told me anything about your day, Ez, was he all right? You know I like to know.’

  ‘Oh yeh,’ she says, through a bitter half-laugh, ‘you like to know exactly how my day’s going, don’t you? Haven’t you spoken to your old pal about it yet? Don’t you already know how great my day’s been?’

  ‘Erin –’

  ‘Don’t you already know that today, just today, I managed not to hurt my baby. But who knows, there’s always tomorrow. Better have a debrief with Earth Goddess out there about keeping close tabs on me tomorrow.’ Raf runs his thumbnail over his bottom teeth, starting to look annoyed. Annoyed is the least that Erin wants Raf to be. He had her followed. The temperature of the dish is getting through the gloves and she feels the heat flush through her body, the red wine swelling in the front of her head like a crashing wave.

  ‘Should I do that? You’ve let yourself get upset by something, so let’s sit down and have something to eat.’

  ‘What do you think I’ve “let myself get upset by”?’ she spits. He glances out to the garden. ‘Don’t look for her. Me, look at me. What do you think I’m upset about, Rafael?’

  ‘What aren’t you upset about, doesn’t take much, does it?’ He smiles, a Cheshire cat superior grin and she snaps. Erin launches the dish of boiling pasta bake at him. He sees it coming and manages to slam the corner of it down in front of him, sending the dish flying to the floor where it cracks into pieces, the contents splatting out like a Jackson Pollock. He shakes his head in disbelief, his lip curled in disgust as if she’s a drunk who’s just been sick. He closes his eyes, a long blink, then walks to the other side of the room. Erin stands, rictus hands inside the oven gloves still held out, miming the food, paralysed with the shock of what she’s just done.

  ‘No, you do not do that to me.’ His voice is steely but calm, like he’s talking to an aggressive dog. ‘You do not hit me. You do not throw things at me.’ He’s put the table between her and him and he paces by the bookshelf at the far end of the room like a captive jaguar. ‘What – what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘You had her follow me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Amanda, you had her follow me. The video’s made you think I’m going to hurt Bobby so you had her follow me.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I caught her. I thought she was the person trolling me, but she said you told her to “keep an eye on me”. You thought your son was in danger. With his own mother.’ The truth of that statement hits her all over again, bringing her back into the reality of their kitchen. She sees the mess of food all over the kitchen and it dawns on her what she’s just done. She’s just thrown food, scalding hot food, in a heavy ceramic dish at her fiancé, the person who’s worried that she has the capacity to hurt their child. So is he right? Is she dangerous?

  Raf stops his pacing. Then he goes to the back door and goes out into the garden, leaving the door open so the cold rages into the room. He’s going to get her, Erin thinks. She begins to manically clear up the mess of pasta and vegetables on the white kitchen tiles. The dish has broken in five or six large chunks which she picks up and puts in a local newspaper and into the recycling. She tries to wipe up the mess but then they’re there, at the door. Raf and Amanda.

  ‘Oh my goodness, Erin, did you hurt yourself?’ Amanda rushes over to help but Erin stands up and walks out of the kitchen.

  ‘I dropped the dinner,’ he says. ‘But, Mand –’ Amanda perks herself up like a meerkat – ‘I was hoping you could clear up
a bit of a misunderstanding. Erin thinks you’ve been following her? Around town.’

  Amanda seems to be chewing something in the side of her mouth. She gives Erin a nervous side-eye.

  ‘What? No, no I haven’t been following her.’ Erin looks between them, speechless, she can’t believe Amanda’s denying it now. ‘I wanted to try and be around. I’ve stayed in when you and Bobby have been here, made sure I’m close by when you’ve been out and about.’

  ‘And that’s not following me?’ Erin’s exasperated but Raf gives her a warning look.

  ‘She told me that you said I had asked you to keep an eye on her? After I’d seen the video.’ Raf says it plainly. There’s no anger in his voice, only curiosity. They stand in a triangle, Amanda in the kitchen, Raf by the back window, Erin in the far corner of the room. It feels like a stand-off from an old Western but there are no guns, just calm expressions, the casual, almost soothing words of Amanda and Raf as Erin stands, the perpetrator in this kangaroo court, silent.

  ‘You didn’t ask me to do anything like that,’ Amanda says. Erin glances between the two of them. She knows that behind her is the painting, the painting that Amanda says impelled her to travel around the world to come and visit them. It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit. She’s lying. She said that he asked her to follow her, that he was worried for Bobby’s safety.