The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  ‘I – I don’t know what happened,’ Erin says and Anna leans in, scenting something illicit, eyes sparkling with anticipation. ‘I’ve not been sleeping much, there’s this fucking twat on Insta messing with my head, and Bobby’s refusing to breastfeed now –’ Anna’s left eye starts to squint again. ‘Anyway, Raf and I, we had this argument. He saw me, losing it with Bobby.’ Anna raises both eyebrows so her tanned forehead creases. ‘Anyway, I just totally lost control and- I threw something at him.’

  ‘What did you throw at him?’ Anna cocks her head, a sideways smile but her eyes look more alert.

  ‘I threw a pasta bake at him.’

  ‘What, like a bowl of pasta?’

  ‘A dish, an oven dish, like the whole thing.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Um, yeh, it was hot as well, straight out of the oven.’ Anna Mai pulls her arms off the table and into her lap, edges to the other side of the booth. Erin nods, nervous now.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ she asks, all her former lightness dispersed.

  ‘I was so, I was so angry. I thought he was having me followed.’

  ‘What the fuck! He was having you followed?’

  ‘No,’ Erin says, ‘no he wasn’t. I got it wrong.’

  Anna shakes her head, blinks a few times and looks over towards the bar. There’s someone there that catches her attention, or that she pretends to know. Because then she stands up.

  ‘Lucy Caldwell’s at the bar.’ Lucy Caldwell (93k followers), a foodie influencer. ‘I’m really not sure why you wanted to tell me that.’

  ‘You asked me what’s wrong.’

  ‘What do you expect me to say? Well done? You tried to burn your fiancé for what seems like basically no reason. You need to go and talk to someone but I really, really can’t help with this.’

  ‘Anna –’ Erin’s stood now. She can’t believe her apparent friend’s leapt so quickly to judge her. ‘I’m not – It’s like the guy who said he wanted to rape you – it, all this horrible shit from people on the Internet, it fucks you up.’

  ‘I’ve never thrown, like plates, anything at people because of it, Erin. That’s what people do in films, not in real life.’ She collects her bag, her jacket, the coat she’s wedged into the side of the booth. She’s trying to shuffle herself out of the booth when she stops. ‘Is he going to leave you?’

  ‘He understands how much pressure I’m under,’ Erin says, ‘forgave me straight away.’ She lies to Anna because she wants her to feel guilty for her reaction. If Raf can forgive her, she should be able to be less judgemental. Anna makes a face that tells her how lucky she thinks Erin is, implying that she wouldn’t tolerate someone hitting her. Erin feels her stomach crumple. She genuinely thought Anna would understand, would make her feel better. Perhaps she doesn’t deserve that.

  ‘I’m going for a smoke.’ Anna gives her a grin as she goes but it feels plastered on. Erin sinks back down onto the banquette, drains her Tom Collins and slides Anna’s vodka tonic over to her side of the table.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re Xavi,’ Erin says, waving a cigarette in the chill night air a little too close to Xavi, making him duck out the way to avoid it igniting his beard. He’s a couple of inches taller than Erin, and wears an elaborate jacket, black with a golden drum-major front panel that he’s somehow pulling off. He had swerved the Phibe event but one of Grace’s assistants had invited him to join the after-party. Erin’s drunk now. Pete, one of the CEOs of Phibe, had been plying her with mescal and, although she’s still compos mentis, her tongue feels thick and she leans heavily on the wide sill of the old pub window. She and Xavi are now on their second cigarette.

  ‘What did you think Xavi would be like?’ His English is perfect but he still has the slight sibilance and casual consonants of his native tongue.

  ‘Fat.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Bald.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Old.’

  Xavi laughs, whipping his thick shoulder-length hair behind him. He knows Erin’s flirting with him, he’s flirted with her, but he also knows she has a child, he knows she has a partner, so it’s the purest form of flirtation, untainted by the potential of having to act on it.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint,’ he says, finishing his beer, and clinking it on the floor behind him. ‘Listen,’ he says, turning in towards her, eyes full of sincerity, ‘I feel bad that we have not found out who he is, the person taking these photos.’ Erin waves him away, forget it. ‘But have you thought about the names?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ She blinks to try and focus her eyes. She doesn’t want to have a serious conversation now. She wants to finish her cigarette, get in an Uber and go back to the hotel before she drinks more and does something stupid.

  ‘Ali-crow, leister-worc.’

  ‘OMG, they’re fake!’

  ‘Yeh.’ He chuckles at her ribbing sarcasm, sucks hard on his cigarette like it was a shisha pipe. ‘Well, anyway, couple of days ago I googled Ali-crow, just to see if anything came up. Nothing.’ Erin grips the edge of the sill, the cigarette’s making her feel sick so she holds it down to her side and lets the chilly 1 a.m. air smoke the rest of it. Across the street, she thinks she can see someone moving around behind a van. ‘There was another name, someone that made a weird comment on one of your posts, “Crowlypoly” and one also called “Leisacrowd”. All using the same sort of letters. Which could have been a coincidence, but it seemed weird. So I kept googling and I found a name.’ Erin switches her attention from over by the van, where she can’t tell if there’s someone wearing black walking around or whether it’s just the shadow made by people passing under the street light, back to the leonine Xavi.

  ‘Who is it? Why did you wait until now to tell me?’

  ‘Don’t get too excited. He’s not a real person, well, not a living one anyway. Aleister Crowley. Ever heard of him?’ She shakes her head for a few shakes too long, eyes drift back over to the van. She sees a glint of something catching the street lamps, the light catching someone’s watch or more likely, the black mirror of their smartphone. ‘He was a weird dude. An occultist. Very famous. Into pagan stuff, organised orgies and magic rituals and shit.’

  ‘Do you see someone over there, by that grey van?’ Xavi squints in the direction she’s pointing. He doesn’t see anything, and now he’s looking, she’s not sure she can either.

  ‘I don’t see anyone.’

  ‘No.’ She clenches her jaw, swallows back some saliva, regretting the last mescal as the smoky bitterness creeps up the back of her throat. ‘You said something about magic?’

  ‘Ah, yeh, this guy, Crowley, he was into real magic, ceremonies, pagan stuff. Orgies. Doing whatever he wants. So, my question was, does that ring your bells about who it could be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is there anyone you know who’s into magic or weird pagan stuff?’ Erin looks at him and it’s like his question takes a moment to seep into her ears because then she starts and it’s like she’s looking at him for the first time that night. ‘There is someone?’ he says, seeing the clarity spring into her expression.

  ‘Was he into crystals, this guy?’

  ‘Aleister Crowley.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘No idea. He’s into spells, witchy stuff. I just read Wikipedia. I can get Grace to send articles over to you if it helps. Do some digging?’

  ‘No.’

  Erin dismounts from the windowsill, cogs stuck by booze suddenly whirring around in her mind. Until she talked to Anna an hour or two earlier, she didn’t know anyone that was into alternative, holistic things, no one that would have had anything to do with the occult, apart from Amanda.

  ‘Great to meet you.’ She goes to give Xavi a hug, he picks the wrong side, so their faces almost touch, they laugh and shift their bodies so they can hug. ‘Got late. Got drunk. Going to head back to the hotel.’

  ‘You getting a cab?’

  ‘It’s only ten minutes – I’ll walk.’ />
  ‘Shall I walk you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ She touches his arm, he looks at her, unsure, perhaps only just realising how drunk she is as he feels her swaying slightly towards him. She looks over to the van again before heading into the night.

  She rounds the corner into an alleyway that leads towards a railway bridge, unmitigated darkness beyond. She looks at the map on her phone, a park ahead. The screen lights up her face making her feel like a target. She pockets it and turns, heading back towards the busy road she’s come from. She sees a path, a cycle lane, that’s well lit and seems to be leading in the right direction. There’s some movement to her left, something seems to sweep behind a low wall. A cat, a fox perhaps. Erin flicks her collar up around her face and pulls a hat out of her coat pocket. If she’s warmer, perhaps she’ll feel safer.

  The end of the path leads to a dark road. She checks her map, still some way from the hotel. She hears steps, turns and manages to trip on a broken roof tile in the middle of the path. A hand on the wall, she stops herself falling. There’s no one there. The fence at the back of a house creaks. Just the wind. She knows she’s being irrational. She’s been feeling someone’s been following her constantly since the troll posted that video of her. But then someone was, Amanda was. She caught the only person she knows that dabbles in the occult following her. There is someone trolling her, who has made her lose control of her faculties, who’s made her violent, has named themselves after some big name in the occult. She feels the rough surface of brick catch at her tights. Perhaps she’s not being irrational. Maybe Amanda wanted to catch her, maybe she does have a smartphone, a camera, that Erin just hasn’t found yet.

  She’s in a dark street that leads to a main road up ahead that her map is saying is where she’ll find the hotel. Footsteps behind her, the sharp shuffle of feet moving, changing direction – are they breaking into a run? Erin doesn’t look back, she can’t. She starts sprinting, wedges clipping together as she attempts to accelerate. If she can get to the light on the main road she’ll be fine, people are there, she can hear people up there.

  A sharp noise, Erin looks behind her and her hips collide with a bin. She crumples forward, lands on her head, her leg twists, shattering pain in her ankle. She manages to crane herself up to sit, looking wildly for whoever it was she heard coming for her. There’s no one there. No one’s in the street. She slumps down, a distant voice from the busy road ahead slings out of the general noise as she squeezes her eyes to close out the pain.

  47

  BRAUNEoverBRAINS

  502 posts 83.2k followers 1,642 following

  ERIN BRAUNE

  This is my proud face. Because he is my pride and joy. This boy is my pride and joy.

  I’m not always joyful. The biggest lie they ever got us to swallow was that we could always be happy, always be content. Nobody is.

  I’m not always proud. I’m mostly not proud of what I’ve done, of how I am, of who I am. I don’t know if anyone is.

  Am I a ‘good enough’ mother? The pictures of me probably tell you I’m not. I know that when he’s asleep like this and his skin looks so perfect he looks like a little demi-god, it’s easy to say how much I love him. I find him hard. So, so hard. I spit with fury when I look at other people’s babies that never cry. Because he cries. All the time. And my body tenses up, which I’m sure makes him cry even harder. But, he is my pride and he is my joy. He is. So you can all think what you like about me. You can do what you want to me. But I know what he means to me.

  ‘Holy shit.’ Raf’s at the door of Bobby’s bedroom. He’s dressed even though it’s five thirty in the morning. He beckons Erin out of the room, shocked by the state she’s in but not wanting to wake the baby. Erin smiles, puts her hand out for him to come and join her in staring at the sleeping baby but he shakes his head and his eyes tell her that he wants to know what the hell’s happened to her. She’s still in her outfit from the club, coat dirtied. She doesn’t know if, in the low light, he can make out the blood matted into her hair, or the shredded patches of her tights. She tried to go to A&E after she fell but it was overstuffed with frightening drunks so she came straight home.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Raf asks, as she closes the door of Bobby’s room. He ushers her over to the kitchen table, gets her to sit down. She has a banging headache though feels strangely at peace. Perhaps she’s concussed.

  ‘I got an Uber from London. Please don’t be angry. I’ll give you the money when I get paid. You won’t have to pay for it.’

  ‘What happened?’ Raf goes to put the kettle on, gets a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and brings it over to her. He doesn’t know where to put it until Erin hauls her ankle up on a kitchen chair, takes it from him and winces as she places the peas on it. ‘Did someone do this to you?’

  ‘I tripped.’ He looks at her, dubious. ‘I decided to get the last train back, I didn’t want to be away from Bobby for another night. I was sprinting for a taxi to get to the station and I tripped and fell onto a bin.’ Raf sits down opposite and puts her hands in his. She realises her fingers are shaking. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She looks at him starkly, one eyelid slightly closing from the swelling on the top of her forehead. ‘What I did to you was unacceptable and you don’t deserve it and I hope you can forgive me.’ Raf looks down at the floor, he starts breathing through his nose. Erin knows he doesn’t have to forgive her, maybe Anna Mai’s reaction was right and he should leave her. But his face when he saw her hurt, the compassion, the desire to protect, she needs him, it could be that’s all she’s ever really needed. She looks at her hands in his. Rather than the adulation of an audience, the likes of tens of thousands of anonymous followers, perhaps she just needs the love, the care and protection of this one man. ‘I don’t want you to leave us.’

  Raf looks up and he’s got a big grin on his face, he shakes his head. He goes to hug her, attentive to the fact she’s hurt. He’s happy.

  ‘Of course I forgive you. You’ve put yourself under so much pressure,’ he whispers into her ear. ‘I’m doing everything I can, I’m putting everything I can into helping you cope, but it’s got too much. Hasn’t it?’ She nods. He looks at her with warmth in his eyes for the first time in what seems like weeks and it feels so wonderful to have him back on her side. He is on her side, she knows that, he always has been. It’s been her that’s pushed him away.

  ‘We should clean that up,’ he says, eyeing the gash on her head.

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Hair mostly.’ He encircles her cheek in his hand and she could almost lean into it and fall asleep. Raf gets up to search the kitchen cupboard where they keep medicine.

  A light comes on outside. The security light of the studio at the end of the garden. Erin turns to see Amanda slinking in through the garden gate and towards her room. It’s not even six yet. Their guest glances into the kitchen before heading into her lodgings. She doesn’t turn the studio light on. Erin thinks back to that dark road in Hackney. Maybe she fell because she was drunk. Maybe she imagined there was someone there watching her. Maybe she imagined the shuffle of running feet that made her sprint into the pitch-black until she fell hard and hit her head. But if she imagined it all, then where’s Amanda been in the middle of the night?

  48

  18 May 1999

  We’ve moved to the suburbs and everything is better. Donny and I are clearly not made for city life. We don’t need the noise and all the people, we only need space and each other.

  He’s been so amazing. I thought he’d be angry to have to move out but he’s been so kind, so loving, just like he was back at school. It was my fault we had to move so quickly. He’d told me he didn’t want me talking to any of the neighbours. He told me, again and again, that sooner or later Jean upstairs would start asking questions about where my parents were. But she always seemed so ditzy to me, I thought she had Alzheimer’s and that he was just being too cautious. Well, one day she came looking for me in the day, Donny was home
and answered the door. She’d never met him before as she never left her flat after he got back from work. She started shouting at him, threatening to call the police. He told me we’d have to leave that night. I felt terrible, but he was so lovely about it, he didn’t blame me even though I knew it was my fault. He went out to get everything sorted and we came straight here.

  And now we’re in a little one-bed house that has a creek ten minutes’ walk away and it feels like when we were getting to know each other again. Donny’s still commuting into the city and, for the moment at least, he thinks it’s best if I stay inside when he’s not here. He’s put a CCTV camera above the door so we’ll have evidence if Craig finds us here, but I can’t see how he ever will.

  I was having doubts. It feels almost sacrilegious, with everything we’ve been through in the last year, to say that, but I did. Our love felt so intense, so pure, it made me feel alive, but when we moved to the city I started to feel as if he thought he’d made a mistake. He seemed so stressed all the time, so paranoid. But now I’ve got the old Donny back. So loving, so tender. And I feel like our world is everything again. And that’s important. People spend their lives striving for money and career, to get married, to have children. But for what? He and I have to put something important in the world. We’re on a voyage together. And that’s the operative word. Together. Soulmate is a cliché now. But if you find that person who can be enough to satisfy every craving, every desire you have, when you find perfection, you have to do everything to maintain it and never let it go.