The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  ‘Erin, can you take me off speaker?’ Erin wants to do as she says but Raf stills her with a glance. She doesn’t want to leave Instagram. She has a career now, for the first time in her life she was about to start earning money, really good money. She could start buying the things she wanted, doing the things that she wanted, not always being beholden to Raf, not always asking him for cash to do the most meagre things, she could start to live like everyone else she knew. She was planning to work hard and build her fan base, and who knew what could have happened from there. She’s still a bloody good actor, she’s not thick, she didn’t know where it was going to take her but she knows she could have made something tangible out of her online success. But it’s a physical thing as well. The thought of not having it there in her pocket, not checking it, not having that hit of joy every time someone likes one of her posts, every time someone tells her how well she’s doing, fills the pit of her stomach with a void. ‘I want to make sure you understand –’ Grace’s voice – ‘what it is you’re doing at this stage in your career.’

  Raf picks the phone up and takes her off speaker. ‘Erin isn’t well.’ Erin’s face creases in concern. What’s he doing? What’s he telling her? Why isn’t she doing anything to stop him? ‘And you’re filling her head with how she’s this great career woman and none of it’s real.’ Erin wants to grab the phone away, but Bobby’s on the sofa now and looks like he’ll tumble off so she goes to him and sits down and lets her fiancé handle the conversation with her agent because, the honest reason, she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to leave Instagram even though she knows she should and she doesn’t want to have the difficult conversation with Grace because it all feels too grown up, too serious.

  Bobby launches himself onto her torso, wraps his arms around her neck and gives her the most nourishing cuddle she’s ever had. The noise of Raf storming round the kitchen telling Grace how this whole situation is her fault, how she’s failed her duty of care, how he’s going to pick up the pieces, melts away. Bobby moves his head from side to side so his furry angel-hair tickles her chin and she thinks to herself that this, this bundle of pudge pawing at her face with his clammy hands, that this is enough. She’s spent her whole life wanting to be busy, wanting to be in demand, but the reality is that it’s awful. In the last few months, with notifications and emails constantly pinging, everyone looking at her, judging her, wanting something from her, she’s never felt more anxious in her life.

  She glances round at Raf stood in the corner of their kitchen, legs twined around each other, listening, face crinkled in measured disdain. He’s trying to save her. He’s trying to smooth things out for her and make things easier like he’s always done, because he’s right. She can’t cope. She isn’t coping with what’s going on. He’s been right all along. She squeezes Bobby into her, almost too hard so he fidgets away. He smiles up at her and she laughs. She doesn’t need the love of tens of thousands of faceless avatars, she just needs this.

  ‘You’re a cowboy. Erin’s been expecting payment every single day. We need the cash that she’s been promised and we’ve had jackshit.’

  ‘Raf,’ Erin murmurs, still facing away, not wanting to shout and shock baby Bobby.

  ‘What else is your job? I mean, seriously, apart from creaming off your twenty per cent and sticking the money in your client’s account, what is your actual job?’

  ‘Raf, that’s enough.’ Erin stands, Bobby perched still on the side of her hip. Raf looks up at her, she extends her arm to him. ‘Let me.’ Raf listens, his face changes. He looks shocked.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he says.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I knew, from the start, I didn’t want to say it, but that woman is a piece of work.’

  ‘What did she say?’ She bends her head down as Bobby yanks her earlobe.

  ‘Well.’ He seems pleased with himself as he saunters over from the kitchen towards her. As the gap closes she gets an image of the pasta bake splattered across the tiles. He laces an arm around her hip. ‘You’re going to get paid for all the posts that you’ve already done. Pretty quick I’d say.’ He looks like he’s just beaten up a smaller schoolboy to impress his crush.

  ‘Great,’ she says. ‘Well done. Thanks.’

  ‘It’s what I’m here for,’ he says, planting a peck on Bobby’s head that causes him to hug in closer to Erin. ‘You and I don’t have to deal with money-grubbing harpies like her ever again.’ He takes her cheek in his hand and kisses the side of her head. Over his shoulder Erin can see Amanda standing in her studio, watching them.

  56

  Erin looks down at her ‘mum jeans’ and sees where the fingers of her right hand have scratched into the denim. She’s at the church group and Bobby’s struggling up against the pink plastic walker that’s so encrusted with dirt it reminds her of a pig rolled in mud. She stands to go and help him and notices the lightness of her pocket, the void where her phone should be. She knows she hasn’t got the willpower not to re-download Instagram so she’s let Raf hang on to it for her in exchange for an old Nokia he had at the back of a drawer. She’s heard people talk about how, if you lose your phone or it breaks, the first hour or two feel weird but then it starts to feel liberating, but Erin’s clearly further entrenched in her addiction than most people, because after two days she’s feeling the opposite of freedom. She feels edgy, like she’s had a line of coke and tried to go straight to sleep.

  A dad with a lumberjack shirt and a preposterous beard laughs at something an uber-trendy older mum says to him, she might be called Ellerby. They both glance momentarily her way before falling back into conversation with each other. She didn’t want to come today, she spent all of yesterday in the house with Bobby, but Raf said he’d been up all night with him, and although he seemed fine in the morning, Erin knew that she would have to go out and find distraction for her tired boy or face a grave screamathon.

  She walks over to the crumbled ‘Nice’ biscuits in the corner by the plastic jugs of squash, greeting a couple of local mums on the way. There’ve been a few snatched conversations this morning, but, and it’s not her being paranoid, there’s been a wariness in whoever she’s spoken to. Before, people would find all sorts of reasons to come and sit on a tiny plastic chair next to her, people would offer to get her tea, push their son or daughter in one of the Fisher-Price toy cars over to where Bobby is and make some comment about his Babygro or his perma-frown, in order to open up a conversation, but now, as she looks over at her boy stumbling his way to push the stroller up against a radiator, and the furtive eyes of a mum called Fran as he gets close, it seems like she’s put an exclusion zone around the two of them. Perhaps she would have been better keeping them both inside.

  Bobby tries to bend over to pick up a piece of Duplo, his tentativeness making him look like an old man picking up a dropped coin. There’s no doubt that not having her phone to turn to has made her feel closer to him. He’s been in pain, with his teeth or a rattly chest, she’s not sure, and he’s had moments of being miserable, but Erin hasn’t found herself getting as tense as she used to. She’s found herself holding the boy into her, shhing rhythmic comfort into his ear as he cries or struggles against her, patiently, until he relents and gives himself to the comfort of his mother’s shoulder. Oddly, she has Amanda to thank. It seems she’s osmotically absorbed some of Amanda’s calm with him, some of her ability to withstand her son’s torrential emotional responses.

  Amanda’s still around. She offered to come to the group with them but Erin declined. She’s not sure what she’s been up to but, with the responsibility of Bobby taken away after Erin’s various commitments were struck from the calendar, she’s seemed listless. Trying to cook, trying to clean around them, but she also spends hours at a time out of the house, doing God knows what. It also seems clear that Raf hasn’t spoken to her yet. Which Erin hasn’t brought up, because he’s been in a much better mood with her, much more loving, more caring, and she doesn’t want to shatter the veneer
of balance that’s fallen over their home. But she wants to know why nothing’s been said, their deal was crystal clear, and so far, however hard it’s been to go cold turkey, she’s the only one who’s kept up her part of it.

  She looks up to see Bobby on top of a tower of soft-play blocks that some large toddlers have been building. The tower begins to lean to one side. Erin rushes towards him and just as he begins to tumble off, Bronwen, the lady who runs the group, manages to grab at him. She doesn’t get both hands on him but she manages to manoeuvre him to land on one of the gym mats rather than the floorboards below. As Erin picks him up into her arms before he has a chance to start properly crying, she notices a dozen pairs of eyes watching her – no wonder she’s not watching her baby – they all seem to be thinking.

  ‘Thanks, thanks so much, Bronwen.’

  ‘Boys will be boys.’ There’s something in her eyes too. A coldness, disdain. Lovely, kind, Christian Bronwen. Can she know too? Has someone snitched to Bronwen about the photos of Erin, about the picture of Erin screaming at her baby? Bronwen glances down at Bobby. She’s always loved him, always lavished extra kisses and games of peekaboo on him. She always tried to defend him whenever Erin would complain about his screaming to her. Erin catches more glances around the room. She feels like a car crash everyone’s desperate to see so that they can feel safe, content with the calm mundanity of their lives.

  Without thinking, she bursts through the double doors leaving her buggy behind. She had to get out of there. She has to get out of this town. She needs to be in London. She needs to be anonymous for a few hours, she needs to soak up the collective energy of thousands, to escape the scrutinising eyes down here, just for a while. As she pounds the streets towards the train station, Bobby bouncing on her chest, grinning from ear to ear, she thinks about how uncomfortable she’s always been here. She grew up with the bustle of Croydon, the teeming life of London. It’s too quiet here, too bland. There’s no colour, no culture. No wonder when the local populace found someone remotely well known, even just on Instagram, they took to her with such parasitic zeal and no wonder they’re now enjoying her downfall so much.

  She reaches the station, goes to one of the machines on the street and selects a ticket to London. She puts her debit card in the machine and pumps her pin into the keypad. It seems to be taking a long time, Bobby’s getting heavy in her arms and restless. The screen on the machine says:

  CARD DECLINED

  INSUFFICIENT FUNDS

  Before it cancels her transaction.

  ‘Fuck!’ she says. An old dear waiting at the bus stop turns 180 degrees to see who’s swearing so loudly in the street and shakes her head when she sees she has a baby. Erin extends a hand to apologise before trying the joint account card in the machine. She gets the same message. Raf normally makes sure there’s money in it, but he’s obviously forgotten to.

  The train is in two minutes. She considers crossing the footbridge to the platform and getting on, hoping that she’ll somehow be able to blag the inspector, or phone Raf to put money into the joint account, but she can’t. She can’t be thrown off a train with a one-year-old and she can’t expect Raf to pay for this if money’s as tight as he says. She watches the train trundle to a stop across the tracks, then watches it leave. The old woman at the bus stop gives her a disgusted look, then at Bobby. She’s not even on Instagram and she’s judging whether Erin’s fit to look after her child.

  She gets her phone out as she turns and makes her way home, and calls Grace Fentiman. This isn’t fair. She’s given everything on Instagram to try and finally make herself some money, her safety, her sanity potentially. The funds from Phibe have presumably been given back, but she must have earned at least a few grand from the various sponsored posts she’s done, as much as ten maybe. All the other influencers moan about how long it takes to get paid, but it seems ridiculous that she hasn’t even been paid enough for a train fare.

  ‘Grace Fentiman’s office?’

  ‘Is Grace there? It’s Erin Braune.’

  ‘Er – she’s not.’ The hesitation tells Erin that she is but clearly has no time to talk to her ex-client.

  ‘I need to speak to her about when I’m going to get paid.’

  ‘Let me just –’ Erin’s hip starts to burn with pain from the weight of Bobby perching on top of it as Grace’s assistant, Zoe, looks through Erin’s file on their system. ‘Are you talking about the payment from Slow-Aloe for the selection of hair masks? Because that’s come through now. Payroll’s not till Thursday if you remember so you won’t get it for a couple of days.’

  ‘I’m not just talking about Slow-Aloe, I’m talking about all of it. The hair-mask posts were only a couple of weeks ago, three at most. I’m talking about all of them. I haven’t been paid for any of the posts I’ve done yet. Why would I specifically be talking about Slow-Aloe?’

  ‘Um –’ Erin has to endure the sound of Zoe tapping on her computer for a moment. ‘We’re all up to date up until the Slow-Aloe invoice on our system.’ Erin tastes the spit in her mouth. What’s she talking about? Erin hasn’t been paid for any of those things. Her card’s been declined. As of a few days ago, when she last checked, she had about forty quid in her account and had worried about asking Raf to put his monthly £150 in early.

  ‘I haven’t got any of that money,’ Erin says, shifting Bobby onto her other hip, almost limping along the parade of shops towards home. She needs to put him down. She wishes he could walk.

  ‘That’s weird. I mean, the money’s left our account so –’

  ‘Can I speak to Grace?’

  ‘She’s in a meeting. Yeh, it’s been paid into account number 94738382.’

  ‘That’s not my account.’

  ‘That would explain it.’ Zoe’s sunny tone makes Erin actually slap herself on the forehead in exasperation. Bobby thinks it’s a game and joins in hitting her so she has to hold his hands down.

  ‘It’s a totally different account number, why would you pay it into that account?’

  ‘I’ve just found the email you sent us with your details, are you able to check your email?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘OK. The 26th of Feb you sent us an email that said, “I’ve set up a new business account, details below 9473 –’

  ‘I signed with Grace at the end of January. I sent my bank details then, not on the 26th of February.’

  ‘OK. I’ll forward the email chain back to you, maybe we should get off the phone so you can check it.’

  ‘I can’t –’ But she stops herself. Somehow she’s too ashamed to admit that she’s not using a smartphone.

  ‘OK. Thanks. Let me check.’ She hangs up just as she turns onto her road. She almost skips down the hill to her house, opens the door and deposits Bobby onto the play mat. She pulls her laptop out of the kitchen drawer. It’s dead. She plugs it in. The minutes feel like hours as she waits for it to turn on. When it sparks into life she logs into her email. There it is from Zoe, a forwarded message.

  FROM: erinbraune@outlook.co.uk

  TO: grace.fentiman@rfgtalent.com

  RE: Account details

  Hi Grace,

  I’ve set up a new account for my work with you, details below. I wanted to be able to keep my business income separate from my day-to-day life. Hope you’ll be able to amend on your system.

  Thanks.

  Erin

  There’s no ‘X’ at the end. Erin and Grace always end their emails with an ‘X’. Erin didn’t send that email.

  57

  ‘You must be able to tell me when the account was opened?’ The middle-aged man with a Don Draper hairstyle that doesn’t suit the width of his face grimaces from behind the bank counter.

  ‘Sorry, no. We can’t reveal any details about our accounts without the account holder’s photographic identification.’

  ‘The identity of the account holder is exactly what I’m trying to find out!’ The man in the polyester suit is starting to look uncomfortab
le. She breathes, tries to calm herself. Bobby’s sleeping in the sling on her front and the last thing she needs is him waking up.

  When she read the email it suddenly all clicked into place. Raf was right, she was being ridiculous thinking that Amanda was here for him or to steal Bobby away from her. Amanda’s in a dead-end situation at home, she found out she has a tenuous link to someone who has tens of thousands of Instagram followers. She could have googled how much money influencers make or maybe she knows much more about the whole thing than she’s ever let on. Erin would love to accuse her, she’d love to tell Raf, go through her wallet and find the card from the account, but what if she’s hidden it somewhere like the jar? Erin’s not sure Raf would tolerate that, it might be the last straw.

  But this officious jobsworth isn’t giving her anything. She expected it to be an Australian account but the sort code says that this is the bank, the only one left on the high street. Amanda must have set up an account when she got here, though whether Erin’s money’s still in it, she can’t be sure. In heist movies the money’s always redistributed to untraceable accounts as soon as it’s paid in.

  ‘Can you tell me if there’s any money in the account? If there’s any forwarding account? All my money, everything I’ve earned this year, is in that account and I don’t have access to it.’

  ‘How has it got in there?’

  ‘Look –’ she glances at his name tag, almost double-takes – ‘look, Fabian. Someone has stolen my money and put it in one of your accounts. I’m not asking you for the person’s address, just tell me when it was set up, tell me if there’s anything left in it. I’ve been a victim of fraud. I’m a mother. I have nothing else. Nothing!’ Fabian’s staring down and Erin realises she’s grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. His eyes are wide with shock. She withdraws her hand and places it on Bobby’s head as if that will excuse the indiscretion. Fabian steps back and points at a sign behind him that says ‘Any abuse of our staff will not be tolerated’. Erin’s winces in indignation and is about to tell Fabian to man the fuck up when someone grasps her upper arm firmly.