The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  ‘You were a kid, Amanda. He was a grown man. How old? Twenty, twenty-one? What he did to you is called grooming.’

  ‘Do you want to stay with Raf then?’ She bites the words off like they were a stale biscuit. She’s still obsessed with him, after all these years. The crystals, the jar spell, all designed to force Erin away and win him over again. And of course Erin wants to leave him. He’s a compulsive liar, a rapist, a paedophile for Christ’s sake. He’s isolated Erin, made her think she’s an insufficient mother and partner and that he’s working all hours to provide for them, he’s made her leave her agent, taken the money she earned, the first proper money she’d ever earned, and made her think she’s mad. Now she thinks about it, he was probably days away from committing her to an institution. Has he ever loved her? Why didn’t he just run off with Amanda if that’s what he wants? Why all this? She has so many questions but right now she needs to deal with Amanda. Damaged, eggshell-fragile Amanda, who has her locked in a hotel room with her baby expecting her to get on a plane to Australia in three hours.

  ‘I’m going to leave Raf, yes. Of course I’m going to leave him,’ Erin says and Amanda brightens. ‘But I’m not going to get on that flight. I’m not going to get on a plane to Australia.’

  Amanda’s brow furrows. ‘It’s the only way.’ She sits on the bed, both hands fiddling with a large obsidian pendant she has round her neck, eyes on the carpet. ‘He won’t let you go. You’re engaged. He –’ She looks up at Erin and she can see the petulant, precocious teenager that Raf painted in the pictures. The girl he clearly still wants her to be. Has she seen his pictures? Has she seen how he’s painted her, how dissatisfied he is with the aged her, the real her? ‘I imagined it was going to be easy to remind him why he married me.’ In her mind they’re married. That crazy little ceremony they had, she thinks they’re married. ‘I wanted to show him how much better I’d be as a mother, as a partner, and it seemed to be working. He wanted me to spend more time with him, he started painting me again. He said I was inspiring him. He wanted to be an artist again, to get his work out into the world. He said he hadn’t felt like this in years.’ She looks out the window, a sadness falling into her eyes. ‘When he found out about the video, when he saw how you were treating his son, I thought that would be enough, I thought it would make it easy for him to leave. I never wanted to take Bobby.’ She flicks back to looking at Erin, the shadows under her severe cheekbones making her look her age for once. ‘I just wanted to show him how obvious it was that we were meant to be, how good a mother I’d be if he wanted to have the sort of family he wanted with me.’

  ‘What sort of family does he want?’

  ‘You were never going to be happy just being his wife. It’s not your fault, but that’s what someone like Raf needs. Someone who will dedicate themselves entirely to him and his baby. He wouldn’t have done any of the things he’s done to you if you weren’t always trying to make a life away from him. We all need different things from our partners and sometimes people get into relationships that aren’t right, and they stick with them out of stubbornness or fear. But you can never give him what I can, what he deserves, and no matter how hard he’s tried with you, and I can see he’s tried so hard, too hard, what he’s done to you isn’t right, but he has only ever done it for you, to make you something like his first wife –’ she puts both hands to her collarbone – ‘who he was cruelly separated from. But he can have what he needs now. I’m here to claim him. It’s legal now for him and me to be what we always should have been. And you can be free. It’s what we all deserve, Erin. We all deserve to be happy.’

  Erin’s about to try and contradict her, to try and make her see that she’s talking like a cult devotee, but she stops herself. The situation feels as if it’s teetering on a needlepoint and trying to win over someone so damaged, whose mind is set on an entirely different planetary wavelength, isn’t going to get her anywhere. She sees a cool bag, some of Amanda’s preparations for her flight, and extracts a banana and gives it to Bobby before plonking him down on the carpet and sitting next to him.

  ‘Why is this –’ she holds up the plane ticket – ‘why is this the only way?’

  ‘He’s really very traditional,’ Amanda says, making Erin actually shake her head in disbelief. ‘I realised that he wasn’t going to leave you of his own accord. I thought about telling you we were still married, that we’d lived as man and wife, about, well, I didn’t think you’d understand about the age difference, no one ever did, but I thought about telling you, in the hope you’d leave him. But how he was –’ she pauses, glances up at Erin before going back to massaging the pendant around her neck – ‘how he was behaving, I could see he was fighting to make things work, so if he found out I’d told you about us I knew that he’d never, ever forgive me. And it would have tarnished things between us, stopped us ever refinding our bond. I thought he’d just gravitate towards me, but –’ she hums a half-laugh – ‘he’s very traditional, I should have known he wouldn’t just be able to let you go. He’s got such strong principles, and it makes perfect sense, after how his dad treated his mother, her running away, he wants to be the type of husband and father his dad never was.’ Erin swallows the lump in her throat. She glances at the window. She doesn’t feel safe in the room with Amanda. To her, this isn’t a hare-brained idea. This is how she’s going to clear a path to Raf so the two of them can be together. What’s she going to do when Erin tells her she’s not getting on that flight? Amanda’s so deeply in thrall to Raf. But no, Erin tells herself, she’s got me here to help me, she thinks she’s helping. Perhaps the excuses for him come from the way he conditioned her as a child, some scar tissue in her psyche that stops her seeing anything he does as the rest of the world would. But how to shine a light into her head and make her see how brainwashed she is? Erin starts as Amanda looks sharply at the clock radio on the bedside table.

  ‘Bobby will need a nap in half an hour,’ she says. ‘Probably better to get through security first.’

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen, Amanda? Bobby and I get on the flight and then what? You go back to our house and reclaim your husband?’

  Amanda tries to smile but she looks annoyed. ‘I don’t think he’s going to just fall into my arms. I’m sure he’ll try and get to you, to try and get you back, but he won’t be able to because he can’t travel back home. He only left me in the first place because of what the police were accusing him of. He’s still wanted for kidnapping me, and, um, what happened to our neighbour Jean. I know he wouldn’t risk it. And, here it is, he knows deep down that what we had was true, powerful love. I feel sure that that’s the reason you and he have never been able to make things conduct between you. So with you gone, I’m certain it will just be a matter of time. And I can wait as long as it takes.’ She moves her hands from her pendant to her lap as if that proves her point.

  ‘You don’t think he’ll want to know why I’ve gone? If he’s that obsessed with my not leaving, don’t you think he’ll blame you?’

  Amanda smiles, one hand twists the thick cord of hair that rests on her chest. ‘He knows you’ve been going through the studio, spying on me, trying to find something to incriminate me. I hid the journal where no one could ever find it, he can’t blame me for that.’

  ‘What if I tell him? What if I tell him that you told me everything, that you told me exactly the sort of man he is?’

  Amanda launches herself off the bed and down onto the floor with such force, that Erin finds herself almost gearing up to shove her away.

  ‘You can’t!’ she pleads. ‘You can’t tell him. There’s no need. You want to be free of it. Be honest with yourself, you don’t love him. You’re not the person he needs, I am. But if you tell him it would taint everything we have.’

  ‘Have you seen the paintings he’s done of you? They’re sick. He’s not in love with you. He’s a pervert who abused you when you were a child. He doesn’t love you.’

  Amanda blinks three, fo
ur times. She pulls at the lace on her cuffs. She shakes her head, smiling from ear to ear.

  ‘You don’t know him.’

  Erin gets Bobby onto her, stands up with him and goes into the bathroom. Raf’s been telling her she’s deluded for the past few weeks, but now she’s witnessing true, profound delusion, the likes of which she’s never imagined possible. Amanda needs help immediately, and she needs to get away from Raf, because if he’s half as controlling as her journal says he is, he won’t forgive her, and although she doesn’t know what happened to Jean, Erin can’t let him do the same to Amanda. But what’s Erin going to do? She looks at Bobby looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. He’s starting to look less blobby and more human. He smiles as he makes his huge powder puff of hair shake from side to side. She can’t risk Raf seeing him again. She definitely doesn’t want to see him again. She doesn’t understand it all yet, but Amanda, the studio, the paintings, she knows that everything about their relationship is a lie. Bobby can’t have anything to do with someone who could do what he’s done.

  ‘We should get you to departures,’ Amanda says from the bedroom, her tone eerily flat. Erin needs to deal with her. What Amanda’s done today, the elaborate treasure hunt leading her to look for the jar spell, the fucking jar spell! She needs to get Amanda somewhere safe, then Erin can assess what the hell she’s going to do with the rest of her life.

  ‘This is what’s going to happen.’ Erin turns back into the door frame of the bathroom. This is all acting now. The wide stance, deepening the tone of her voice, the firm, commanding words. This is Henry V ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’ stuff. ‘We’re going to go to the British Airways desk, put your name on this ticket, and you’re going to go home. My old agent, Grace, her company has an office in Sydney, they’ll find someone for you to talk to. You’ve been a victim of abuse, you’ve been groomed, and you’ve not been able to move on from it. Raf will know that you told me about his past.’ Erin pauses, expects Amanda to come up with some objection, but she just stares ahead of her, fiddling with her pendant again. ‘Do you understand that, Amanda? He’ll think it’s your fault that I left him, that I took his boy away from him. If he’s so obsessed with being a great dad, that’s going to make him very angry. You won’t be safe.’ Erin can’t quite believe it but Amanda starts nodding.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asks.

  ‘Go to my mum, I guess.’ Erin hasn’t thought about it all, she hasn’t spoken to her in months, but she can’t think of another option.

  ‘He’ll find you.’

  ‘I’m going to tell the police about the bank account,’ Erin says, biting the inside of her lip, making it all up on the spot. ‘Tell them I found out he was pretending to be me. That’s illegal. I’ll say I’m in a coercive relationship. I’ll show them the journal, show them what he did to you when you were a child and they’ll be able to protect me.’ Amanda turns her head to Erin. She’s smiling.

  ‘Us abandoning him like this,’ she says, eyes filling, ‘it’s much worse punishment than anything the police can do to him.’

  ‘You might not be able to understand it yet, Amanda, you might not ever believe it, but he deserves every punishment we can mete out against him.’

  ‘Let’s go then,’ Amanda says, closing her eyes briefly. Then she whips a key card out of her pocket and opens the door onto the yellow light of the hallway.

  63

  ‘Erin?’ Her mum’s shock scratches curtly through Erin’s iPhone speaker.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘You’ve deigned to call me.’

  ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘It’s not a great time to be honest, I’ve got to go into town for –’

  ‘I’m coming over.’

  ‘Um –’ The crowded airport swirls around Erin and Bobby as if they’re in the eye of the storm and she can barely hear her mum with the noise. She half expects her to say she has some pastoral stuff at the charity she volunteers for that she just can’t put off. She hates to be surprised. Bobby grabs a clump of skin. He looks exhausted, panda patches under his eyes. Erin’s mum clears her throat. ‘Has something happened?’ she asks, concern beginning to melt her frostiness.

  ‘Yes.’ Erin’s chest shudders up at the thought. ‘Yes, something has happened.’ The admission breaks Erin’s banks, she sucks short breaths in, the point of hyperventilation, yelping almost. Eyes in the crowd become fixed on her though no one does a thing. She locks eyes with Bobby who’s staring at his mother somewhere between upset and amused and it stills Erin momentarily, gives her the time to rein her emotion in.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ her mum says. ‘I’ve got stuff for a fish pie.’ Erin bursts into laughter, tears streaming down her face. Soon they’ll be there. Soon they’ll be safe.

  Bobby looks tiny sitting on the big train seat next to her. He napped for a while on her chest and he’s now dismantling one of those spirals of compressed fruit and sticking bits of it on his face. As the scenery outside starts to adjust from towers of council flats to the flatter rows of suburban terraces, towards Croydon, her mum, sanctuary, everything starts to settle in her mind.

  She thought she was losing her grip on reality; that she’d forgotten about a bank account she set up. She glances at her phone on the table between her and Bobby. He almost made her believe that her addiction to it had made her so delusional that she was imagining jars with dolls planted under sofa beds. She never truly believed that she was going mad, but Raf seemed so frustrated with her, so quick to dismiss the things she was saying were going on, that she accepted it. Got into bed, pulled the cover over her head and just accepted it. Looking back on their time together, she can see that the pattern was always the same. He’d suggest she make a life change, not hanging out with certain friends, giving up acting, moving out of London, having a baby, and at first she’d rail against the idea but somehow she always acceded to it. And it would always be because he was ‘worried’ about her, worried about her mental health. He used her neurosis about her career, her anxieties about her friends making more money than her, her sense of wasted potential, her antenatal depression even, as a tool to control her and she drank it all down like a milkshake.

  From the hotel she and Bobby walked Amanda to the British Airways office to put her name on the ticket, checked her in, and saw her off at the security gates. She must have somehow known that this was the best course of action because she had her passport with her but she barely said a word. As they parted ways, she gave Erin the tightest hug and seemed genuinely emotional to say goodbye to Bobby. It was as if she suddenly realised that this whole trip was a fantasy, that the ardour she’d harboured all this time, the lies she’d been telling herself, were a result of being abused. Erin wasn’t sure how she’d got through to her, there hadn’t seemed to be a road to Damascus realisation but she seemed, in the hotel room, to just give up.

  Raf calls again. Only when they got on the train did she turn her phone on. She sent him a text: I found Amanda’s journal. You’re sick. I never want to see you again. I never want Bobby to see you. If you try to find us I will have you arrested.

  He hasn’t stopped calling since but she doesn’t want to hear his lies, she can’t bear hearing how she’s got it wrong, how Amanda’s making it up, how they’re all deluded. She looks at Bobby who’s moved on to mutilating a small pot of carrot sticks. At least she has a purpose now, at least her life has a meaning. To make sure that her boy grows up nothing like his father. Her relationship is over. She should be distraught but all she feels is intense relief. Relieved she’s not lost her mind but mainly relief at being free of him. Because she’s spent the last four years just as deluded as Amanda is. She so wanted a saviour, someone that would make sense of how messy her life felt, that she allowed herself to be controlled by a monster. But now the blinkers are off. Bobby cries out as he bites his finger instead of the carrot stick between his four little teeth. He hands it out for her to kiss better so she leans down and smothers his tin
y fingers with kisses. It feels extraordinary to mother him like this. It feels natural, perhaps for the first time.

  She looks on her phone and sees the icon for the Find My iPhone app. She had no idea what it even did, no idea that you could use it to track your partner, but when she goes into it she sees his phone is there along with hers. She clicks onto his phone. There’s a tiny icon of a phone with a pin stuck onto their road at home. He’s back from London, whatever he was doing there. There are two other phones on the list. ‘iPhone 3’, ‘iPhone 5’. Raf’s old ones probably, Erin’s borrowed one of them in the past when hers was stolen on a bus in Camberwell. She sits forward when she sees that one of them is ‘online’. She clicks on it. The dot seems to be somewhere on the south side of the M25, heading east from Heathrow. She remembers Amanda in the hotel room saying that Raf used the app to watch ‘us’. And Erin had never realised – of course Amanda has a smartphone, she had to have one, the baby monitor they use for Bobby is on a smartphone app. He gave her one of his old ones. Amanda’s not on a plane back to her homeland. She’s in a car heading back towards Erin’s home, back to him.

  Erin squeezes her temples. She remembers what Amanda’s journal said he did to the neighbour who threatened to break up their relationship. She wrote that the police had made a mistake but she also thought she hadn’t been abducted. Erin wants to scream ‘fuck’ very loudly, but for the sake of the carriage she manages to restrain herself. She glances out the window and sees the spire of the clock tower of the Museum of Croydon. Her mum’s house is ten minutes away, fifteen, max. She could take Bobby up to her old bedroom, climb into bed and cover herself in the duvet, just for an hour or so. The train comes into the station. She picks Bobby up and he hugs into her. As she’s stepping out into the cold grey of suburbia, she looks into her boy’s eyes, like pools of molten chocolate. His dad’s eyes. Erin’s going to go to her mum’s to drop him off, but she knows she can’t stay.