The Family Friend

by C. C. MacDonald

  64

  The ground floor looks like it’s been ransacked. The coffee table has been upturned; three empty cans of lager, a bottle of half-drunk vodka stand like sentries on the edge of their dining table guarding a huge bag of crisps popped, spilled and ground into the carpet below. The wire bookshelf has been pulled from the wall and rests on an armchair, its contents mostly on the floor. This is nothing like the man Erin knows, so considered, so neat, so fastidious. But the Raf she knows isn’t a real person at all, so perhaps this is him finally revealing his true atrocious self. Perhaps he has to attach himself to vulnerable, desperate women to bring order to his monstrous mind. But even though he clearly has been here, there’s no sign he’s in the house currently. The Find My iPhone trail has gone cold for both him and Amanda.

  She spots the painting of the shrouded figure staring at her and realises that he must have painted it, and that it’s probably of her. Erin’s stomach sinks like she’s dropping in turbulence at the thought of Raf, the grown man, and the poor child Amanda. And he’s a fucking terrible artist, she thinks, looking at the immature daubing, feeling a sense of glee. She remembers back in Marine Gallery, the way the curator was almost sniggering at him. Was he trying to get her to sell his work? Erin feels her own laugh building inside her when she hears a desperate sound. A shriek, a keening, mournful shriek. Erin’s eyes dart to the window and, though the blinds are down, through the door of the studio she sees Raf holding Amanda up against the wall by her shoulders? Or is it by her throat? Erin picks up the first thing she finds, the twin-spired crystal, balanced on the leaning shelf, and runs out into the garden.

  ‘Put her down,’ Erin says, brandishing the rock by one of its columns, the heavy end held up in front of her like a mace. Raf looks round at her through a mop of hair, pupils huge, desperate delight coming into his expression as if she were a rescue ship and he a castaway. He releases Amanda who slides down the wall, holding her throat, gulping big breaths in – he was strangling her? He looks like an entirely different person to her fiancé, pupils huge, face shimmering with sweat. Is he on drugs as well as pissed? Raf has never done drugs, she knows that his house of cards is crumbling around him, but what the fuck has happened to him since this morning? He moves towards where she stands in the door frame but Erin swings the crystal, warning, and he stops where he is.

  ‘Ez, I am so sorry.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘She’s lying.’

  ‘I saw your studio. Your lavish studio that you pay for with, with what money, Raf, because I thought we were skint?’

  ‘Look, I’ve, I’ve got – Weird about money but –’

  ‘Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You have lied to me every single day I’ve known you to make me feel like a piece of shit –’

  ‘Ez –’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ She screams it at the top of her voice, a power and intensity she’s barely ever shown him, and it works. He’s stunned into silence. ‘Amanda, come on.’ Amanda shakes her head on the floor. ‘Come on, for Christ’s sake. He just tried to kill you, come on.’ Amanda looks at Erin, black pupils, large in her eyes too, cheeks streaked with tears and trails of eyeliner. ‘Get up,’ Erin says, playing the role of an action-movie heroine, puffing herself up with forceful authority because she has to get Amanda away from him. She wants to go over and grab her but she can’t get too close to him. ‘Come on, Amanda – now!’

  ‘OK, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I thought I was going to lose you. I never would have done any of what I’ve done, but you were leaving me.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘You were leaving me, you didn’t know it, but all the people online, hundreds of thousands of people, I was losing you to them, Bobby as well. I had to do something. I know I shouldn’t have made you scared, I never wanted you to be afraid. But I was angry, angry that the rest of the world got this fun, sunny side of you while I had to listen to you moan and moan, on and on about how terrible you felt, how you didn’t feel connected to the baby, how hard it was. I think I was jealous, I was, I was jealous to see you looking at your phone, smiling like you were in love with it while all I got was your misery.’

  ‘Can you – Just shut up. Amanda!’ Erin doesn’t want to hear this. He looks reasonable again, the shadow of mania seems to have passed, and it’s like he’s genuinely trying to reach her, to find some kind of rapprochement in this batshit-crazy situation. She doesn’t want to hear his excuses, she doesn’t want to get sucked back into his logic, his rationality. He’s an abuser, a paedophile, it’s not just in his past, those pictures were painted in the last few weeks. ‘Amanda, for fuck’s sake, come on.’ Erin roars at her but Amanda only shrugs, blinks away her tears, a sorry shake of the head.

  ‘It was like when you were acting. You were so desperate to get all these jobs that would fly you around the world away from me, that’d make you famous, loved by all these strangers. So excited about the chance of getting one and then so miserable when you didn’t. For weeks. Until all I ever got from you was misery and despair. You were never as hopeful about our future as you were for these jobs, never so devastated at the possibility of having to leave me for any length of time. I was just funding the fucking roller coaster, a port in the storm, you called me that, a port in the storm. Those first few months you were incredible, transcendent, and that was enough to tie me to you forever, but after that, all I got was your pain. I’m not proud of what I did then and I’m not proud about what I’ve done now, but I knew you’d never listen to me if I just told you that you were changing. I knew that confronting you and telling you that you were neglecting your responsibilities as a mother and a partner would drive you even further away from us. That’s why I put up the video and the photos, I wanted you to see for yourself how toxic the social media stuff is, how it was destroying the incredible woman you are. I know it might seem fucked up, Ez, but you have to see, I was so so scared of losing you. I couldn’t see there was any other way.’

  ‘You’re the troll,’ Erin says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Raf looks quizzical, eyes even wider than before, as if he’s just revealed something he shouldn’t.

  ‘I wanted you back. I love you and I missed you and I wanted you back. I still want you.’

  ‘Then’, she thinks, he said he did something ‘then’, what did he do? Erin’s mind races, she thinks back to her acting career, what did he do? She spots the pile of magazines she must have left in here from the bedroom this morning, Wonderland on the top, the interview with Rhia Trevellick. ‘You whisked me off on a holiday. You fucking – you whisked me off to a cabin in fucking Ireland. Somewhere you knew there wasn’t going to be any phone reception. You fucking knew, you knew I was going to get the part, how –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how, I did it because –’

  ‘Tell me how you knew.’

  ‘There was a voicemail.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Erin turns and leans on the table, the huge crystal sweeping the rest of Amanda’s crystal grid onto the floor. It was him! All along it was him that ruined everything for her.

  ‘You and me, Ez, we’ve never needed anyone else. I’ve always known that but I could never make you see it. I thought when we had Bobby that would prove it to you but even that didn’t work. I’m sorry for scaring you but don’t you see? We’re free of all that stuff, past the lies, we can be what we’re meant to be.’

  ‘Donny, please –’ Erin wheels up to see Amanda launching herself from the floor and throwing herself towards Raf. ‘We don’t need her, I can be your muse, I’ll be your servant, I’ll dedicate every ounce of my being –’ Then Raf turns, takes Amanda’s arms off his neck, almost picks her up by the wrists and launches her against the back wall. Without a thought Erin swings the huge crystal and hits the side of Raf’s head. It makes a dull thunking sound like a pillow hitting a wall. And moments later Raf falls in the same direction as the crystal Erin immediately dropped to her left, a
s if he were attached to it by an invisible thread.

  Erin begins to breathe out of her nose, loud, forceful breaths. What has she just done? Blood flows down the side of his face; she takes a step closer, peers at it, it doesn’t look as bad as she was expecting. She can’t have caught him as hard as it felt in her hands. She looks at Amanda, who’s nursing her shoulder, facing the wall still. Amanda turns and sees Raf on the floor. She stares at his body and begins to blink, strong, hard blinks, as if she were trying to get something out of her eye, like waking from a dream. Then she looks at Erin. The side of her mouth twitches into a half-smile. Erin stares at Raf for a moment more, eyes closed, chest rising and falling slowly. She hasn’t killed him. Of course she hasn’t killed him, she’s not strong enough to kill someone with one blow of a blunt instrument. She steps over his body and grabs Amanda, pulling her out towards the doorway.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Erin says, voice shorn of conviction. ‘We need to get you away from him now. You’re not safe. Neither of us is safe once he comes to.’

  Amanda nods but she breaks from Erin’s grasp, eyes fixed on Raf, the sinister crease of a smile setting on her face. Erin shakes her head, slams the studio door behind her and marches back towards the main house. As she gets to the open door into their main room, she turns to see Amanda trailing behind, staring at her cradled fingers. Beyond her Erin sees Raf’s legs prone through the glass. He’s going to be fine, she tells herself, hands shaking, he deserved it, it was the only way they were going to get away safely. By the time he comes round, they will both be far enough from him that he can never hurt either of them again.

  ‘Please, Amanda,’ she says to the still-dawdling woman. Amanda trots up to her like an obedient child, pupils wide as dinner plates. ‘He’ll be fine, OK? You’re safe. Do you get me? He would have killed you, you’re safe now.’ She clutches at Amanda’s wrists, trying to get through to her, trying to convince her that Erin’s not the bad person here, that the man in the studio is the monster and not her.

  Amanda smiles, a titter of a laugh, but her eyes, she looks crazed. Erin spots the kitchen knife out of its block on the sink. She’s just knocked out the person this woman thinks is her soulmate, she could do anything.

  ‘Let’s get you in the car.’

  Sitting side by side speeding down the main road that takes you away from the coast in Raf’s hatchback, Erin and Amanda haven’t said a word to each other. Erin’s driving to Heathrow, she has the card for the account Raf set up with her money in it so she’s going to buy Amanda another plane ticket, watch her go through security this time, and make sure, somehow, she’s on that plane. Then she’s going to get home to Bobby at her mum’s, call her brother to come round, just in case Raf turns up, call the police and tell them everything. Once they’ve heard he’s still wanted in Australia for what, abduction, manslaughter, murder maybe even, she feels sure they’ll make sure she’s protected. If they ask her what happened to him, how he hurt himself, she will admit she hit him, say that he was trying to strangle Amanda and it was the only way to stop him. Erin has no idea whether Amanda would back up her story but she’s hoping that away from Raf she’ll regain some semblance of rationality and see that what Erin did was to protect them both.

  She hears a snuffling sound next to her and darts a look at Amanda. She’s covering her mouth, eyes watering, attempting to smother the beginnings of laughter. She sees that Erin has clocked her and puts her other hand over her mouth, trying to hide what she’s doing like a schoolgirl. Erin turns her eyes back on the road, frightened, more frightened than she’s been all day. It seems like the taut cable keeping the ravages of Amanda’s trauma under the surface has finally snapped and now she has the aura of a rabid animal, as if she could do anything at any moment. Erin angles her elbow up slightly as a blocker, suddenly hit by the idea that she might grab the steering wheel and send them both careering over the central reservation. The noises from the passenger seat die down. Out of the corner of Erin’s eye she sees Amanda’s hands are down in her lap now, but she’s shaking her head like it’s on a spring, face stretched in a grimace.

  ‘What the fuck,’ Erin says, not to anyone, as she pulls off sharply, throwing her over towards Amanda. She drives into a lay-by on the slip road she’s come off on to. A burger van billows smoke up ahead. Erin stares at her, imploring her to tell her what the hell is going on in her head.

  ‘I’m alive,’ Amanda says, her eyes seeming to swell again and again as she stares in front of her.

  ‘Yeh,’ Erin says, ‘you got out alive, we both did.’

  ‘Atropa belladonna.’

  ‘What?’

  Amanda starts laughing again but then catches it in her hand, as if it’s naughty. ‘Of course I’m alive, I’ve built up a tolerance. I’ve been taking it all my life. I – The smoke of that van is making the most beautiful patterns.’ Amanda turns her head sharply towards Erin. ‘I gave him twice the dose, perhaps more, because I thought, he’s at least twice as big as me.’ She blinks again, that long slow blink.

  ‘What are you talking about, Amanda? Are you – Have you taken something?’ Erin remembers Raf’s eyes, she’d never seen them like it. She used to go raving and that’s what it looked like – in the moment she thought it must be the adrenaline of the situation, but Amanda’s eyes are the same fishbowls now.

  ‘Atropa belladona. Amazing for some bowel issues, asthma, and people even use it for motion sickness.’ She grabs at the armrest on the door, as if she feels like she’s on a boat in the static car. She leans over, conspiratorial, then points up ahead at the smoke. ‘And it can send you on the most wonderful trips in the right proportions.’

  ‘What did you – did you drug him?’

  ‘He always said he’d never leave me, he said we’d be together forever.’ Her mouth creases, eyes narrow, and a moan catches in her throat. It looks like she’s going to cry now. She grips the sleeve of Erin’s jacket and looks into her eyes. ‘He didn’t want me, he told me he didn’t want me. Belladona, deadly nightshade, it was the only way for us to be together, the way it was always meant to be. But I’m still alive.’ Erin turns away from Amanda and stares out the windscreen. She takes a big breath in and huffs it out. She pulls the keys out of the ignition, opens her car door and steps out, slams it behind her and then presses the button on the key fob to lock Amanda in the car. She leans her back against the door, unable to look at the woman. In the distance, she can hear the siren of a police car.

  65

  ANNAMAITRON

  789 posts 91.7k followers 7,356 following

  OK. I am going to address this because I’m getting hundreds of DMs about it, which is insane. But just once, because this isn’t the platform for it IMHO. Hence the uncharacteristically stern face in the pic – though that coral lipstick is popping the fuck out regardless.

  Anyway. My dear friend Erin Braune left Instagram some weeks ago due to online harassment. As many of you will know, as has been reported in the press and shared all over social channels, it came to light that it was her fiancé Rafael Donadoni who was responsible for this savage and cruel trolling of his own partner and, following the revelation, he committed suicide at their home. It’s since emerged that Rafael has a history of coercive, violent and controlling behaviour including that of an underage girl he abducted back in his native Australia in his early twenties where he was, before his death, still wanted by the police for both his grooming of the girl and for the attempted murder of an elderly neighbour.

  Erin has been through a trauma the likes of which very, very few of us can even begin to relate to, which is why I find myself appalled that so many people seem to want there to be more to Rafael Donadoni’s death. There are all sorts of theories being passed online and, to be honest, it’s made me evaluate whether I want to continue to involve myself in any sort of Internet discourse. I think the people peddling this trash are absolutely disgusting gossip-mongers who have no sense of empathy for someone who’s been through somethin
g horrific. Donadoni was clearly a deeply disturbed individual with no sense of compassion or concern for other people and it seems ridiculous that people are surprised that he’d choose to take his life when his appalling behaviour was revealed and the consequences of it were about to be meted out. Everything he did demonstrated a craven and egotistical streak and, although my psychology undergraduate degree doesn’t make me an expert, suicide seems to be the obvious course of action for someone whose sociopathic behaviour has been exposed.

  Coercive control is real. The patriarchy want us to think it’s some new thing but it’s ingrained in our homes and our society. Examples like this shouldn’t be picked apart to see how, in some way, the woman is to blame, they should be seen entirely as they are. A man trying to suppress the ambition, voice and power of a woman who threatens his ego. A man wanting his woman to be some Victorian mother and wife, madonna, whore and nothing else. To those who accuse Erin, to those who think her silence on the matter is some suggestion of guilt, be you whatever gender, I implore you to take a long hard look at the facts and YOURSELF and think about re-evaluating the way you look at the world and other people.

  #brauneoverbrave

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  66

  Imogen trowels a large mound of soil into a rusted frying pan and takes it over to a pile of sticks that Caz and Erin have assembled to be their stand-in fire at the far end of the garden of Erin’s rented house. It’s only three bedrooms but its owner is an amazing interior designer Erin knew from her Instagram days who’s now moved to Porto, so it looks incredible. She and Bobby have been living here the past four months, since she moved back to the sea from being with her mum. As she looks at Caz helping Bobby make a mud-castle with a bright pink plastic bucket, she realises she’s one of the big reasons why she came back. Caz, the sea and the fact that in and around Croydon there seemed to be about four times the amount of people who used to follow her and knew, thanks to the fact that the tabloids ran wild with the story, everything that happened six months ago.