The Family Friend C. MacDonald (reading comprehension books .txt) 📖

rebuild positively. BUT I want you all to know, and I know you know, that if I post something in my stories where I’m posing with A-list or more likely Z-list celebs, or if me and @annamaitron are singing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at midnight, that nights like tonight are the outliers and that 99% of my time is spent dealing with this boy and his poo face, and his sick face, and his angry face and, so far, zero smiles. Unlol. Bonjours to you all. Will post some shiz in my stories.

#everydayi’mshovelling #lookintomyeyes

#nappynappyjoyjoy

#iloveyoufearne

#sorryinadvancefearne #supermumsofinstagram

#moonlightingmumma

@varyafinn whoop, whoop, poop.

@motherlovininstitute can’t wait to have you. We are PSYCHED. FYI @fearnecotton is bringing extra security

@gossamer we’ll be there! #1stnightoffin6months

@julesspurn women have been bringing up kids for thousands of years without going to talks about it. What a load of shit.

@aleister have a nice night away

17

Erin can’t get reception on her phone in the chemist so she bats the rubbery phone case on the handle of the buggy. Their part of town is dominated by seafront flats with elderly inhabitants who treat the little pharmacy like a social club. Erin’s record waiting time to get the medicine for Bobby’s reflux is forty-five minutes. At least there’s usually a large supply of purse-lipped old dears to swoon at Bobby and today’s no exception. A lady in her eighties, in great shape and wearing a very elegant plum coat that Erin would consider wearing, leans over the sunshade making goo-goo noises at him. She makes a comment about how sweet his little serious face is. Erin tries to catch the harassed-looking chemist’s assistant she gave her prescription to ten minutes ago but the girl’s working hard to avoid making eye contact with any of the people piled around her desk. Erin’s train up to London is in an hour and she needs to get home, drop Bobby off with Amanda, get showered and changed, put some make-up on and then get to the station.

She spots two women in the queue for the post-office desk at the back of the chemist’s looking at her. They’re both in their late thirties, one wears a green beret and thick-rimmed glasses and both have chunky knitted scarfs on, typical BRAUNEoverBRAINS followers. One of them steals another glance and turns back again, pretending she wasn’t looking. Erin enjoys these moments of recognition. It’s thrilling that people are excited to see her, that she’s a talking point, a story for those who follow her to tell their friends. More often than not they might approach her for a chat or vice versa. But Erin won’t talk to them today. Now they just remind her that she’s being watched, that there’s someone who probably lives nearby that wants people to know that she’s not a fun, sunny mum who dresses her super-cute, olive-skinned baby in out-there outfits. Someone who wants people to know that a lot of the time Erin feels so out of her depth, so out of control, she thinks that her super-cute, olive-skinned baby should probably be taken away from her.

‘Hiya.’ Erin looks round to see Lorna Morgan wearing a coat that resembles loft insulation, stood in front of a double buggy blocking the aisle behind her. Erin looks over at her twins. Sleeping serenely as always. Erin sometimes wonders whether that’s the reason she’s taken a dislike to Lorna, her boys seem so easy in comparison to Bobby, but no, Erin doesn’t like Lorna because she’s not very easy to like. ‘Was your little boy alright the other day?’

‘What?’

‘The other morning when he was very upset. We passed you both on the prom or have you forgotten seeing me?’ Her voice comes right out of her nostrils, but she’s right, Erin hadn’t remembered that, a few minutes before she went up onto the grass, a few minutes before she was filmed shaking her son’s buggy, Lorna Morgan had been there with her horde of pink children.

‘I did. Yeh. Thanks.’ Erin peers to the back of the dispensary willing someone to arrive with Bobby’s drugs. As they stand there side by side, silence breeding between them, Erin thinks about whether it could have been Lorna that filmed her. She had the kids with her and was walking in the opposite direction. But she could have circled round and been standing across the road from the grass as it’s on the route back towards her house. But could she do something like that? Lorna was one of the first people she met when they first moved down here. Erin was five months pregnant and they organised a coffee and a walk on the beach. Lorna is Kent born and bred and talks as if she’s always trying to beat some personal best for words per minute. There was always a gossipy element to the stories she told Erin, an icicle core of mean-spiritedness. Everyone she mentioned, those Erin vaguely knew, those she didn’t, were, in some way or other, conducting themselves incorrectly, in her plentiful opinion. So when Lorna suggested another mum-date, Erin prevaricated. Which, when they saw each other with their new babies at baby-groups, Lorna seemed to have taken to heart as a snub. Then, two months ago, Erin soured things further by intervening in a conversation Lorna was having with a criminally underslept-looking mum called Jules. Erin very calmly suggested that Lorna ease off on doling out her ‘infinite wisdom’ to Jules that morning. The word was that Lorna had taken that very personally indeed.

‘Saw you got an agent.’ Her inflection soars but it’s not a question.

‘That’s right, yeh.’ Erin nods and smiles to Bobby’s elderly entertainer as she heads past them towards the door.

‘Bet they’re sending you loads of free stuff now.’

‘No more than before really.’

‘Look at this.’ Her shellac scratches at a patch of dirt on the hood of her huge buggy. ‘Got it on Buy, Sell, Swap. Mould. Actual mould. Twenty