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

pissed off in them, maybe it’s because I am bored. Maybe it’s because I am pissed off. Yeh, I’m giving him a bottle sometimes. How else do you think I can go to events on weekday nights? Should I have declared it to the world? If people don’t like it they can unfollow me. I don’t give a shit.’ But then the words catch at the back of her throat like leaves in a drain. She stops the recording and puts the phone back in her coat pocket. Bobby shrieks with joy up ahead. Erin puts her head between her knees.

31

‘So, I’m feeling very sad and very, as you can see from the panda-eye mascara debacle going on here, very upset about what’s happened today. Someone intruding on me and my family in this way feels very personal and I’m feeling attacked. It does feel like an attack. I know that lots of people with far fewer followers than me have to deal with some of the most despicable abuse online, death threats, rape threats, etc. And I’ve had a few of those and they’re awful when you get them and are one hundred per cent not OK at all, but we’re taught to dismiss them as trolls and ignore them. And the fact that society has just said that that’s sort of fine is a pretty horrendous thing, but I’m not here to talk about that today. But yeh, the fact that the pictures are of me and Bobby and one of our friends is, it’s very personal and worrying. Whoever it is has been near enough to take a photo. And that is not on, at all. So please stop. Stop taking these photos. However, um, this is really hard to say right now but, these photos have actually been a wake-up call to me about what I choose to post and a reminder that I have a responsibility to be as open and transparent as I can possibly be. I should have made it much more explicit that I’m no longer exclusively breastfeeding. For the last three or four weeks, I’ve been pumping breast milk and Bobby’s been having it in a bottle. There it is. And, to be honest, he’s not been great on the boob recently so we might have to think about him starting on formula and that is totally cool, and if it ever seemed like I made a big deal of him being exclusively breastfed, then it was never my intention to shame those that chose not to. Most of the reaction has been about the bottle, but people also want to know who the lady with Bobby is. She’s called Amanda. She’s an old friend of Raf’s and she’s been amazing helping me out with Bobby when I’ve had to be in London for work. She’s not a nanny that we’re paying, she’s not a #gifted childminder from an agency, she’s just doing us a good old-fashioned solid. I didn’t want to feature her because she’s not on social media and doesn’t want to be. But again, mea culpa, if I ever gave the impression that I was doing everything I was doing while always looking after Bobby, then that was a false impression and I apologise for it. What these photos have taught me is that I am not perfect, my life is not perfect, and I don’t always love all aspects of being a mum. I never thought that my feed was saying that I did, but some of your responses to the photos have made me reconsider my own output. I want us all to be the best caregivers, the most loving parents, the most satisfied and fulfilled people that we can. If my Instagram feed EVER made anyone feel inadequate or in some way, not ‘enough’, then I’m filled with remorse and if there are those that now feel I’m some sort of fraud, I want you to know that I’m not. But if you choose to unfollow me, there are some wonderful women out there who I’d love you to fill the void with who I’ll link to in the next few frames of my stories.

‘I love you all and hope that you’ll be patient with me as I take a day or two to get over the intrusion into my family’s life. It’s been a very difficult day. I am going to drink gin. Because that is how middle-class women have been brought up to cope with all varieties of distress.’

32

‘I thought the album you posted last night was inspired. Tonally, a perfect reaction.’ Grace Fentiman jingles a teaspoon around her mug, fishes out a green tea bag and puts it on the edge of the untouched plate of ginger nuts that rests on Erin’s dining-room table. At ten o’clock last night, Grace had helped Erin craft a video response to the pictures for her ‘stories’ and Erin had the idea of posting a selection of blooper photos that she’d taken while trying to make content for her Instagram feed. Bobby writhing around while she tries to take a selfie of them, her with sick all over her top, Bobby incandescent, head thrown back, screaming at her. The sort of photos that seem like a mission statement of authenticity moving forward but nowhere near as questionable as the ones posted by her unwanted paparazzo.

It’s late afternoon, the day after. Grace’s come down on the train. She wears a Barbour padded gilet over a crisp white shirt with dark fitted jeans, all pristine. It looks like she might have ordered the whole ensemble from Net-a-Porter last night in preparation for a rare trip to the provinces. She’s so well put-together she makes everything in Erin’s house seem shabby in comparison. Raf plonks a brown teapot with a chipped spout in