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

the breastfeeding. ‘But I’ve had a few clients who’ve had some pretty horrible stuff. Death threats, threatened sexual assault, torture. I suppose the most similar is a presenter I had whose address kept getting posted up online. She got sent some odd things, but nothing happened really.’

Erin’s about to ask what ‘nothing happened really’ means but Bobby screeching cuts her off. He arches his back away from her chest. He doesn’t want her milk. He hasn’t wanted her milk for a week or so now. Not from her breast. Not from her when she pumps it and tries to give it to him in a bottle. He doesn’t want anything from her. She feels so hot she wants to put Bobby down on his mat and walk out into the rain. Grace gives her what must be her sympathetic face, but it’s not hard to tell that she’s not much of a baby person.

‘Can you –’ Erin stands and expects Raf to stand with her and take Bobby, but he remains seated, picks up his phone and calls someone.

‘Could you just come and give Bob a bottle for a minute?’ he says. ‘Yeh, that’s right, yeh.’ He puts his phone back on the table. Erin looks through the thick lines of rain that hammer onto the mud-green lawn to see Amanda duck out of the studio and skip towards the house and she’s surprised to feel grateful. Even though she’s loath to let Grace see Amanda charm Bobby into silence she could really do without him scratching and screaming at her while she has to endure this conversation.

Amanda breezes through the door, wet hair twisted into a lock and swept over her shoulder, an embroidered bag hanging from one arm.

‘Come here, babba,’ she says, taking the screaming Bobby from Erin. ‘Hello,’ she says to Grace in the polite way a cleaner would acknowledge their employer’s guest as she moves past the table towards the kitchen and flicks the kettle on.

‘This is Amanda.’ Erin realises she doesn’t know how to refer to her. ‘Our friend.’

‘Erin tells me you’ve been a godsend?’ Grace says, cocking her head.

‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways,’ Amanda says without turning round. Grace takes her time examining Amanda’s lacy purple dress with its billowing sleeves as she warms Bobby’s bottle in a bowl of hot water.

‘What’s the plan of action with threats like this? With your presenter client, what did you actually do?’

Grace swings back round to face Raf. She nods, grimaces into a smile.

‘There’s no set protocol. With the presenter we reported it all but ultimately just had to let it blow over. It’s a horrible part of having any sort of public recognition. Are you feeling frightened at all, Erin?’ Grace asks.

‘No, not frightened, no. They’re only taking photos.’

‘So far.’ Raf’s smartly clipped nails scratch at an old scar on the surface of the table. Grace side-eyes him before returning her laser focus to Erin. She can see how Grace’s got to where she is. Her eyes are swimming-pool blue and when she looks at Erin it makes her feel like a significant person, someone who should be listened to, yet conversely, she has such effortless authority, Erin always finds herself deferring to her entirely.

‘The reason I ask is, the Phibe thing is a pretty major contract that I’m still trying to hash out, but it does require you to commit to them, set number of posts per week, days in the office, all that stuff, over a nine-month period, as discussed.’ Erin spots Raf’s hands ball up on the table. He knows about the job with Phibe, knows about the time commitment. He’d been happy for her, but, as always, she could tell he was thinking about how it would impact them as a family. ‘I’d hate to get it all over the finish line,’ Grace continues, ‘and then for you to decide, totally legitimately, that you’re going to have to duck out of Instagram for a bit and for us to have to pay back all that money.’

‘I’m not going to leave Instagram,’ Erin says, with a vehemence that causes her to check herself. Raf pushes his top lip out with his tongue. ‘I just hate the idea of letting whoever it is win.’ Raf takes her fingers in both his hands.

‘I agree,’ he says. ‘You can’t run away.’ Erin squeezes his thumb.

‘Good,’ Grace says, ‘I think that’s the right play as well. We’re on the crest of getting somewhere really exciting. So in terms of next steps…’ Over Grace’s shoulder Erin notices Amanda putting something from the counter into her bag. She scans the surface, a Pyrex bowl of lightly steaming water, a dishcloth, a spoon. Erin looks up and sees Bobby, limpet-like on Amanda’s hip, slurping on his bottle. How does she get him to do that? she thinks. How does she get him to sleep so easily? Erin’s tried the topless cuddling technique but it didn’t work as she’d hoped. Perhaps it’s stress, the stress that radiates from her body. Since he’s been born, with every scream, every scratch, every noise he’s made, every panicked thought he’s demanded from her, her head’s felt like a microscope slide invaded by a rapidly multiplying cell, always on the verge of cracking down the middle.

‘Is it possible to download images from Instagram, Ez?’ Raf’s voice cuts into Grace’s strategy that Erin was only half listening to.

‘Um–’

‘Not easily,’ Grace says, ‘not from someone else’s account. Why?’

‘If your guy, Xavi, can get me them as JPEGs, I could probably find out what sort of camera they were taken on.’

‘Raf’s a graphic designer.’

‘I’ve got software that can go pretty hardcore on an image and there’s a lot of photographers work at my office. I mean, we’re assuming it’s done on a smartphone but, to take images, that many images, without you noticing, Ez, it’s possible whoever it was was using a proper DSLR camera. Just a thought.’

‘Good idea,’ Grace says. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Erin’s