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

Up ahead of her, Sophie Delauney emerges from Phoenix Wines with Mercedes, both without children. They’re in big padded coats, Sophie’s electric blue, Mercedes’ white, over gym leggings. Erin tries to up her pace to catch up with them. Mercedes spots her and says something to Sophie who turns to look. Her permanent expression, somewhere between a grin and a pout, drops when she sees Erin. She looks incredible, Erin thinks, her face has filled out a bit with the due date approaching which suits her and the new orange tint to her pixie cut seems to emphasise her pregnancy glow. She puts out a flat hand to Erin, somewhere between a greeting and the gesture for stop, before giving an empty smile as she turns back the way she was going. Mercedes creases her brow in some kind of apology at their not stopping then follows her friend up the hill away from town.

Erin swallows and turns down a side street, feeling like the whole county has just witnessed the snub. She’s just been on the receiving end of the sort of fickle shallowness that’s driven Lorna away from her own toddler group and she starts to feel sorry for the woman. She’s replayed the conversation they had over her front garden wall many times since and it just didn’t seem like she was lying. She could have done it, of course she could. She doesn’t like Erin, she doesn’t like anything she stands for, but she seemed so upset to be accused, there was no furtiveness, no defensiveness. On the other hand, she is a gossip, she has got a reputation as someone with a streak of cruelty to her, so perhaps that was all for show. Perhaps she’s at some other baby group she’s started, talking to her old mates about how she’s sticking it to the middle-class dickheads who’re trying to take over their town.

She flicks onto Sophie’s Instagram, hit by the thought that they might be off to meet Amanda. There’s a new post, a picture of a flat-white, oat milk probably, with the caption ‘Caffeine kick before HotPod launch’. Erin didn’t know there was a new HotPod yoga class starting. Clearly no one’s felt she should be invited.

She’s had so much support online, hundreds of people sharing their stories of how they’ve shouted at their kids, how bored they’ve found themselves – many have posted selfies of them looking numb as their baby cries or feeds or plays. There was a hashtag that went around for half a day or so after she made her apology, #boredlikeBraune. The responses haven’t all been positive, some of her followers feel as if they’ve been lied to, but Erin’s been relieved that so few people have voiced their disapproval. But the real people, the mums and dads she half knows who she sees every day at the various groups or playgrounds, can’t seem to get over the revelation that someone they looked up to as an aspiration of easy-breezy parenting is actually a fraud. Perhaps they’re embarrassed, having bragged to their friends about being on first-name terms with someone who’s been revealed to be a liar, or possibly it’s more personal to them because they feel some collective ownership over her online celebrity and so its tarnishing feels like a deeper betrayal. Whatever the reason, their smiles are strained now; she spots clusters of whispering faces in her periphery and it stings like seawater in a graze.

She walks into the shade of a narrow street, wanting to get away from the busyness of the old town. As she gets down towards the seafront she hears steps behind her and turns, certain someone’s following her, but no one is there. She looks in the reflections of destitute shopfronts, hoping to spot a glint of humanity, but the street’s deserted. The chill from the sea seems to flood in through the collar of her coat so she heads towards the warmth of the nearby supermarket, trying to stop herself from turning round every few steps to see if whoever it is she senses is really there.

She’s tried to apply logic to work out who it is that’s doing this to her but perhaps that’s where she’s been going wrong. There’s nothing logical about the sort of people who choose to plague other people online. And Raf’s right, there’s no doubt that the troll’s activity has become more brutal since her crusading speech at Claridge’s, so that does point to it being some resentful misogynist, but to what end? Whether it’s Lorna, some other jealous local mum or any faceless incel malignity, what would any of them actually gain from doing what they’re doing?

Just as she pushes Bobby through the automatic doors into the heat and fabricated bread smell inside the supermarket, she sees something out of the corner of her eye in the car park to her right. A floating flash of aquamarine in the blanket of concrete grey. She reverses back out of the shop and begins to follow the black parka and grey woolly hat as it disappears down the ramp towards the lower level. Erin gets to the top where a silver car has to slow abruptly on seeing her as it turns the spiral of the ramp, the driver giving her a look that asks what the hell she’s doing pushing a sleeping baby down a ramp made for cars as it ambles past. She sees the black coat moving through a gap in the concrete pillars and rushes down the ramp to follow it. When she gets to the underground level she sees the figure up ahead, step quickening as they jink between cars. She wants to shout after whoever it is but it’d wake Bobby. The person makes for the exit towards town. Maybe she’s imagining it, Erin thinks, maybe this person isn’t following her, perhaps it’s one of the many slightly dodgy folk who hang around this car park.

A white