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

to write to me. Perhaps she did initially. But then she saw Craig in a bar in Alice Springs, he was all full of how he still loved her, I mean, what a mindfuck all those years later, and, ah, I think she, I don’t know how she felt, scared maybe, but here she is. She didn’t want you to know. She’s not told me much, no details.’

‘She mentioned an on–off boyfriend who’d come back into her life,’ Erin says, voice distant. Raf narrows his eyes.

‘I think she thought she’d rebuilt her life, but then seeing him must have thrown it all on its head. Look, I don’t know why she came here. Maybe she needed to be somewhere she could feel safe for a bit.’

‘With you.’ He throws his hands up, I guess so, before scratching his head through his beanie. She knows it makes her a bad person, she knows she should feel some sympathy for Amanda and her harrowing childhood, but her first thought, the thought that’s now raging in her head, is about Bobby. Is he safe with her? Are they safe with her? Erin knows that she invited Amanda into the bosom of their home but what Raf’s just told her has done nothing to assuage her fears about her. She hasn’t got a family, her concept of family has been warped by her stepdad, she’s broken, she has deep childhood scars that sound like they’ve been recently reopened. The crystals are one thing but Amanda’s been trying to turn her baby against her, trying to make him love her more. A woman whose childhood was taken away, who’s sought refuge with the family of an older boy who looked after her for a year or more, is trying to turn her baby against her and, the thought hadn’t landed before, perhaps her fiancé too.

‘Do you not think …’

‘What?’

‘Should we not ask her to leave?’ she asks, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

Raf looks up from the litter-strewn ground at her, brows wrinkled in confusion. ‘That’s what you take from this?’

‘Everything’s been so messed up since she arrived.’

‘How do you know? You’ve barely been here.’

‘I think there’s something wrong with her and –’

‘No,’ he says, standing up, and the shelter suddenly feels much smaller. ‘I’m not doing this.’ He walks out into the open before turning back to her. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you. I tell you about a woman who’s done everything for you, who’s picked up the slack at home because you’d rather swan about with your mad new mates, and when you find out she’s had an unbelievably tough time as a kid your reaction is to throw her out?’ Erin reaches out a hand instinctively, he’s twisting her words, that’s not what she meant. ‘You going to hit me now?’

‘No.’

‘I googled it. Every single website says that if your partner throws something at you, assaults you in any way, you should walk out. They said that it crosses a line that it’s virtually impossible to come back from.’

‘I lost it, in the moment, I lost control and I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Sorry doesn’t undo it though. Doesn’t suddenly make me forget that you burned me.’ He holds his hand up, a bandage wrapped around the palm where he batted the pasta dish to the floor. ‘I’m too weak. That’s my problem, I’m too bloody weak.’ He grits his teeth, moves closer to tower over her. She doesn’t know what to say, she should have known that he’d react to her saying she wanted Amanda to go like this. But she’s his fiancée, he should be on her side. He shakes his head. ‘I can’t even believe it, can’t believe it,’ he says, before pulling the orange hood over his head and storming out into the weather.

46

Erin downs a shot of Jägermeister and as Anna Mai claps her on the back in sorority, the aftertaste makes her think of Manuka honey. Amanda in her house, having put Bobby to sleep, having dinner with her fiancé, talking about her.

Anna Mai’s drunk. She was steaming into the warm wine at the Phibe pre-launch ‘hype’ event that was held, somewhat inappropriately, in the crypt of a central London church. It was the first time Erin had met the whole team at Phibe, not all women despite what she’d been told to post when she first signed up, and she’d found their excitement at her being there awkward. People all around the room were still stealing glances at her, but it felt less in admiration and more a sordid curiosity, as if she were a weeping stranger whose sad story they’re desperate to know. Every time someone told her how thrilled they were to meet her, how much they loved her feed, how inspirational they thought she was, it seemed hollow to Erin now. There’s a line from The Seagull, the Chekhov she did at university. A famous writer is given a compliment and he responds that he finds people’s admiration of his life sickly, ‘like sticky sweets a child gobbles up, to an adult’s palate, in some way nauseating’. All of her followers’ love, all their adulation, she thinks, what does any of it actually mean?

On the train up it had hit her, what Raf had said. He could leave her. The man she’s decided to make a life with, away from her brother and mum, alienating herself from them in the process, the man she’s had a child with, the man she’s entirely dependent on for money, for support, for a roof over her head, would be entirely within his rights to leave her because she lost control. She lost control because some anonymous arsehole is making her look bad on Instagram, a social media platform, something that she knew nothing about until fairly recently, something that didn’t even exist ten years ago. So tonight’s had none