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

with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom.’

Sonnet 116. Erin hadn’t remembered which sonnet it was when she saw it written on the Post-it on the inside of the studio kitchen cupboard, she’d meant to google it to check, but now she doesn’t need to and the realisation hurts like a sharp kick to the gut. Amanda’s in love with Raf. She’s been in love with him for twenty years. Maybe her stepdad being released was the catalyst for coming but she’s not here for his protection. Her crystals are there to bewitch him, to heal their broken relationship. Erin can’t believe she didn’t see it when Raf told her the story of his and Amanda’s unconventional friendship. Of course she was in love with him. He was older, he saved her. She can’t imagine holding a love like that for twenty years but she also can’t imagine pinning a sonnet up like a motivational poster. Maybe the boyfriend she’s talked about who’s come back into her life, perhaps that’s not Craig, perhaps it’s her fiancé.

The ice wind picks sand up from the beach and she has to clench her eyes to protect them. She feels numb. Six words repeat in her head again and again. ‘Even to the edge of doom.’

50

FROM: grace.fentiman@rfgtalent.com

TO: erinbraune@outlook.co.uk

RE: Post updates

Hi Erin,

Hope you’re having a fab week. I just wanted to drop you a quick line because I was talking with my assistants about your content and we were thinking perhaps it might be helpful to pass things by us for a little copy edit before uploading. We do it for most of our clients, but because your posts are always so funny we’ve never thought it necessary until now. We wanted to help you get back in touch with what people responded to in the early days, your breezy tone that has just the lightest touch of the sardonic. It’s totally understandable with what’s been going on, but some of your stories have come across a little over-serious?

I can’t imagine how personal the trolling must feel, but, thanks to your incredible work and an increased social media marketing spend our end, it fortunately hasn’t affected the growth of your followership and 100k is in touching distance. I can’t stress again how much of a game-changer it would be to get into the macro-influencer sphere.

I’m chasing payments for you from Phibe and others. It’s coming up to the end of financial year so brands often delay things around this time. But I’m on it.

Let me know what you think. So excited to break into the big time with you.

Best,

Grace

X

51

‘Poetry instantly turns me off, but some people like it. Maybe it’s just that.’

‘Caz –’

‘And even I’ve heard of the “marriage of two minds” one.’

‘Putting up a Post-it, that’s a positive-mind therapy thing. My friend Pete had them all around his flat when we were at drama school. They’re like mantras. And hers is “Love is an ever-fixed mark”. That’s what she’s telling herself every time she looks at the inside of that cupboard.’

‘Right,’ Caz says, plinking a teaspoon around her mug of tea. Erin was waiting outside Caz’s three-bed Victorian on a grotty road by the station when she got back from work. She needed to tell someone what she’d discovered and it couldn’t be Raf. The way he was last night when he saw how distraught she was, it’s been the first time in a week or so that he hasn’t treated her like she’s rabid. ‘I think it’s weird,’ Caz says, matter-of-factly, ‘for sure, everything you’re saying is weird. Crystals, jars with old dollies in, weird. But that doesn’t make her dangerous.’

‘She’s been lying to us from the off. She didn’t see the picture and fly over here. She planned to come. She’s probably been planning to come and claim him for years.’

‘People who’ve suffered childhood trauma, they don’t always act in a way that people might see as rational.’

‘She didn’t have to lie to us.’

‘She’s ashamed. I had a feeling something like that had happened to her. When I asked her why she decided to leave Oz in their summer to come to this windswept hellhole, she said she’d needed to make a change, she needed a chance to reset. And my fucking sonar went off. I thought it might have been a messy divorce, some prick of a husband that she didn’t want to talk about, but this makes so much more sense. Being vague about everything, deflecting, being super nice to everyone, desperate for people’s love, it’s overcompensating. I’ve worked with kids that’ve suffered like her and they all need something to cling on to, so for her it’s crystals and herbs, and maybe you’re right, maybe it is your Raf, someone who was kind to her at that time. But that doesn’t make her a threat to you. She loves you, the way she talks about you.’

‘Really?’

‘She thinks you’re hilarious, always saying it, not sure what she’s talking about myself,’ Caz says with a wry smile. Erin shakes her head, brow creased. She’s told Caz everything Raf told her about Amanda’s past, everything Amanda has done, the cuddling, the honey, the crystal grid designed to bewitch, to repair fractured relationships, the sonnet, and Caz thinks it’s normal, normal behaviour for someone who’s endured a childhood abuser. Erin doesn’t know anything about how something like that would affect a person in their childhood whereas Caz has spent her entire career working with those sorts of cases. Her friend gets up and walks to the wooden worktop, still covered in the plastic bearing the name of the DIY shop her husband bought it from.

‘Have you heard of Aleister Crowley?’ Erin asks.

‘No,’ Caz says, sounding tired, bored even.

‘He was a famous occultist, like the most famous one.’

‘Let me guess,