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

of laughter. She sees that Erin has clocked her and puts her other hand over her mouth, trying to hide what she’s doing like a schoolgirl. Erin turns her eyes back on the road, frightened, more frightened than she’s been all day. It seems like the taut cable keeping the ravages of Amanda’s trauma under the surface has finally snapped and now she has the aura of a rabid animal, as if she could do anything at any moment. Erin angles her elbow up slightly as a blocker, suddenly hit by the idea that she might grab the steering wheel and send them both careering over the central reservation. The noises from the passenger seat die down. Out of the corner of Erin’s eye she sees Amanda’s hands are down in her lap now, but she’s shaking her head like it’s on a spring, face stretched in a grimace.

‘What the fuck,’ Erin says, not to anyone, as she pulls off sharply, throwing her over towards Amanda. She drives into a lay-by on the slip road she’s come off on to. A burger van billows smoke up ahead. Erin stares at her, imploring her to tell her what the hell is going on in her head.

‘I’m alive,’ Amanda says, her eyes seeming to swell again and again as she stares in front of her.

‘Yeh,’ Erin says, ‘you got out alive, we both did.’

‘Atropa belladonna.’

‘What?’

Amanda starts laughing again but then catches it in her hand, as if it’s naughty. ‘Of course I’m alive, I’ve built up a tolerance. I’ve been taking it all my life. I – The smoke of that van is making the most beautiful patterns.’ Amanda turns her head sharply towards Erin. ‘I gave him twice the dose, perhaps more, because I thought, he’s at least twice as big as me.’ She blinks again, that long slow blink.

‘What are you talking about, Amanda? Are you – Have you taken something?’ Erin remembers Raf’s eyes, she’d never seen them like it. She used to go raving and that’s what it looked like – in the moment she thought it must be the adrenaline of the situation, but Amanda’s eyes are the same fishbowls now.

‘Atropa belladona. Amazing for some bowel issues, asthma, and people even use it for motion sickness.’ She grabs at the armrest on the door, as if she feels like she’s on a boat in the static car. She leans over, conspiratorial, then points up ahead at the smoke. ‘And it can send you on the most wonderful trips in the right proportions.’

‘What did you – did you drug him?’

‘He always said he’d never leave me, he said we’d be together forever.’ Her mouth creases, eyes narrow, and a moan catches in her throat. It looks like she’s going to cry now. She grips the sleeve of Erin’s jacket and looks into her eyes. ‘He didn’t want me, he told me he didn’t want me. Belladona, deadly nightshade, it was the only way for us to be together, the way it was always meant to be. But I’m still alive.’ Erin turns away from Amanda and stares out the windscreen. She takes a big breath in and huffs it out. She pulls the keys out of the ignition, opens her car door and steps out, slams it behind her and then presses the button on the key fob to lock Amanda in the car. She leans her back against the door, unable to look at the woman. In the distance, she can hear the siren of a police car.

65

ANNAMAITRON

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OK. I am going to address this because I’m getting hundreds of DMs about it, which is insane. But just once, because this isn’t the platform for it IMHO. Hence the uncharacteristically stern face in the pic – though that coral lipstick is popping the fuck out regardless.

Anyway. My dear friend Erin Braune left Instagram some weeks ago due to online harassment. As many of you will know, as has been reported in the press and shared all over social channels, it came to light that it was her fiancé Rafael Donadoni who was responsible for this savage and cruel trolling of his own partner and, following the revelation, he committed suicide at their home. It’s since emerged that Rafael has a history of coercive, violent and controlling behaviour including that of an underage girl he abducted back in his native Australia in his early twenties where he was, before his death, still wanted by the police for both his grooming of the girl and for the attempted murder of an elderly neighbour.

Erin has been through a trauma the likes of which very, very few of us can even begin to relate to, which is why I find myself appalled that so many people seem to want there to be more to Rafael Donadoni’s death. There are all sorts of theories being passed online and, to be honest, it’s made me evaluate whether I want to continue to involve myself in any sort of Internet discourse. I think the people peddling this trash are absolutely disgusting gossip-mongers who have no sense of empathy for someone who’s been through something horrific. Donadoni was clearly a deeply disturbed individual with no sense of compassion or concern for other people and it seems ridiculous that people are surprised that he’d choose to take his life when his appalling behaviour was revealed and the consequences of it were about to be meted out. Everything he did demonstrated a craven and egotistical streak and, although my psychology undergraduate degree doesn’t make me an expert, suicide seems to be the obvious course of action for someone whose sociopathic behaviour has been exposed.

Coercive control is real. The patriarchy want us to think it’s some new thing but it’s ingrained in our homes and our society. Examples like this shouldn’t be picked apart to see how, in some way, the woman is to