The Family Friend, C. MacDonald [ereader for android TXT] 📗

short films, fringe theatre, viral marketing campaigns all in the hope that one day she might be treated like someone that deserves a free drink with all the trimmings. It was exhilarating. As a small lump of the wall comes away and drops onto the floor, dust around it powdering the carpet, she wants to be back there. The space, the quiet, the focused energy of a workplace.

The truth is she’s scared. Not just of Bobby screaming when he’s handed back to her. She’s scared of how Raf will be. Ever since the post-interview elation melted into the synthetic train seating, she’s felt the fluttering wings of worry about what he’s going to say about her leaving their baby with Amanda for the day. Before Bobby was born, Raf talked about how he didn’t want his children raised by nannies and boarding-house matrons like he was, and she knows this is different, Amanda is his friend, but concern for how he’ll react steams inside her nonetheless.

But when she rounds the corner and stands in the door of the bathroom, bubbles and water sloshing on the lino, her fiancé turns to her with a huge smile.

‘Hello, Mum-mum,’ he says, lifting Bobby into a towel and onto his chest. He comes over and wraps his arms around her, Bobby’s wet hair leaving a dark mark on her jacket. He hands the baby into her like they were playing rugby, a wedge of bubbles still stuck in the thick rolls off his neck. She wipes them away with a corner of his towel and pulls his bunny-eared hood over his head. He looks well rested, jolly, the sort of baby you’d see on a poster. The clenched feeling in her chest whenever she’s holding him seems to slacken a little. He’s not smiling, of course, but he almost looks pleased to see her.

‘How did it go?’ Raf asks, moving past her to make space in their cramped bathroom. She comes through and places Bobby down on their bed where Raf’s laid out a nappy, the pack of wipes and his sleepsuit like they were surgical implements.

‘Really well, I think. She was nice. Lovely, in fact.’

‘I’ll do him.’ Raf brings a tube of organic moisturiser from one of the #gifted boxes and squirts it onto Bobby’s naked belly, making him squirm. ‘Have you seen the house?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can’t believe Amanda had time to do a whole spruce-up while looking after the Bobmeister.’

‘He had a really long nap, she said.’ Erin thought she’d made a simple statement but her tone must have been tinged with protestation because Raf turns to her, a little shocked.

‘I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t take it personally, babe, she’s got nothing else to think about.’ Erin smiles, comes over to her unusually content baby and helps Raf keep him still by dangling her necklace over his face. Raf seems different, more energetic. When they first met, four years ago or so, she was entranced by his self-assured poise. His charisma, the enigma of him. This tall man, with his own sense of style, kaftans and loose-fitting linen trousers like a character in a Bond film. His voice was insouciant, he had a smile that played behind his lips but rarely came out, always calm, self-possessed. But when you got past his veneer of cool, which in itself felt like you’d been let into a secret club, he’d reveal this megawatt sparkle in his eyes when you got him onto something he was into, revealing that there was a passion, a fire inside the stillness. But in the last eighteen months, so much of that has gone. He’d never complain about his life, often the opposite, telling her how perfect things are now, but there’s a heaviness about him that was never there before. Erin knows it’s stress, the pressure of having to provide for them, to make a life for them, and, although he would never want her to, she feels responsible for the dulling of her boyfriend. But tonight he seems to have some of his former zip back.

Erin doesn’t want to puncture it, but she decides to rip off the plaster.

‘I signed with the agent, Grace, the one that’d been emailing me.’

Raf picks Bobby up and stares at her.

‘Oh, right.’ He nods, keeps nodding, not aware he’s doing it. He wriggles Bobby into his sleepsuit and takes his wet towel over to the radiator by the window. He holds Bobby up, showing him the view, although there’s no moon, nor stars visible to light the sliver of sea they can normally see through the gap between the flats opposite.

‘I know we should have talked it through,’ she says, leaning against the frame of their bathroom, ‘but she’s really good, like really impressive, and she doesn’t represent many people. So I didn’t think I could say no, and at the end of the day if I don’t get any money, then she doesn’t get any money.’ She comes over to him at the window, thinks about threading her arm through his but decides against it. ‘And, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but this could be – people earn a lot of money doing this stuff. Like, a lot. Wouldn’t it be so great, you know, take some of that pressure away? Bobby and money stuff, sometimes feels like all we talk about. I know how hard it is, how hard you’re working, providing for us all. I want to be the one who brings home the bacon for once, it can’t be all on you forever, it’s not right. And at some point, maybe you could ease off a bit, spend more time with the little guy.’ He huffs a laugh out to himself. She catches muscles moving in his face, inscrutable. Is he angry? She’s overstepped the mark. After all he’s doing, all he’s done for her, is it ridiculous to expect him to look after Bobby while she goes off to work?