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

Erin goes out into the garden. She has trolls spitting bile at her feed every day but she’s always been able to write them off as lonely old arseholes fighting their own private war against the world by meting out insults to strangers. But this is something entirely different. Someone has posted a video of her, minutes from where she lives. A video they know will damage her. Erin begins scratching the inside of her wrist, trying to blink away the shock of it.

‘That being said –’ Grace’s tone shifts – ‘as we grow your followership, more people will be watching and – I’ve had it with a lot of my clients – some people can be quite vindictive with influencers, more so perhaps than with others in the public eye. So it’s just important to be aware. When you’re out and about. Assume everyone has their camera on you, because they might. I really am so sorry about all this. Just glad we were onto it before people started sharing.’ Erin looks inside. Amanda’s still got Bobby hoisted up looking down at her from a great height. Erin nods to no one, pinching the ligaments in her wrist together. ‘Any idea who it might be?’ Grace asks.

Erin shakes her head to no one. ‘Er, no,’ she says, unable to demist her foggy thoughts. ‘There were a fair few people out down by the sea. A church group I was at that morning would have been finishing.’

‘It’s most likely to be someone you don’t know to be honest. This sort of stuff. Trolling. It’s the anonymity they get off on. Most likely a man, looking to polish up their self-esteem by taking people like us down a peg or two.’

‘Right.’

‘There’s a guy we use sometimes in these sorts of situations. He’s a digital security expert. He’ll try and get to the bottom of who Ali-Crow is – though, unless he pops up again, I think it’s unlikely we’ll find anything. But I do want you to know, we’re taking this seriously.’

A gaggle of seagulls shriek overhead making Erin hunch away from them. ‘Thank you, that’s so great to know.’ Bobby is sitting up on the table inside. There must have been some form of leakage onto his vest as he’s now bare-chested. Erin turns her attention to her bamboo hedge. The video’s hollowed her out. The image of that terrifying woman, her, shaking the buggy, groping and pulling at something so tiny, so defenceless. Loathing courses around her and she’s freezing cold.

‘It’s horrible stuff, Erin, but as your visibility increases I’m sorry to tell you this sort of thing can become par for the course.’ The afterlife of a shiver runs down the base of Erin’s spine. ‘Now, we’ve got some meetings booked in for the end of this week and the beginning of next. Does that still sound OK?’

‘Yeh.’ Amanda’s said she’s happy to help on the days Erin has to go to London and telling her new agent that she’s totally free to meet brands and production companies should feel wonderful but now she’s seen that, seen herself behaving like that, everything tastes sour.

‘We’ll talk strategy when I see you. I’ll make sure we carve out some time for a cocktail at some point during the day too.’ Grace leaves the conversation and Erin with her thoughts, standing in her garden eyes locked onto the bamboo as it swats gently in the breeze. The sliding door shushes open and the air is blasted by the sound of Bobby’s screaming.

‘Somebody’s hungry,’ Amanda says, appearing at Erin’s shoulder, serene in spite of the racket the baby’s making in her ear. The boy lands in Erin’s arms and she turns him towards a hanging cluster of flowers that hangs down from a planter high up on the fence. She puts a string of petals into his hand, which distracts him briefly as he takes time to yank on it like a tiny Tarzan. She pulls him a little closer to her. It’s an apology to her little boy for every time she’s raised her voice with him, every time she hasn’t understood that he’s confused and in pain and that, to him, the world is a terrifying place. If her new friend weren’t standing behind her, Erin would cry into the blue woolly cardigan Amanda’s put him in.

‘All this attention all of a sudden?’ Amanda’s voice is quiet, respectful and full of purpose like someone offering support at a funeral. ‘Must be a lot to deal with.’ Erin turns, Bobby still attached to the greenery over her shoulder. The winter sun behind Amanda makes her red hair shine gold and, in her long green cardigan, she looks like some sort of beneficent wood sprite. She leans forward and squeezes the thick fold of chubby skin on Bobby’s ankle, hard enough that the boy looks round at her in indignation.

‘This is too much, isn’t it?’ Amanda says, putting her teeth together in a biting gesture. ‘I could just eat him, couldn’t you?’

‘Yeh.’

‘Lunch?’

‘How long do you think he’ll take to cook?’ Erin says. Amanda cocks her head in that way she has, it feels like something adults might have found sweet when she was a child that’s become part of her physical lexicon.

‘You’re so quick, you and Raf must be just laughing all the time,’ she says, mouth pursed in a tight smile and Erin hasn’t got the heart to say that Raf’s never really been much of a laugher. Perhaps he was as a kid, she’ll have to ask some other time.

‘Lunch would be amazing, thanks.’ Erin shifts Bobby from one side to the other. Amanda flicks a lock of hair behind her ear and pirouettes back into the house. She was there, the thought bursts into Erin’s head fully formed. When someone was filming her aggressively shaking her baby’s buggy, Amanda was right there.