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

affects mothers, the hypocrisy and contempt that society seems to have towards them. She talked about a new mother’s loneliness and the many practical, institutional and financial factors that reinforce it. And it went down like a basketful of Labrador puppies.

The whole of Claridge’s seemed desperate to speak to her afterwards. Grace told her she’d played the room perfectly and, judging from how it felt when she was up there, it didn’t feel like her agent was flattering her. Fearne Cotton made a point of coming up to her before she left and asking her if she’d like to come and do a short segment on her podcast. The whole thing was pretty overwhelming.

A feeling which led her straight to the free bar and an evening with Anna Mai, Daisy and Elana Clarkson-Wells (134k followers) who Erin had never met but was as much fun in real life as on her Insta. Amid the mood of jubilation, egging each other on, they steamed into the drinks, ending up at a private members’ place called Black’s, on Grace’s company membership naturally. There were celebrities, old English gentlemen in three-piece suits and the most beautiful bar staff and hostesses she’d ever laid eyes on. Erin got caught up in it, drinking espresso martinis and quaffing late-night mix plates of cheeses and charcuterie.

And now her tongue feels like an offcut of carpet as she scrapes it against her teeth. She rounds the corner onto her street, pulling her keys out of her bag, swearing as she catches her hip on the latch of their half-open gate. She puts the key in the lock and stops, squeezing her eyes shut and popping them open. Unsurprisingly she doesn’t feel magically better and ready to face her screaming baby. Remorse squeezes through her pores like playdough spaghetti. She needs to spit but someone will probably film it and put it up online.

When she pushes open the front door she’s surprised to be met with silence. It’s Friday morning. Raf’s at work but she expected Bobby to be here with Amanda. Erin glances at the station clock on the back wall. Quarter past ten. There are no groups on now and the buggy is by the door. But he’s safe with Amanda, she thinks, and thankfully not her responsibility yet.

She hangs her coat up, shoves her holdall behind the door, goes to the kitchen sink and runs the tap. When it’s as cold as it’ll go she dips her head down and drinks. She glances out the window at the studio in their garden. The lights are off.

She imagines Amanda babywearing Bobby along the beach to Chalk Mantle or another stack on the coast near them that Erin, to her shame, still hasn’t been to. Amanda spends a lot of her time walking when she’s with Bobby. Then it hits her, maybe Raf’s with them now. She sees him in the maroon beanie hat he lives in in the winter months, Amanda by his side, flaming hair blowing in the wind, swapping war stories from their schooldays while Erin drinks out of the tap like a dog.

She shudders. She’s always had the most horrific paranoia after boozing. In her late twenties, almost overnight, she seemed to become that person, the one that would take it further than everyone else on nights out. It was like all her university friends got together and had a meeting somewhere, complete with flip chart and thought-through agenda, to decide that their partying would become collectively more conservative and forgot to send Erin the memo.

Since she woke up, ‘Raf and Amanda, together’ has been the subject title of a thesis that’s being badly written in her head. Although she managed to suppress the thought in order to focus on last night, she can see now that it fuelled her speech with anger, because now it hurts to think of them walking together. Erin and Raf haven’t taken Bobby for a walk together on a weekday since his two-week paternity leave ended. He’s always said how much he wanted to hang out with them but he’s always had too much on. She’d love to walk arm in arm with her fiancé along the seafront as their son sleeps in the buggy but it hasn’t been possible. But now, for Amanda, it is.

Erin sinks down into the ancient fabric sofa she inherited from her mum and feels it work its charms on her hangover which, now she’s a hundred per cent sober, is throbbing inside her like a pulse. She pulls a blanket off the arm of the sofa, but when it’s in her hand she sees that it’s not a blanket at all but one of Raf’s jumpers. Navy blue, cashmere, incredibly soft to the touch. She pulls it over herself anyway.

The dishwasher beeps to finish its cycle. Erin hadn’t noticed its swishing hum when she came in. In the renewed silence she hears a moan.

There’s no other word to describe it. The sound of a single, open-mouthed moan. From a woman. Erin hauls herself out of the depths of the sofa and perches on the edge, listening. The same sound again. A quiet moan stifled somehow, as if she were trying not to be heard.

The sound comes from down the hall. Erin stands up, balling the jumper in her fingers. The moan again, it seems louder although the tone is almost identical. She tenses her jaw, cursing herself for having such a strong coffee on the train. She goes towards the sound. When she reaches the end of the corridor she sees a yellow piece of clothing on the lilac carpet, a cardigan maybe, just outside Bobby’s room. Amanda’s.

The sound once again. It’s coming from Bobby’s room. As Erin takes tentative steps, she hears words as well. The same voice. A whisper almost, coming from her baby’s room. A wave of sickness sweeps up from her stomach, spit gushes into the back of her throat. She twists the jumper between her fists,