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

perfect for him. I’ve been reading in magazines about how to please him in other ways as well. He’s sacrificed so much for me. I know, with a little work, I can be everything he needs me to be.

Sometimes I pinch myself hard, hard enough that it leaves a mark, just to make sure I’m not dreaming.

28

Erin turns the corner, past the small stone fortification that sits atop the promenade, and spots Amanda in the distance. She’s leaning on the metal pole that blocks toddlers from falling into the sea, head on her forearms. She could be stretching but she’s not wearing her yoga pants. As she gets closer she sees Amanda’s shaking her head. She slaps the metal with one hand, then grips it, legs wringing around each other. She’s upset, Erin thinks.

There’s part of her that wants to walk on, Bobby’s looking sleepy, and having spent the morning doing a live Instagram Q&A with the whingeing baby locked to her hip, she’s desperate for an hour or so’s peace, and stopping to chat to Amanda could jeopardise him nodding off. But she’s never seen Amanda anything but upbeat so she can’t just leave her.

‘Hey,’ she says as gently as she can muster. Amanda wheels round, blinks eyes puffy with past tears, and sighs out a smile.

‘Erin, hello. Hey, baby.’ Bobby, eyes half closed, on the edge of sleep, acknowledges Amanda’s greeting with a lurch to the other side of the sling.

‘Are you OK?’ Erin asks. Amanda does a strange nod, like her head’s dipping under a set of waves.

‘Boy trouble,’ she says, voice gravelly, shaking it away as if it’s nothing. Amanda notices something, cocks her head at Erin. ‘You’re so, so beautiful.’ Her voice almost catches as she says it. ‘Stand there, give me your phone.’ Erin crinkles her face in confusion but Amanda’s insistent, she positions her to stand against the barrier, a twenty-foot drop down to the beach below, and reaches her hand out for Erin’s phone. There’s something manic in her eyes, whites too big like an anxious animal. She comes up to Erin, hand still stretched out for the phone. Erin sees the drop down to the rocky beach below out of the corner of her eye and hands the phone over, Bobby enlivening at the activity. Amanda takes a few steps back and holds up the phone and frames Erin and Bobby up in its camera.

‘Picture-perfect,’ she says, followed by the artificial sound of a camera shutter opening.

29

BRAUNEoverBRAINS

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ERIN BRAUNE

This is my loved-up face. Cos I’m in LURVE.

THIS PLACE. THIS BOY. SPREAD MY HEART ON TOAST BECAUSE IT HAS MELTED.

Been such an exciting month, but I’ve missed this boy more than I can say and having him snuggled up to me, in sunshine like this! It’s not always easy-breezy looking after a bubba but what they say is true, value every moment you have with them because the time is so precious. And, as if you don’t already think I’m a smug twad already, LOOK AT THAT VIEW.

But wherever you are, whether they’re sleeping or awake, love your bubba like they love you. Because, perish the thought, they might not always feel so ardent!

30

Erin concentrates on the ridges of black rock as she steps over them. Five minutes ago she turned her foot on one and it sent a jag of pain drilling into her left hip. Amanda stops ahead, allowing Erin to catch up with her.

‘Whose idea was it?’ Amanda asks, her schoolgirl-style duffel coat not quite covering the hem of her dress.

‘Whose idea was what?’ Erin asks, still trying to talk quietly so Bobby doesn’t wake even though she’s slightly out of breath. They’ve only been walking for five minutes but Amanda’s raced ahead and it’s hard going. There’s a path at the top of the cliff that leads all the way to the chalk needle on Jessup Bay, but Amanda wanted to walk along the beach. So it’s been mostly sucking sand, slippery rocks and knee-deep piles of drying seaweed that Amanda’s treating like nature’s obstacle course.

‘Having a baby,’ she says, slowing to allow Erin to catch up.

‘It was a joint decision, I suppose.’

‘Hm,’ Amanda says.

‘I felt rudderless, I was blaming Raf for it. I was becoming a bit of a nightmare to be honest. I think we both thought it might bolster things between us.’

‘It has.’

Erin gives Amanda a quizzical look. Her tone wasn’t questioning, she was telling Erin she was right, that having a baby has brought them closer together, despite having only known them as a couple for a matter of weeks.

‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Erin asks. ‘You were – you seemed upset, up on the prom?’

‘Just, this guy back home.’

‘You spoke to him?’

Amanda nods. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to work.’

‘Has he got impatient?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You being here, is he not happy to give you space any more?’

‘Something like that. I shouldn’t be telling you all this.’ She dismisses herself with a shake of the head, frustrated, that edge of mania creeping into her eyes.

‘It’s fine, honestly. If you need to talk to someone, you’ve helped us so much, it’s the least I can do.’

‘Look, I don’t know. He – he needs me, I know he needs me, but he can’t see it.’

‘He’s broken things off?’

‘He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s a conundrum.’

‘Shit, one of those?’

‘It’s so draining.’ Amanda looks at Erin with a wan smile. ‘But I can’t seem to –’ she tenses her two hands into claws and then releases them into the air – ‘tear myself away from him.’

‘He sounds like a dick.’

‘He’s not.’ Amanda’s jaw tenses, she’s suddenly defensive.

‘No, I just mean, he’s probably not half as complicated or interesting as he wants everyone to think.’ Amanda’s face creases into a