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

and sits back down next to Erin. ‘So then I saw pictures of this little beauty.’ She tussles Bobby’s thick hair, ‘and with Mercury in retrograde, I knew it was a sign.’ She flicks her full eyebrows up and ‘hahs’ a chuckle to herself.

‘Amazing,’ Erin says, trying to catch Raf’s eye but not wanting to seem rude.

‘I was going to message you, on the app, to get in touch, set up a visit, but it felt like if I didn’t just book a flight and do it then I might chicken out.’ Bobby comes off Erin’s nipple and then lurches back on, fledgling teeth pinching the skin, making her want to grab him off her and put him on the floor.

‘Amanda’s going to stay in the garden,’ Raf says.

‘Only if that’s OK.’

‘Course,’ Erin says with fabricated gusto. She glances out the window above the sink at the anthracite-grey and glass studio flat that takes up the furthest portion of their narrow garden.

‘I’ve got the name of a B&B in town that looks nice so I’m super happy to go there. I didn’t expect you to have space for me.’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Erin says, Amanda interrogating her with swift eyes to check she’s really as welcome as they’ve said she is.

‘That’s the sweetest thing,’ Amanda says, squeezing Erin’s wrist. ‘I’ve wanted to see Europe for years but, you know, big scary world, thought I’d start myself off visiting a friendly face.’ She gives a little shrug before cocking her head to look at Bobby from a different angle, a faraway smile on her face.

Erin looks into Bobby’s eyes, Raf’s Italian heritage showing in the deep brown of them, and wishes she could feel as misty-eyed when she looks at him as their new guest seems to.

‘I’ve got something for you!’ Amanda blurts out, clapping a hand to her throat, excited like a child. If she and Raf grew up together, Erin thinks, she must be a few years older than her, but with her Disney-princess eyes and girlish clothes she seems younger. She skips past the table and out the sliding doors towards the studio.

Raf comes and leans over Erin to give Bobby a kiss on the top of the head.

‘Hello, mate,’ he says. He pulls back and puts his hands on Erin’s shoulders and squeezes. ‘She won’t stay long,’ he says. Erin flips her phone over and looks at the screen, ripe with hundreds of notifications. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she says, fighting the urge to dive onto Instagram. Since she’s got into the tens of thousands of followers, responding to all the messages has become overwhelming and she won’t be able to sleep unless she’s made inroads, but she knows how upset Raf will be if she goes on so soon after getting home.

‘Mercury in retrograde. You got the tiniest clue what that’s meant to mean?’ Raf says. She gets distracted by the sight of another message arriving. ‘Ez?’

‘Sorry, what?’ she says, placing her free hand on his and craning her neck round to look into his perma-stubbled face.

‘You must be tired after all that partying.’ Raf huffs out a sigh as he takes his hands away from her shoulders. The sliding door clicks open and Amanda comes to the other side of the table and faces them like a candidate for an interview. From an embroidered bag covered in Chinese symbols she produces a large pink crystal and places it on the table in front of them.

‘Rose quartz,’ Amanda says, making it sound like the name of a person. It’s the colour of coffee cups in trendy cafes, millennial pink they’ve started calling it, but translucent. It’s formed of two columns, alongside each other, like twin towers, that grow out of a mass the shape of a large bread roll. Erin looks over to the shelving unit by the entrance to the room, immediately thinking about where to put it. There’s a stack of books with pinkish spines and a speckle-glazed pot in a similar shade – one of the many primo charity-shop buys that make up her Insta-adequate interior. Although maybe the stone should go somewhere less prominent – she might not want someone seeing it in the background of one of her Insta-stories and making a thing of how she’s into crystals. These are the things she has to think about now. ‘It has a very feminine energy.’ Amanda runs a finger around the base. ‘It opens the heart chakra and I just thought, with your whole positivity thing … Anyway, it’s for you.’ Amanda glances at Raf and looks down, embarrassed. Raf rests two fingers on the large vertebra at the top of Erin’s spine. It makes her feel anchored for the first time since she saw Amanda through the window.

‘I love it,’ Erin finds herself saying, feeling bad that she and Raf have given Amanda the sort of reaction to her talk of crystals and energy that’s popped her former bubbliness, ‘you really shouldn’t have because you’ve come all this way to visit, but I love it.’ Amanda’s eyes spark again, pleased. There’s a nervous energy to her, like a skittish animal.

Bobby reaches over to the crystal but he overbalances out of Erin’s arms and knocks his head on the edge of table. He erupts into a wall-shaking scream as Erin, infected by panic, tries to juggle him back to the safety of her chest. He arches away from her and it seems as if she might drop him before Raf swoops in and takes the baby from her. He jigs the inconsolable Bobby over to the mantelpiece and lowers the boy’s eyes towards the tendrils of a spider plant that he swishes around with his elbow. Bobby’s quickly distracted and the cries disappear as suddenly as they arrived.

Erin stands paralysed, riven with her own ineffectiveness, a hurricane of self-flagellation beating at the doors in her head, attempting to blow in. She’s been feeling more connected to Bobby recently, not