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

‘You OK?’ He asks the question before she’s through the door frame.

‘Something’s happened,’ she says. Raf raises an eyebrow, nods his head and lets out a sigh. He goes to sit down at the table that has a view out to the road and grabs one of the place mats from the table and begins rolling it up into a cigar shape. Erin puts Bobby down on the play mat. She puts Hey Duggee on the TV, glances over at Raf to see if he’s going to object to their son watching a screen before five o’clock, but he doesn’t. Erin observes Amanda clacking her way through the back gate. The sun blares down on their little garden and Amanda, her maroon coat over a flowing powder-blue dress, walks in and out of the shadows caused by the neighbours’ overhanging trees, towards the house.

‘Hey, guys, everything good?’ she says as she heads through the door to face them sitting at the table like they’re about to interview her.

‘We need to talk about something,’ Erin says. Amanda looks at Raf who shrugs back at her. Erin sees his jaw clench, she knows how much not telling him what this is about will be enraging him, but she doesn’t care. When he hears what’s happened he’ll be shocked. He should feel guilty. He should feel ashamed for allowing this manipulative bitch into their home. Amanda’s about to sit but, spotting Bobby on the floor, extracts a tissue from her coat pocket and goes over to him to wipe his nose. ‘Do you want to sit down, Amanda?’ Erin stops her in her tracks. She comes back to sit down, brow furrowed though smiling still.

Erin slides across a printout of the email chain Zoe sent over to her. Amanda reads it and gives a nervous laugh. She looks at Raf for some sense of reassurance.

‘What the hell’s going on, Ez?’ He snatches the papers up and reads what they say. ‘What, you got a new bank account?’

‘She did.’ Erin’s index finger flies out from her fist and points at Amanda like a gunshot.

‘Sorry, I did what?’ Amanda puts prayer-hands to her chest and widens her eyes.

‘You sent my agent an email with new bank account details so you could steal my money. That’s why you came here in the first place.’

‘Erin, stop’ Raf puts a hand on her wrist.

‘I won’t go to the police. But I want to see the card. I want you to show Raf the card. Then I want my money back and for you to get out of our lives today.’

‘I – I’m so – I didn’t do this, Erin, I swear. I didn’t even know –’

Raf stands up and shoves the chair into the table. He walks over to the shelving unit and Erin almost thinks he’ll sweep all the books off, but instead he leans against it.

‘This is too far, Ez. Too much. You’ve crossed a line,’ Raf says, but Erin won’t be cowed this time. She has the evidence.

‘The money hasn’t gone into my account because of this. Nine thousand pounds, that’s how much my agent has paid me, or at least thought they’ve paid. But it’s not in my account. How do you explain that?’ Erin’s up now. Amanda sits still, looking up at Raf, plaintive, begging him to rescue her. Confess, Erin internally screams at her. Confess to this, she thinks, glaring at her, there’s nowhere to hide, I’ve caught you out. But now she looks sad, pitying almost. Erin would like to slap the light out of her glistening green eyes.

‘Come on, Amanda,’ she says, trying to smile, cajole her, looking almost sympathetic. ‘I’m sure you had your reasons, but please, please don’t make this more painful than it already is.’ Raf storms out to the hall, almost knocking Bobby as he goes. He comes back with Erin’s laptop and places it on the table in front of Erin. He opens the screen up.

‘Does she know your password?’

‘No, but that’s – I could have left it open.’

‘When would that have happened?’

Erin glances at Amanda whose gaze is fixed on the surface of the table. Erin hadn’t thought about this, hadn’t thought about how she might have got into her email. Erin doesn’t put much effort into passwords and security so she’d assumed it must be easy but Raf’s right. He types in the password, goes straight into her email. He pulls the laptop over to face him. Erin and Amanda both seem to be in a state of paralysis, and with Bobby motionless in front of the television, it’s as if Erin’s accusations have cast some sort of spell over everyone apart from Raf. She looks at his back as he hunches over her laptop doing something. She remembers what Lorna said in the cafe.

‘It was you,’ she says. He ignores her, tapping and clicking at the laptop’s mousepad. ‘It must have been. You’re the only one who knows my passwords. Lorna was right. You don’t want me to have any money of my own. It had to be –’ Raf turns the screen round. There’s an email from her sent items, from 26 February. A message to Raf’s email address.

Hey babes,

Thinking of setting up a business account for Instagram. What do you think?

Ciao bella

‘You just wrote that,’ Erin says, squinting at the screen. Raf sighs and walks into the kitchen. He fills a sippy cup with water and takes it over to Bobby. The boy bats it away at first, but after Raf offers it to him a third time, he takes it and sucks water down. Erin looks closer at the screen. Checks the date again. Tries to think about how someone could fake all of these messages.

‘I got it when I was on a call. Forgot to go back and reply. Only just remembered. You did it, Erin. You set up the account.’

‘Should I go?’ Amanda’s chair scrapes as she backs away from the table.

‘Maybe