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

into the inside cover of the notebook. Erin pulls it out and puts the notebook on the table next to Amanda’s crystals. There’s a millisecond where she considers the breach of privacy she’s committing but she knows she’s way past that now. In the envelope there’s a single orange Post-it. On it, in block capitals that lean to the right:

34 HILDA’S BAY ROAD

CT8 1BU

UK

It’s Erin’s address. Why has Amanda got her address written on a Post-it? Erin looks at the envelope. An address in Darwin, Australia. Two large international stamps. A postmark.

East Kent

28.11.2018

It’s been sent from here. Raf. Raf sent their address to Amanda in Australia several months ago. She didn’t come here because of a picture, she didn’t come here because of some fucked-up relationship with her abusive stepdad. She came because Raf told her to.

60

The stick-thin receptionist isn’t at her desk at the Lookout. Erin’s called Raf but his phone appears to be off so she’s come looking for him. Amanda will be at the group for another half an hour and, although Erin hasn’t actually thought what she’s going to do yet, she needs to have this conversation without having to worry what Bobby may think about how she’s behaving. Because she’s fairly certain she isn’t going to behave well. He’s been lying to her, he and Amanda have both been brazenly lying to her from the first moment she set eyes on them together in her front room. He sent her their address. He didn’t call her or email her or even write her a letter. He sent a Post-it in an envelope all the way to Australia.

She slaps the desk a few times to get someone’s attention. There aren’t many people here today. Eventually a burly man with a yellow-checked scarf wrapped tightly around his neck looks up.

‘You OK?’ he says, a Welsh accent beleaguered by a heavy cold. She’s not met him before.

‘Is Raf in?’ He gives her a sideways look. ‘Wears a beanie all the time like he’s stuck in the nineties?’ She tries to smile but can only manage a grimace. The man breaks into a lopsided grin.

‘Ah, no. He was. Earlier. Think I heard him saying something to Sev about going to London for work?’

‘Is Sev not here?’

‘He went out about an hour ago.’ Raf didn’t say he was going to London, she thinks. She remembers how he was this morning. Telling her to stay in bed, to take a pill if she can’t sleep, suggesting to her that it might be better not to leave the house, that facing people after what happened on her Instagram might make her unwell. She turns on her heels and barges her way out the double doors into the main space. Where’s she going to go? To the group. She should go and get Bobby, everything Amanda’s told her about how she’s here, why she’s here is a lie, she has to get her baby and then she can worry about finding Raf. But then something stops her. There’s a door with a symbol of a man and a symbol of a woman. The toilets, unisex. She turns round to look through the glass doors, to the corridor behind the bullpen of desks. When she came here after she found Amanda and Bobby together in the nursery bed, Raf came from the back, wiping his hands on a tea towel. She’d assumed he was coming from the toilet, but she’s standing next to the toilet. On the wall she sees an old school sign indicating who’s in and who’s out, desks numbered 1 to 12, studios 1 to 4. Studio 4 is the only one set to ‘unoccupied’.

‘Who is it that has Studio 4?’ she asks the room loudly, head popped back through the double doors. The Welshman looks around and, seeing everyone else entombed in their noise-cancelling headphones, realises it’s on him to answer again. He gets the attention of a woman in a hoodie who’s making what look like artificial flowers. She pulls her hoodie down, takes her headphones out and smiles at the Welshman.

‘Studio 4 – that the big one at the back?’

‘That’s right, yeh.’ The woman nods, then notices Erin by the door. ‘Oh, hiya,’ she says. They’ve met before. She’s called Sara, moved from Walthamstow. ‘Raf was in there this morning but not for long – he left about ten, I think.’

‘In Studio 4?’

‘We all call it the beast cos it’s three times the size of all the others.’ Erin blinks. She didn’t know he rented a studio. Why does he need a studio? How can he afford the biggest studio at this chichi co-working space? She needs to go and get Bobby, but he’s safe, he’s at the class, Caz is there. She can’t leave without knowing why the hell her fiancé has an art studio he’s never told her about.

‘I’m locked out,’ she says. ‘He’s not answering his phone, must be on the Tube or something. Any chance I can get in and see if he has our spare in there?’ Sara hesitates. The Welshman eyes his desk, keen to extricate himself from any responsibility.

‘Sure,’ Sara says, coming up to get a set of keys from behind the front desk. Erin follows her through the gauntlet of desks, laptops and computer monitors, air plants and succulents. The place has been done up a little since she was last here. Walls painted, electrical cables no longer visible.

As Sara leads her to the back of the building, she looks at the clock on her dumbphone, the group Bobby’s at is on for another twenty minutes. She labours to text Caz and to tell her to call if Amanda leaves with Bobby before the end. If Raf invited Amanda to come over to England then perhaps it has something to do with the baby. Maybe he knew that Erin wouldn’t be a good enough mother so tried