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

‘This room is so beaut.’ One of Erin’s eyes twitches with Sara’s familiarity. Has he been writing Post-its to her as well? No, she tells herself, this can’t be right. He’s never looked at another woman. She’s never been with anyone who’s been so devoted to her. There has to be some logical reason why he invited Amanda to come. Some reason why he lied. Because that’s the kicker. There’s nothing wrong with inviting an old friend, maybe she’d asked for the address and he sent it on a Post-it as some sort of in-joke, but lying about it, making up a story about Lydia and seeing some painting …

They arrive at the nondescript black door. A numeral ‘4’ has been daubed on it in yellow paint.

‘Everyone’s super jelz he’s got it, but, to be fair, no one else here could afford it, and he lets people store their stuff in it so that’s pretty sound.’ They can’t afford it, Erin thinks. And if they can, then Amanda’s reason for visiting them is the tip of an iceberg of lies. Sara takes a key from a large bunch and puts it into the lock. Erin realises her breathing has deepened as if she’s preparing to plunge into freezing water.

Sara opens the door. It’s dark, a curtain drawn over a huge window at the far side of the room, but Erin can see it’s huge. She had no idea this was even here. Sara reaches around for a light switch. The lights click on and what Erin sees forces an audible gasp. She turns the noise into a cough and musters a smile for Sara.

‘Hope you find your key,’ she says as she wheels past Erin and back to her desk.

The walls are stacked with row upon row of canvases. The outside one of each has a picture of a woman with flowing bounds of red hair sat among rocks, turned towards the viewer. Amanda. Erin closes the door, backs into it and slumps down onto her haunches. It’s not a woman, she thinks. It’s a girl. A teenage girl. Younger perhaps. Amanda as a young girl. Erin closes her eyes and rests her head on her knees. She needs to look again but can’t. That girl is thirteen, maybe twelve, is there any way to see them as anything but depraved? When Erin found Amanda’s passport, she knew, deep down, there was something deeply wrong about the age difference, but she was so keen to believe that Raf was the man she’s always known him to be that she ate up his story.

Erin tries to get her breathing under control. She opens her eyes and stares round the room. On the opposite wall there are more canvases, but these all face the wall. There’s a larger one, half finished, on an easel down towards the window, though she can’t make it out from where she is, such is the prodigious size of the room.

She manages to get herself up and walks along the row of pictures of the girl Amanda. Raf’s attempted to make her expressions ambiguous, Mona Lisa smiles, but he’s failed. In one painting her head’s lowered and she has a ‘come-hither’ stare. In another, the face is up and on an angle so she looks wary. In a third, the lips are pursed, it could be fear, it could be hatred. Erin crosses to the other side of the room. The studio is newly painted, the light fittings look expensive. A free-standing metal shelving unit next to the door is heaving with premium-looking art supplies, oil paints, brushes, black leather-bound books, a huge MacBook, padded bags full of what looks like expensive technical equipment. Where has all this stuff come from? Has he bought it? They don’t have any money. He’s always telling her that they don’t have any money.

She grips the top of one of the canvases that face the wall and turns it round quickly, like ripping off a plaster. It’s different. Still Amanda, but Amanda now. Most of the painting, the background and the body, has been sketched, only the face is finished. It’s disturbing. Amanda’s wrinkles have been accentuated and have been painted again and again, smears of black and dark brown, it’s chaotic, as if done in a flurry of strokes. From here she can see the work-in-progress at the end of the room. It shows Amanda, the young girl Amanda, reclining on a bench, shoulders bare, an expression of forced joy. There’s an ottoman on the other side of the easel. She looks at the girlish pictures behind her and it hits her. They’re not from before, he’s painted them here, since she’s been here. There’s dozens of them. When has he been doing it? Is this why he’s been so busy with work, spending all his time here, in his studio, working on these paintings? Does he even have a job?

She can’t be in this room any more. Can’t be surrounded by scores of eyes, scores of Amanda’s eyes, her child eyes, staring at her. What has Raf done? What did he do to her? Why would she let herself model for him while he painted pictures of her prepubescent self? Caz has talked about how abuse suffered as a child can drastically alter how you view the world, what you think’s normal, your morality. She catches one of the faces, an upturned smile, cruel. Bobby, she’s looking after her baby, she has her precious boy. Erin needs to go and take Bobby away from this woman now. She clatters the painting to the floor and bolts out of the room. She must make a lot of noise in the hallway because several freelancers in the main space look up from their laptops to see what the commotion is. Sara gives her a thumb’s up. Erin smiles maniacally and nods her head.

As she blunders towards the entrance, she knocks her hip on the corner of a desk