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

off your phone,’ Amanda says but Erin ignores her as she sees Bobby on the ground, knocking miniature shampoo bottles together. Erin swoops down on him and cuddles her baby boy where he is on the floor, settling herself next to him and pulling him up onto her lap, both her arms wrapping around him like the bulky restraint of a roller coaster. Before she even looks for Raf she decides to stay like this. To never let him out of her sight again. Her eyes dart around the darkened hotel room like a woodland animal, alert, waiting for Raf to come out and strike, her eyes fixed on the closed bathroom door. But nothing happens. He’s not here.

‘Turn your phone off please,’ Amanda says, her voice firm but kind.

‘What the fuck are you –’

‘I’m sorry about faking the post-it to get you here, but it was the only way to keep both of you safe. Now please, for Bobby, turn your phone off.’ Erin feels the weight of it in her pocket. Bobby’s little paws tickle at the hairs on her arm, he wants to get back to playing. She makes a circular pen with her legs and puts Bobby in the middle with his toiletries. ‘He uses the Find My iPhone thing, it doesn’t work if the phone’s off.’

‘What do you mean he uses?’

‘He always likes to know where we are, to make sure we’re OK. But he can’t know we’re here now. He’ll try and stop it.’ Erin turns off the phone. She has no idea what the hell is going on but Amanda said that Bobby wasn’t safe and, with what she’s read on the train, with what she saw earlier in the day, she feels she has to do as she’s told. Amanda comes over to her and makes to sit down in front of her.

‘Back off. Sit somewhere else,’ Erin finds herself saying. Amanda gets back up and walks over to the desk near the window. ‘Open the curtains.’ Amanda does as she’s told, flooding the dingy hotel room with daylight. ‘Now, what the fuck is going on? I thought you were abducting my baby.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Amanda says, sitting down on the edge of the chair. ‘I didn’t want to scare you. I would never do anything to hurt Bobby, never, but I needed you to come here and I knew you wouldn’t if I just asked you to.’

‘You wrote the Post-it?’

Amanda nods, looking proud of herself. ‘And I left the screwdriver out so you’d see it. I couldn’t risk us being at your house, he wouldn’t have allowed it.’ She’s smiling still as if this is a nice chat they’re having.

‘So you wanted me to find the other Post-it, the one with our address he sent you?’

‘I’ve started to become concerned about what he was doing to you. It felt, it felt like it wasn’t loving any more.’

‘What wasn’t loving?’

‘Making you think you’d set up a different bank account. He – he’s always been strange about money. His mother’s fault. When she left them she took most of his father’s money. It forced them to move from the city. She’d never had a job, and he’s always said that if she hadn’t been able to take that money, she never would have left and they might have worked it out. It’s incredibly traumatic for a boy to lose his mother so young.’

Erin places a hand on Bobby’s bare knee.

‘He set up the bank account? He’s stealing my Instagram money?’

‘No, no.’ Amanda laughs. ‘No, I don’t think he needs to steal from you. He set up the account in your name. He felt like he was losing you, with all your Internet stuff. He was scared you might leave if you had the means. I tried to tell him.’ She shrugs, with that gleeful grin that Erin would love to smack off her face right now, ‘I took your side. I told him that he should let you go. I could see from the moment I walked into your house that you weren’t meant to be together. It was so obvious. When I first got there, when you were away, he said that sending me your address was a mistake. He said he’d been feeling down in the dumps, ignored by you, uninspired by his art, and he thought he wanted to see me, but that it had been a mistake. He told me to go and I was going to, but as soon as you walked in, as soon as you sat down and went straight to your phone, I knew you didn’t have what him and I have and I couldn’t leave after that.’ Amanda plays her fingers over what looks like an envelope on the desk. ‘I’m so pleased that this –’ she gestures to Erin on the floor – ‘has worked out so well.’

Erin looks at the door. She should go. The way Amanda’s talking about Raf isn’t right. He abducted her, he statutory-raped her then abandoned her for twenty years, and she’s making excuses for him like she’s his long-suffering girlfriend. Erin stands up, bringing Bobby into her arms. Amanda makes a face at him, tongue out and cheeks puffed out, looking faintly absurd in a cream lace dress in this soulless hotel room. ‘Miss Havisham’ vibes she remembers Caz having said about the way she dresses, having no sense of quite how unwittingly prescient she was being. Erin gets a stab of chill down her back. Why has this woman brought her here? What’s she planning on doing to her? Amanda cocks her head to the side, perhaps seeing the dawning fear in her eyes. Erin goes for the door but the handle just flicks down impotently. It’s locked. Amanda comes towards her, the envelope in her hand.

‘This is for you,’ Amanda says, handing the envelope over. Bobby starts using Erin’s ribcage as a climbing frame and she nearly hands him over to Amanda before remembering and