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

wheeling him away from her. She crosses to the corner of the room, rests Bobby on the top of the trouser press and opens the envelope. Inside there’s a plane ticket. British Airways, to Sydney, for Erin Braune plus an infant.

‘I’ve packed a bag for you with some of your things, some essentials for Bob. Passports are in there too. I checked with the airline and you can take two tubs of formula with you – that should be enough to get you going.’ Erin watches Amanda swing a plastic bag with two huge cans of formula up onto the bed. ‘Am I right in thinking you’ve got a cousin who lives somewhere in Oz?’

‘Have you lost your mind?’ Erin spits the words out with such venom that even Bobby looks shocked. ‘You think I’m going to leave my fiancé, leave my home, with a eleven-month-old? How much did you spend on this ticket? Jesus Christ, Amanda? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?’

‘You don’t want to leave him?’ It’s a genuine question. ‘Did you not read my journal? We’re married. If the law was a little more nuanced about age differences in meaningful relationships we’d still be together. We’ve always been supposed to be together, Erin. That’s why it’s not worked between you. It’s not your fault.’ She moves towards Erin, hands outstretched as if to take hers. Erin backs into her corner, brings Bobby closer into her neck. ‘I know it might seem drastic but it’s the only way he’ll let you go. He can’t go back to Oz after what happened with us when we were kids –’

‘You were a kid, Amanda. He was a grown man. How old? Twenty, twenty-one? What he did to you is called grooming.’

‘Do you want to stay with Raf then?’ She bites the words off like they were a stale biscuit. She’s still obsessed with him, after all these years. The crystals, the jar spell, all designed to force Erin away and win him over again. And of course Erin wants to leave him. He’s a compulsive liar, a rapist, a paedophile for Christ’s sake. He’s isolated Erin, made her think she’s an insufficient mother and partner and that he’s working all hours to provide for them, he’s made her leave her agent, taken the money she earned, the first proper money she’d ever earned, and made her think she’s mad. Now she thinks about it, he was probably days away from committing her to an institution. Has he ever loved her? Why didn’t he just run off with Amanda if that’s what he wants? Why all this? She has so many questions but right now she needs to deal with Amanda. Damaged, eggshell-fragile Amanda, who has her locked in a hotel room with her baby expecting her to get on a plane to Australia in three hours.

‘I’m going to leave Raf, yes. Of course I’m going to leave him,’ Erin says and Amanda brightens. ‘But I’m not going to get on that flight. I’m not going to get on a plane to Australia.’

Amanda’s brow furrows. ‘It’s the only way.’ She sits on the bed, both hands fiddling with a large obsidian pendant she has round her neck, eyes on the carpet. ‘He won’t let you go. You’re engaged. He –’ She looks up at Erin and she can see the petulant, precocious teenager that Raf painted in the pictures. The girl he clearly still wants her to be. Has she seen his pictures? Has she seen how he’s painted her, how dissatisfied he is with the aged her, the real her? ‘I imagined it was going to be easy to remind him why he married me.’ In her mind they’re married. That crazy little ceremony they had, she thinks they’re married. ‘I wanted to show him how much better I’d be as a mother, as a partner, and it seemed to be working. He wanted me to spend more time with him, he started painting me again. He said I was inspiring him. He wanted to be an artist again, to get his work out into the world. He said he hadn’t felt like this in years.’ She looks out the window, a sadness falling into her eyes. ‘When he found out about the video, when he saw how you were treating his son, I thought that would be enough, I thought it would make it easy for him to leave. I never wanted to take Bobby.’ She flicks back to looking at Erin, the shadows under her severe cheekbones making her look her age for once. ‘I just wanted to show him how obvious it was that we were meant to be, how good a mother I’d be if he wanted to have the sort of family he wanted with me.’

‘What sort of family does he want?’

‘You were never going to be happy just being his wife. It’s not your fault, but that’s what someone like Raf needs. Someone who will dedicate themselves entirely to him and his baby. He wouldn’t have done any of the things he’s done to you if you weren’t always trying to make a life away from him. We all need different things from our partners and sometimes people get into relationships that aren’t right, and they stick with them out of stubbornness or fear. But you can never give him what I can, what he deserves, and no matter how hard he’s tried with you, and I can see he’s tried so hard, too hard, what he’s done to you isn’t right, but he has only ever done it for you, to make you something like his first wife –’ she puts both hands to her collarbone – ‘who he was cruelly separated from. But he can have what he needs now. I’m here to claim him. It’s legal now for him and me to be what we always should have been. And you can be free. It’s what we all deserve,