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

Erin’s about to try and contradict her, to try and make her see that she’s talking like a cult devotee, but she stops herself. The situation feels as if it’s teetering on a needlepoint and trying to win over someone so damaged, whose mind is set on an entirely different planetary wavelength, isn’t going to get her anywhere. She sees a cool bag, some of Amanda’s preparations for her flight, and extracts a banana and gives it to Bobby before plonking him down on the carpet and sitting next to him.

‘Why is this –’ she holds up the plane ticket – ‘why is this the only way?’

‘He’s really very traditional,’ Amanda says, making Erin actually shake her head in disbelief. ‘I realised that he wasn’t going to leave you of his own accord. I thought about telling you we were still married, that we’d lived as man and wife, about, well, I didn’t think you’d understand about the age difference, no one ever did, but I thought about telling you, in the hope you’d leave him. But how he was –’ she pauses, glances up at Erin before going back to massaging the pendant around her neck – ‘how he was behaving, I could see he was fighting to make things work, so if he found out I’d told you about us I knew that he’d never, ever forgive me. And it would have tarnished things between us, stopped us ever refinding our bond. I thought he’d just gravitate towards me, but –’ she hums a half-laugh – ‘he’s very traditional, I should have known he wouldn’t just be able to let you go. He’s got such strong principles, and it makes perfect sense, after how his dad treated his mother, her running away, he wants to be the type of husband and father his dad never was.’ Erin swallows the lump in her throat. She glances at the window. She doesn’t feel safe in the room with Amanda. To her, this isn’t a hare-brained idea. This is how she’s going to clear a path to Raf so the two of them can be together. What’s she going to do when Erin tells her she’s not getting on that flight? Amanda’s so deeply in thrall to Raf. But no, Erin tells herself, she’s got me here to help me, she thinks she’s helping. Perhaps the excuses for him come from the way he conditioned her as a child, some scar tissue in her psyche that stops her seeing anything he does as the rest of the world would. But how to shine a light into her head and make her see how brainwashed she is? Erin starts as Amanda looks sharply at the clock radio on the bedside table.

‘Bobby will need a nap in half an hour,’ she says. ‘Probably better to get through security first.’

‘What do you think’s going to happen, Amanda? Bobby and I get on the flight and then what? You go back to our house and reclaim your husband?’

Amanda tries to smile but she looks annoyed. ‘I don’t think he’s going to just fall into my arms. I’m sure he’ll try and get to you, to try and get you back, but he won’t be able to because he can’t travel back home. He only left me in the first place because of what the police were accusing him of. He’s still wanted for kidnapping me, and, um, what happened to our neighbour Jean. I know he wouldn’t risk it. And, here it is, he knows deep down that what we had was true, powerful love. I feel sure that that’s the reason you and he have never been able to make things conduct between you. So with you gone, I’m certain it will just be a matter of time. And I can wait as long as it takes.’ She moves her hands from her pendant to her lap as if that proves her point.

‘You don’t think he’ll want to know why I’ve gone? If he’s that obsessed with my not leaving, don’t you think he’ll blame you?’

Amanda smiles, one hand twists the thick cord of hair that rests on her chest. ‘He knows you’ve been going through the studio, spying on me, trying to find something to incriminate me. I hid the journal where no one could ever find it, he can’t blame me for that.’

‘What if I tell him? What if I tell him that you told me everything, that you told me exactly the sort of man he is?’

Amanda launches herself off the bed and down onto the floor with such force, that Erin finds herself almost gearing up to shove her away.

‘You can’t!’ she pleads. ‘You can’t tell him. There’s no need. You want to be free of it. Be honest with yourself, you don’t love him. You’re not the person he needs, I am. But if you tell him it would taint everything we have.’

‘Have you seen the paintings he’s done of you? They’re sick. He’s not in love with you. He’s a pervert who abused you when you were a child. He doesn’t love you.’

Amanda blinks three, four times. She pulls at the lace on her cuffs. She shakes her head, smiling from ear to ear.

‘You don’t know him.’

Erin gets Bobby onto her, stands up with him and goes into the bathroom. Raf’s been telling her she’s deluded for the past few weeks, but now she’s witnessing true, profound delusion, the likes of which she’s never imagined possible. Amanda needs help immediately, and she needs to get away from Raf, because if he’s half as controlling as her journal says he is, he won’t forgive her, and although she doesn’t know what happened to Jean, Erin can’t let him do the same to Amanda. But what’s Erin going to do? She looks at Bobby looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. He’s starting to look less blobby and more human. He smiles as he