The Family Friend by C. MacDonald (love story novels in english txt) 📕

furious with him for the casual way in which he’s kept himself away. Going AWOL to come to terms with his wife having lied to him is a luxury that a baby’s primary caregiver doesn’t have. But she knows she doesn’t have a leg to stand on any more. She’s fucked up and it’s better he have time to forgive her. He’s never responded well to her confronting him about anything.

Bobby throws the xylophone’s beater into the air and it hits the stem of a plant on the coffee table, scattering soil onto the floor. He begins bum-shuffling towards the mess and Erin gets her phone ready. She kneels down, framing up the shot and watches the screen as Bobby puts a chunk of soil in his mouth. He spits it out, makes a disgusted face and Erin snaps him. She has the money shot, the first image for her Insta-stories for today. She looks at the photo. She’ll have to put a caption about how she found him like this otherwise people will be asking why she wasn’t stopping her son eating soil, but it’s perfect. Funny, relatable, authentic, some nice colours from the bookshelf in the background.

Bobby hauls himself up on the coffee table and knocks some coasters onto the floor. Erin glances outside to see that it looks dry and, not being able to handle the screams of wrestling Bobby into the buggy, decides to endure the pain, throwing him in the sling before she heads out for town.

As she walks along her road towards the front, with Bobby enjoying the fresh air and the closeness of her body, she wants to get her phone out and edit the photo, but she keeps seeing neighbours and doesn’t want to be seen on her phone when she’s with Bobby now. With the sun threatening to break the stranglehold of cloud, she goes down a ramp towards the promenade, finding it thankfully empty.

The sea is blanket-calm and as Bobby waves his arms in the air at a swathe of seagulls that fly out towards the horizon, Erin breathes in the seaweed air and starts to feel something close to calm. She stops, lets her smartphone fall to the bottom of her coat pocket and gazes out at the water. Eighteen months ago, on the day trip that first gave Raf the idea to move down here, they’d stood somewhere near this spot, his arm around her, and looked at this view together. He’d said something about how much bigger than us it was, how it made you think about what your priorities were. She knew that was a nod to her, a dig almost. Whenever she got frustrated with her career, with another audition that didn’t lead anywhere, he’d tell her that she just needed to adjust her priorities. This, the scenery, the peace and quiet, is why they moved here, this is what Raf wanted. A simple life by the seaside, not having to work too hard to pay London rents, being a family. But she hasn’t been able to surrender to that and now things feel anything but simple.

Bobby grabs at one of her fingers and grips it, he turns his head up to try and look at her but he can’t see past the mass of hair. Perhaps that’s the answer. The contract with Phibe isn’t signed yet, she could call Grace and say she’s leaving Insta, she could suggest Amanda might want to get back home, try to make a go of things with her complicated man, Erin could dedicate herself to Bobby until he goes to school then she could get a job down here, something that wouldn’t take her away from home too much. It wouldn’t be exciting, it wouldn’t be what she ever wanted, but Raf’s not doing what he wants to do, most people don’t get to do what they want to do. Perhaps that’s what growing up means.

Erin gets the sense that someone’s there. She swings round sharply, but the promenade is empty. Nothing but a beautifully rendered white-chalk angel graffitied on the concrete lip at the bottom of the cliff. As she gets her phone out to take a picture she senses movement around the brush at the clifftop and looks up. No one there, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched.

She turns and strides towards town. Whoever has taken those photos hasn’t just chanced on her. They’ve been where she and Bobby have, several different locations, Amanda and Bobby as well, and that’s just the pictures that have been posted. Even though the town’s not huge, whoever it is seems to know exactly how to find them. Is she being followed? Is whoever it is watching her all the time? She hasn’t ever noticed anyone, but people look at her a lot now and she just accepts them as her Insta-followers. She hasn’t seen anyone taking photos of her, but it’s so easy to do inadvertently with a smartphone.

The clouds have smothered the burgeoning sunlight and as Erin rounds the corner into the bay that leads up towards the harbour and the esplanade of colourful houses, the grey promenade seems oppressive by comparison. She searches the cliffs ahead for some way of getting back up to the headland but the nearest ramp up is five minutes’ walk away. If someone is following her, if someone means her harm, she shouldn’t be trapped somewhere so isolated.

She moves towards the ramp, speed-walks almost. The bumpy motion begins to lull Bobby to sleep. She keeps glancing over her shoulder at the top of the cliffs. There’s no one there. It must have been a seagull. Some pensioner’s dog dicing with death in the search for salty-sea smells. But she doesn’t slow her pace. She looks at the picture of Bobby eating soil and types out a caption:

Organic. Vegan. Sustainable.

Soil-based is the new plant-based.

She wrinkles her nose. It’s not amazing but it’ll do. She’s about to post it when