C. C. MacDonald THE FAMILY FRIEND CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37 CHAPTER 38 CHAPTER 39 CHAPTER 40 CHAPTER 41 CHAPTER 42 CHAPTER 43 CHAPTER 44 CHAPTER 45 CHAPTER 46 CHAPTER 47 CHAPTER 48 CHAPTER 49 CHAPTER 50 CHAPTER 51 CHAPTER 52 CHAPTER 53 CHAPTER 54 CHAPTER 55 CHAPTER 56 CHAPTER 57 CHAPTER 58 CHAPTER 59 CHAPTER 60 CHAPTER 61 CHAPTER 62 CHAPTER 63 CHAPTER 64 CHAPTER 65 CHAPTER 66 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR C. C. MacDonald is a writer and actor based in Margate where he lives with his wife, two children and dog Frankie. The Family Friend is his second novel. Also by C. C. MacDonald Happy Ever After For Mum. 1 Erin’s heels clack along the uneven pavement like castanets. She got off the train eighteen minutes ago. She bought a vanilla doughnut from the delicatessen opposite the station and ate half of it before dropping it in a bin. She filmed herself doing all of this, told her smartphone camera why she was throwing it away – too much sugar – and why she bought it in the first place – it was luminous yellow and made her smile. But when she watched the footage back, she came across a little irritated, probably because she was thinking about having wasted £1.20, so she decided not to post the video. Erin runs her fingers over the ridges of a long fence that hems in the gardens of a row of bungalows, nausea bubbling up from her stomach, giving everything she sees a filter of unpleasantness. She rounds the corner and emerges onto a wider road, where most of the cars drive over the speed limit, and spots the memorial opposite to a little boy who was one of its victims some years ago. Broken shards of old CDs hang from the tree at the memorial’s centre to ward birds away from the dutifully tended floral display and sun-bleached Arsenal shirt. The story goes that the boy’s mother was chatting on the phone and didn’t see him step out. The road is one back from the sea, protected from the harshest ravages of the North Sea wind, but not far enough away to escape the ice water in the air that seems to seep through Erin’s merino-mix cardigan as the light dies away. Glancing up at the houses, the dusk reveals who’s in and who’s out. The colours glowing from the windows remind her of the blinking lights of a Christmas market. The strobing blue of a humungous flat-screen; pink warmth coming through a mid-range red Ikea roller blind upstairs; the ochre tint of an open fire, shadows licking a paved driveway. A cloud must have moved as the sky turns from a muted purple to Technicolor terracotta. She stops outside one of the houses, a bungalow with a dormer stuck out of its roof. The square bay window that stretches over most of its frontage emits a golden hue that gives Erin a swell of warmth and she touches her chest as if she can feel it. She gets out her phone, scans the screen for a moment and posts something before dropping it back into her coat pocket. The January air makes her eyes water. She blinks them dry, scratches her right ear with her shoulder and walks towards the bungalow with the purpose of someone prepared to face the music. She nudges the house’s cast-iron gate gently with her knee and heads up the path. She glances through the window and stops. A man sits at an oval dining table at the back of an open-plan living-kitchen-dining room, smiling. He’s looking at a baby boy with copious dark hair, plumed up in a loose Mohawk, being held out by a striking red-headed woman with a face so chiselled it could have been drawn on a computer. She lifts the baby into the air, staring at him and, is she singing? It seems to Erin like she might be singing. She has the boy stand on her knees and makes him dance, using the hand that isn’t supporting him to move his arms and legs like a marionette. The man glances at the woman and the baby, looks down and his face cracks into a slow smile. The woman puts the baby back into the crook of her arm and looks straight out of the window. Erin knows that she can’t be seen now that it’s darker outside but she ducks away from the woman’s gaze anyway. The man tickles the baby’s palms as he reaches towards him. It looks like something from an advert for a gas company. The happy family laughing with each other in the warmth of the home. The woman holding court, mother, friend, lover. Perfect. Except that’s not her family. It’s Erin’s. 2 BRAUNEoverBRAINS 358 posts 36.2kfollowers 1,321 following ERIN BRAUNE Mum to Bobby. Salty sea-dweller. Bright up your life. Reformed thespian. These are my hangover shades. Because this is my hangover. Banger of a #gifted mini-break @digidetoxglamping. Huge thanks. The cocktails were ting. Not entirely convinced about not having my phone for twenty-four hours. Felt a bit like I’d had a frontal lobotomy. Not the best. BUT my first night away from Bobby-boy was surprisingly fun. I can’t wait to see him but feel racked with guilt and nerves about having left my baby boy behind. IS THIS NORMAL? What if he’s pissed off with me and doesn’t want cuddles?! All your good wishes yesterday made leaving him a lot easier. This piñata was in the bargain bin
