‘Is this about him smiling?’ he says, picking the towel up from the floor and backhand-tossing it into the laundry bin.
‘It’s about the fact that we have your friend staying at our house and we have no idea how long for.’ He flicks his eyes up at her from beneath the canopy of his thick eyebrows. He’s got that disappointed look in his eyes that makes her feel like a child and around a thousand times more irritated than she was before. ‘I mean, has she told you, in any detail, what she’s actually doing here?’ He strides over to her and presses his index finger onto her lips, stopping Erin saying another word.
‘She’ll hear you,’ he says through a clenched-teeth whisper. Bobby begins to rankle, an arm reaching towards Erin’s neck. Raf hands him over to her and she takes him, shocked at the abruptness of what her fiancé’s just done. It felt aggressive and that’s not Raf at all. ‘Do you know what she’s doing here, Erin, most of the time, what she’s been doing since she’s been here?’ He hasn’t moved, face angled to the floor, voice just above a whisper. ‘Looking after our baby when you’re in London. That’s what she’s doing. That’s why I don’t feel that comfortable saying to her, “Hey, Amanda, how long you staying, mate? Gonna think about slinging your hook? Who’s gonna look after Bobby when you’re gone? No idea really, his mother doesn’t seem to have much interest.”’
Erin opens her mouth and closes it again, like a child’s impression of a goldfish, as Raf stalks over to the window and opens it. The cold air swirls into the room like a phantom. She can’t remember a time that he’s spoken to her with such cruelty, so the first thought she has, a thought that seems to become more and more valid as she computes what he’s just said, is that she must deserve it.
She sits on the bed. Bobby’s crotchety, hungry, so she pulls up her top and presents a breast to him. He turns his head like she’s just revealed a bright light, lets out a shrill wail, bats at her sore nipple. Erin shoves his head onto her boob and after the briefest resistance he begins to nurse.
‘I’m, I’m sorry, that was not kind,’ Raf says, ‘speaking to you like that.’
Erin gets her phone out and starts scrolling through Instagram. More than a hundred new followers. An overwhelming number of messages to respond to. But her fiancé’s just said what he actually thinks and it feels like being stabbed in the throat. Excruciating pain followed by the feeling of having all the wind sucked out of her. He turns to her, spots the phone. She can see him deciding not to comment as he comes over to sit next to her.
‘I saw a bit of that speech you did the other night. You going on about how lonely it is being a mum, how lonely you were, and I just, I thought, I’m working my arse off every day, to put a roof above our heads, time I’d love to be spending with my son and, and you’re not doing it anyway. Amanda is. Even though you know that someone else looking after my son is something I never, ever wanted. I barely remember the time before my mum left, any care I got from Dad has probably fucked me up for life, I just wanted things to be different for Bob.’ He flicks a finger at one of Bobby’s toes. ‘She’s staying here, probably longer than she wanted, because you’ve pretty much asked her to. How many times have I heard you tell her she’s a “godsend”, a “lifesaver”? Maybe she’s desperate to get back to her life but she probably doesn’t feel like she can.’ As if in response, Amanda clatters a heavy pan into the sink.
‘What do you want me to do then?’ Erin looks at Raf before shifting a cushion under Bobby’s bottom. ‘Tell me what you want me to do?’ He sighs so audibly that Bobby opens his eyes and looks up at his dad.
‘I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Everything I’ve done since we met, all I’ve been trying to do.’ He can’t hold Erin’s look and stares away from them, down at the floor. It’s true, Erin thinks, since they first met her happiness has been so much more important to him than his was to her. ‘But nothing seems to be enough, the life I’m trying, working, to give us, it’s not enough for you.’ Erin doesn’t know how to respond, so she leaves his words hanging in the air. ‘I don’t want Amanda living here,’ he says, ‘not really. I want it to be just us. A family. A new chapter away from the city, like we planned. So if you want me to ask her to go, right now, I will happily do that.’ His voice is frail, broken, almost on the edge of tears.
Erin’s phone buzzes and it snaps Raf from his thoughts. She glances down at the screen, an email from Grace. Perhaps it’s about the contract. Every time her phone does anything she hopes it might be the contract from Phibe Digital, the money finally that step closer to her account. She tucks the phone under Bobby, conscious of the optics of checking it now.
‘You’re right about the smiling,’ she says. ‘It should have been me. I’m feeding him.’ Bobby pulls his head away from her nipple before Erin clamps him back on. ‘I half ruined my body giving birth to the little bugger. I thought he’d smile first for me. It’s not Amanda’s fault he didn’t.’ Erin thinks of the
