by Jenna Ellis
It’s Monday morning, but the place is still crammed with buggies and exhausted-looking mothers, who have brought their hyper toddlers to bounce in static joy down the bumpy slide. The sound is deafening, not least because the FunPlex radio-station playlist that Dean, the manager, insists upon us playing all day is thumping out Pink at full volume. I sniff the FunPlex uniform Aertex shirt I’ve had to borrow this morning, having come straight from Scott’s. It stinks.
‘Yeah, but’s it a job. Better than McDonald’s.’
Sometimes Leticia’s lack of aspiration floors me. But then her bovine attitude to life appears to mean that she suffers far less angst than someone like me, who feels like I’m suffocating most of the time; like I’m caught in an hourglass, the sand slipping away beneath me.
‘I thought you liked kids, anyway,’ she says, accusingly, flipping over the page to study the Photoshopped ‘fat’ pictures of some poor soap star.
She’s right. I do like kids, but this wasn’t what I imagined when I got the job here. I thought that working with children would be fun. That’s why I qualified as a nanny, after all. But nobody around here can afford a nanny, it seems. Even the footballers’ wives have been slow on the uptake to employ me, opting for Polish live-ins, who will empty the dishwasher, clean, iron and cook as well as doing the night-feed.
I haven’t told Scott, but I’ve sent my details off to an agency in London, but it’s a pipe dream, of course. Could I really cut it as a nanny for a posh family in Chelsea? Would I fit in with those cashmere Fionas, with their tight jeans and designer handbags? Would I be able to drive the family Range Rover around the streets of London, to drop the little darlings at the overpriced nursery school?
Yes, I would, part of me thought as I sent off my application, kissing the envelope for good luck. I’ve imagined it, these past few days, spinning across the countryside to London, in a shimmering, sparkling, magical glow. But I’ve heard nothing back, and the truth has dawned. There are a million better-qualified nannies, with more experience and better references than me. Let’s face it, real-life Fionas want to be nannies themselves these days.
So I’m stuck here in FunPlex until something happens. And please, God, let something happen.
Leticia sighs and heaves her considerable bulk off the counter, as the door opens and there’s a blast of icy air and the next gaggle of women and kids pile through the door.
One of the women in the front is new. I haven’t seen her before. I notice her because she has nicely highlighted hair and her kid in the buggy is wearing a tanktop and cords. Posh, then.
She has tastefully done make-up and normal eyebrows, which is rare for our clientele. She has what looks suspiciously like a proper designer leather handbag on her arm, and she’s holding a large Starbucks coffee cup in her manicured hand. I watch her kid, a sweet little boy with curly blond hair, wriggle free from his buggy and make a beeline for the ball-pit.
‘Jasper, NO,’ the woman cries. ‘Wait.’ She lunges forward, accidentally chucking the contents of her coffee cup at me in the process.
I gasp as the hot liquid lands mostly on the desk and splashes all up the front of my shirt. It’s scorching.
‘Oh,’ the woman exclaims, flushing. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say, fanning the shirt away from my stomach with my fingertips. Leticia, unimpressed, moves her magazine away from the brown spillage and then the computer keyboard. She stares at me, like it’s my fault.
The woman dumps her toffee-coloured leather bag in a dry patch on the counter and quickly unpacks.
‘Here, take this,’ she says, handing me a bulky rolled-up magazine, then rummaging inside to find a packet of tissues, which she hands me, apologizing again. I mop up the coffee as she hurriedly pays and runs after the little boy.
‘What about your magazine?’ I call after her, but she flaps her hand. She clearly doesn’t want it. I unfurl it, to see that it’s The Lady. I’ve heard of it, but never read it.
I go into the staff loos whilst Leticia goes to get another shirt for me from the locker. Whilst I’m waiting, I flick through the magazine. At the back I see an advertising section for nanny jobs and greedily read through them. Why haven’t I looked here before? One in particular catches my eye:
Articulate, presentable, well-mannered English girl required for an exclusive domestic position immediately in Upstate New York. Preferably aged 20–25. References and photograph essential. All travel and expenses paid. Salary details at interview. Basic qualifications required.
Exclusive. I wonder what that means? But it’s in America. Wow! Upstate New York. I bet it is super-posh.
I stare in the chipped mirror at my shabby coffee-drenched reflection, the words whirring in my head.
‘Sophie, I’ve got a new shirt for you,’ Leticia calls from the other side of the door. ‘You decent?’
I’m twenty-two. I have good skin. Scott says I’m pretty. And I can pass as articulate.
Upstate New York. Dare I?
‘Yes, I’m decent,’ I call back. Then I rip out the advert and fold it carefully, stuffing it deep into the back pocket of my jeans.
4
Tiff is sitting cross-legged on my single bed sucking a lollipop. Behind her is a pin-board with a montage of ancient photos – mostly selfies – of the pair of us, on the Big Dipper in Blackpool and in various pubs, and of me and Scott kissing at New Year.
‘What about this one?’ I say, looking over my shoulder at the back-view of the little black dress in the slim wardrobe mirror. This is the one I’ve selected for the interview in London tomorrow. I stand on tiptoes, as if I’m wearing heels. The dress is short, but it shows off my legs, which I know are one of my best assets. Dancer’s legs, like Mum’s were. I grab my hair and put it up, as if it’s already in the smart updo I’m planning.
I give my best glittering ‘give me the job’ look at Tiff, who tips her head over to one side, and the lollipop stick wiggles from side to side. She takes it out of her mouth and I can tell she doesn’t approve. But that’s why she’s here. Because she’s been my best friend since, well, forever, and she’s nothing if not honest.
It was Tiff who told me to apply straight away to the advert I ripped out of The Lady. Tiff who patiently peered over my shoulder and edited my CV, daring me to send it off. And Tiff who knew how much it meant when I got a call this morning asking me to come for an interview tomorrow. and so now she’s here, to help me prepare.
‘Isn’t it a job interview to be a nanny? They don’t want you to look like you’re going to a nightclub,’ she says. ‘Don’t you have anything . . . I don’t know. Mumsy? Frumpy?’
Her words throw me into despair and I growl in frustration.
‘This is my only good dress,’ I moan. ‘Scott bought it for me.’
Tiff’s eyebrows rise, one more easily than the other, which is pierced with a small silver hoop.
‘Ah, Scotty dog,’ she says, knowing that particular nickname annoys me. ‘I take it you haven’t told him yet?’
I turn to face the mirror, away from her searching gaze and into my own deceitful one, letting my hair fall around my shoulders. I lower my heels to the floor.
‘There’s no point. I mean, I would if I got the job, but it’s highly unlikely that someone is going to fly me to America,’ I tell her, but I can feel a secret quickening of my pulse. This is so fateful, so – I don’t know . . . right. Is that the word? The thought of jetting out of here to a new adventure on the other side of the world has filled me with a kind of longing I can’t seem to ignore, no matter how hard I try. I won’t think about Scott or what he might say.
‘You wouldn’t leave, though, would you?’ Tiff says. ‘I mean, if you got the job. You wouldn’t actually go. Not really. You wouldn’t give up all that sex, for a start. I mean, this is just to see if you could.’
I hear the hint of worry in her voice, despite her joke about the sex. She’s always astounded by how often Scott and I ‘do’ it.
No wonder she thinks this is all a game. But it’s not. At least, it might have started out that way – the whole application thing – as a kind of a fantasy, a kind of dare. But what if I really do get given an opportunity to make it all come true?
Dad saves me from answering, opening the door to my room and poking his head in. I wish he’d knock. He’s grown a beard recently, which doesn’t suit him. It’s grey and makes him look even older than he is. Mum would never have let him grow it, if she were still alive. He has dark circles under his eyes, giving him a weary, hangdog look. The anti-depressants the doctor gave him were supposed to have kicked in by now, but I can’t tell the difference. He still looks, well . . . sad. And seeing him this way – well, it breaks my heart.
‘I’m popping out,’ he says, but he doesn’t look at me. We both know this is a euphemism for the fact that he’s going to the betting shop and then to the pub. ‘Make sure Ryan eats his tea.’
I can hear the noise of the PlayStation in the lounge where my little brother has taken up residence on the sofa. He’ll be there for hours. Dad relies on me like this, more and more. But lately I’ve started thinking that me being here to parent for him half the time might be what is stopping Dad from getting better. Or getting over Mum. If I wasn’t here, then he wouldn’t be able to go to the pub. He’d have to look after Ryan and that might help him move on.
Dad suddenly clocks what I’m wearing. ‘Going somewhere?’ he asks.
I catch Tiff’s eye in the mirror. She’s kept all my confidences before. Even about Mr Walters. I know she’ll keep the interview a secret and not throw anyone into an unnecessary panic, but in her eyes I see something I’ve never seen before. An acceptance. A sudden realization that I’m serious. And, with it, a willingness to let me go. I was quite mistaken; she wants this to happen for me just as much as I do.
‘No,’ I tell Dad, but as my eyes stay locked with Tiff’s, I know that I will try my hardest to get this job. And that I’m going to do it, for me.
5
‘This way, please, Miss—’
‘Henshaw,’ I remind the woman, as she walks surprisingly fast down a long corridor. She’s carrying a clipboard and I look at her sturdy calves beneath American-tan tights, as I set off behind her. She’s wearing those small blocky-heeled shoes with a gold square on the front that have never suited anyone in the history of the world.
She came to the reception area just now, where I’d been waiting nervously for half an hour, and introduced herself, but I didn’t catch her name. It sounded German. Gunter, or something. Gunther? Did she notice that my hand was trembling when she shook it? She has a strange accent. Not English, but not American, either. European of some kind, for sure. Most likely she’s German, I guess.
She’s not what I expected. She’s a po-faced, uptight-looking middle-aged woman, with grey-streaked mousy hair scraped back in a bun. She looks like she’s never farted. Let alone laughed about it.
I tug self-consciously at the hem of my skirt. Tiff was right. I should have worn tights. My legs feel too exposed. Like I’m underdressed. I certainly am, compared to old Gunter. She’s wearing a tan-and-cream dogtooth tweed suit, which looks at once prim and expensive.
My high heels sink into the thick carpet as I trot after her, but I can’t help being mesmerized by glimpses of the view I get from the glass panels of the offices on either side of the hushed corridor.
We’re in The Shard, that huge building near London Bridge station. It’s been so long since I’ve been to London that I didn’t even know it had been built, so the address was a bit of a shock, and I had to check the piece of paper I was holding three times before I had the nerve to come in here. I’ve never been in a skyscraper before, let alone one like this. It’s like I’m in a spaceship.
Ahead, at the end of the corridor, Frau Gunter opens a thick wooden door, which swishes against the plush carpet, and nods at me to walk inside. As I step over the threshold I take in the aroma of the stunning room beyond the door, and let satisfaction fill my lungs.
It smells of money.
Or of how I imagine money to smell, at any rate: of the best leather and of expensive perfume. Across the vast expanse of pristine cream carpet is a glass wall with a panoramic view. For a second, it takes my breath away. It’s as if we’re on top of the world. I can see the whole of London stretched out before me: thousands of buildings, their windows winking in the sunlight; red buses on the bridges, barges on the sparkling river. Seeing the pulsing, breathing city right there fills me with awe and a thrill of excitement that, for once, I’m part of it.
‘Miss Henshaw?’
I turn to see the older woman gesturing to a soft fawn leather sofa and I quickly walk to it and sit down carefully, remembering to tuck my dress in underneath me and cross my legs. I lower myself, keeping my knees together, but the sofa seems to swallow me. I smile at her, but she cocks her head to one side and frowns.
‘You don’t look comfortable. Please. Stand.’
Surprised, and worried that I’ve already mucked the whole interview up through my lack of sofa etiquette, I get up – less gracefully. I think I’ve flashed my gusset, but she hasn’t noticed as she’s walking towards the other side of the room where there’s a plush bar area. She drags a high stool towards me.
‘This will be better, I think. Sit.’
With difficulty I hoist myself onto the stool, my back to the view. I feel a bit of an idiot, sitting on the high chair in the middle of the room. I notice now that in front of the bar area is a tripod with a camera on it, facing me. Gunter sees me looking at it.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but my clients asked me to record the interviews,’ she says. ‘They cannot be here, so I will send them the tapes later.’
I nod, wondering how many other people she’s already interviewed. I’m relieved, too. She’s not the client, then. I wouldn’t be working for her. If she had kids at all, I imagine them to be frowning blond ones, in stiff lederhosen.
Gunter stands behind the camera, adjusts the angle so that it’s pointing away from the sofa and directly at the stool, and then, referring to her clipboard, starts the interview abruptly, with no preamble. I tell her a bit about my experience, but I can’t help my eyes darting to the camera occasionally. It’s weird being recorded, and I feel judged in a way I can’t put my finger on. I can see the tiny red recording light, and a miniature version of myself in the shiny black lens of the camera.
Who will watch these tapes later, I wonder? The whole set-up makes me think that ‘the clients’ (whoever they are) must be rich. As in super-rich.
Gunter nods as I speak, but her steely expression soon means that I’m exaggerating my qualifications. Trying to be light-hearted and amusing, I tell her about my initial desire to be a dancer/actress when I left school, which was quickly superseded by my love of children. How this is what I long to do. That I’m brilliant with kids, and kids love me. That I’m flexible, easy-going, yet strict, of course. Manners are my big thing. Isn’t it awful when kids don’t have manners?
I’m babbling a monologue, but I can’t tell whether she’s impressed or not. Eventually, when I pause, she says, ‘And you exercise regularly? You’re fit? You’d say you have stamina?’
For a moment I’m tempted to joke, Of course I have stamina! You try going out with someone with Scott’s libido. But of course I don’t. I lie instead; about how I don’t mind working long hours and how I regularly swim to keep in shape. Although that’s not true. I hate going to our local public swimming pool. All that body-piercing and tattoos on show makes me squeamish.
The truth is that I just have lucky genes from Mum. I seem to be able to eat loads without getting fat. People always used to tell her she was lucky, but there’s nothing lucky about getting breast cancer at forty. Besides, everyone’s thin when they die of cancer. Believe me.
‘You don’t have any commitments here, do you? I mean emotional commitments?’ She glances down at her clipboard. ‘You’re single?’
‘Yes,’ I lie, backing up the fib on the application form that Tiff made me tell for my own good.
My cheeks colour as I wriggle in my seat and cross my legs with difficulty and sit on my hands, which I realize I’ve been waving around far too much. She glances up at me, her eyebrows drawing together. Is she some kind of body-language expert? In which case, she must know I’m lying. But it’s too late now. I can’t tell her about Scott. Yes, he’s an emotional commitment, but not a ‘forever’ one, surely? But even as I justify my lie like this, I know I’m being unfair. Scott has hinted enough times that our relationship is super-serious, as far as he’s concerned.
‘You’d be free to travel straight away?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, biting my lip.
‘And how are you in new situations? Would you say that you’re an adaptable kind of person?’
‘Oh yes. Totally. Completely flexible,’ I tell her, with a little laugh, knowing that I’ve gone a bit over the top. ‘No, seriously. I believe that you can only truly live life if you expand your horizons. That’s why I’m here. Always do what you feel in your heart. Even if it scares you. That’s what I always say.’
‘And, Miss Henshaw, would you say that you’re a discreet kind of person? I assume that you are. You don’t appear to use your Facebook account ever, and you’re not on Twitter, as far as I can see, but perhaps you prefer other social networks?’
I’m amazed that she’s checked, although I realize that she must have, for me even to be sitting here. I don’t tell her that this is not through choice. That I stopped going on Facebook when Ryan got cyber-bullied at school after Mum died. In a show of solidarity for Dad, I stopped writing anything at all about any of us online.
‘That’s not my thing,’ I tell her. ‘I think a person is entitled to a private life that stays just that. Private,’ I add, putting as much gravitas into my voice as I can. ‘In my opinion, people share far too much personal information about themselves that I’d rather not know.’