What the nanny saw
What the nanny saw
What the nanny saw
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2011 by Fiona Neill
First edition: Michael Joseph 2011
First American edition: Riverhead Books 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
What the nanny saw / Fiona Neill.
1. Families—England—London—Fiction. 2. Nannies—Fiction. 3. Family secrets—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6114.E55W47 2012 2012009900
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For John and Mags
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
—John Maynard Keynes
“When did you first notice something was wrong?”
Ali Sparrow sighed. Everyone asked her the same question. And she was always careful to give the same answer. But somehow she had expected greater originality from Foy Chesterton, a man who had recently sung every verse of “American Pie” at his seventieth-birthday party and organized a signed copy of his self-published autobiography for the three hundred guests as a going-home present. Although, of course, now the happy ending looked a little premature.
Ali had come into the room hoping for solitude and an excuse to examine the objects on the circular mahogany dining table in her own time before the antiques dealer arrived. As had Foy, actually. But by the time she noticed the familiar tousle of wiry gray hair emerging from an armchair by the fireplace it was too late for either of them to retreat without having it look as though they were trying to avoid each other.
“Acts of folly,” Ali wanted to correct him. Instead she stared at the chair until its red and green silk stripes started to dance before her eyes. This room had always intimidated her. It was less the imposing furniture, the hard bronze statues by Caffieri that straddled the fireplace, or the armchairs in ghostly colors with feathery fringes around their edges. After more than two years, she was accustomed to its bi-tonal formality. It was more what went on here. This was the room where everyone was called to account, and she was no exception. She walked toward Foy, aware that her role had imperceptibly altered over the past month and she no longer needed to humor him, but unsure how little she could indulge him.
Ali was vaguely aware of him looking down at her bare feet. Apart from Foy, no one wore shoes in the drawing room unless there was a party. It was one of Bryony’s rules. Ali enjoyed the way the pile was so thick you could feel it like grass between your toes and trace your tracks back across the room. But there was something vulnerable about bare feet, especially when the rest of your body was covered and you were standing before someone who had an innate ability to make you feel exposed. Instinctively, she curled her toes into the pile, but it was too late. He had already absorbed the gold ring on her index toe and the small tattoo across the instep.
“It’s just decorative,” said Ali, anticipating his next question. “Like wallpaper.” She remained standing, knowing that if she sat down she might never get up. The urge to unburden herself might prove irresistible, and then she would write herself out of her role in this drama. Besides, she was due to meet Felix Naylor in less than two hours for what he described as a “preliminary chat,” and he had given her firm instructions to talk to no one but him because no one else could be trusted.
“Stellar trajectory. PPE at Oxford, Harvard MBA, analyst, associate, vice president, director, M.D. by thirty-five. Visionary investment banker,” muttered Foy, picking out phrases from the newspaper and arguing with himself. “Well, he didn’t see this one coming, did he?”
Ali ignored him.
“So when did you?” Foy persisted. He started to close the newspaper in his lap. It was The Guardian. He folded it in half, smoothed the surface so many times that the palm of his hand blackened, and then into quarters, as though engaged in an origami project. Until the scandal broke two weeks ago, Ali had never seen Foy read a paper that wasn’t The Telegraph, and she tried to think of an appropriate witticism to highlight this unlikely change of political allegiance. Even now, shattered as he was by events of the past couple of weeks, Foy was still someone people liked to please. Then Ali saw he was reading another story about Bryony and Nick, and decided to change tack.
“Nothing ever feels quite right when you move in with someone else’s family,” Ali responded, pleased to note that the nervousness she betrayed the
first time someone had posed the question had been replaced by something approaching quiet confidence.
It was her first line of defense and as close to the truth as she dared go for the moment. She half turned toward Foy and began rattling off a few carefully inconsequential examples that best illustrated her outsider status at 97 Holland Park Crescent, hoping it would distract him from what was surely another blistering piece about his daughter and son-in-law. What was the point in reading everything that was written about them? Ali wondered. It didn’t change anything. It just made everyone feel even gloomier.
“The dog still growls at me when I come into the room, I’m the only one without a nickname, and people sound disappointed when I answer the phone,” she said, muddling up her list of responses so they sounded less rehearsed. Over the past couple of weeks she had discovered that the most persistent inquisitor, even Bryony’s younger sister, Hester, was generally satisfied by a variation on this response.
“Come on, Ali, you can do better than that,” said Foy wearily. It was one of his stock phrases. One of the few he used in English—“Alea jacta est” and “Carpe diem” being his firm favorites. Although it struck Ali that the idea that the die was cast was totally at odds with the concept of seizing the day. Especially now. This brought to mind an even more appropriate and as yet untapped example of Ali’s outsider status: The expressions invented by Foy and adopted by his extended family when they wanted to pass comment on people without anyone else understanding what they meant. Chesteranto, he called it.
Nick, for example, was currently assumed to be “at forties and fifties.” This was code for depression, although “depressed” seemed an understatement for what Nick must be going through. It didn’t sound monumental enough; Bryony was constantly “in the breakers,” snapping at anyone who crossed her path at the wrong moment; and seventeen-year-old Izzy described a journalist who buttonholed Ali at the end of the road the other day as “menacing,” which meant he was dangerously attractive. Ali had never used any of these expressions. Neither had Nick, which seemed significant now. Although through the prism of the scandal, everything seemed imbued with significance.
“I know you feel more at home here than anywhere you have ever lived,” said Foy, noisily folding the newspaper into an even smaller shape, as though this might somehow diminish the contents of the story on the inside page. He was trying to ensnare her in conversation. Still, Ali winced at the incontrovertible truth of this statement. She hadn’t wanted to become one of those employees who live their life through someone else’s family. She’d seen enough examples of that in the time she had worked here. They attracted that kind. But moving in with the Skinners was like relocating to an exotic country and finding the prospect of going back to live in your own impossible. Life was simply more exciting with them than without them. Especially now.
Ali winced mostly because Foy’s comment was a guilty reminder that she hadn’t returned any calls from her parents for more than a week. There were six saved messages on her mobile phone that needed dealing with. Four from them. One from Felix Naylor and one from Mira, a Ukrainian nanny friend.
For the first time since she had moved in, her parents had left a couple on the Skinners’ answering machine. Bryony dutifully played both to her yesterday. They were sandwiched between a bland message from one of Bryony’s colleagues hoping she was weathering the storm and wondering what to tell her clients and a more urgent request to call Sophia Wilbraham, a parent at the children’s school who lived just down the road. The same Sophia Wilbraham, Ali recalled, who came home after her travel plans were canceled, to find her husband in bed with their nanny of five years. At the time, it seemed there could be no greater scandal than that.
Ali’s messages were banal by comparison. The first and most embarrassing was from her mother, asking whether she was all right and suggesting she might like to come home for a while until things had blown over. It wasn’t the note of anxiety in her mother’s voice that annoyed Ali, it was the treachery implicit in the idea that she would leave the Skinners just when they needed her most. The second, from her father, said calmly that they didn’t believe everything they read in the papers, and it would be nice to hear Ali’s version of events. As he said good-bye, her mother interrupted to say that the neighbors were asking questions that she couldn’t answer.
“Sounds hideous,” Bryony said, raising an eyebrow. “You’d better phone them. Before the alliums bow their heads in shame.”
Naturalistic planting schemes hadn’t reached Cromer, Ali had wanted to point out. It was still all sweet peas and nasturtiums. But she wasn’t even sure that Bryony recognized this description of her own carefully landscaped garden. Instead she had tried to reassure Bryony that their neighbors in Cromer were the kind of people who thought it was rude to hang their underwear to dry on the washing line and the idea that they were pressing her parents for details was ludicrous. Bryony, however, had stopped listening.
“Ali, you’re ignoring me,” Foy whined. She was suddenly aware that he was speaking to her again. She resolved to call her parents that evening, knowing that by then her good intentions would inevitably be eclipsed by further drama today. Bryony’s colleague was wrong to describe this crisis as a storm. A storm had a beginning and an end. A storm passed. This was something you couldn’t shelter from, and although Ali could see how it might have begun, she had no idea how it would end.
“What I’m trying to say is that you fit in,” Foy said benevolently. “In a way that none of the others did.” He pointed at Ali with a pair of scissors for emphasis and then unfolded The Guardian and began cutting out the story. Since the crisis, Foy spent most of the day in the drawing room at Holland Park Crescent, going through newspapers and trawling the Internet for pieces about Nick and Bryony. He consumed everything he could on the banking crisis and the credit crunch. Ali didn’t have the heart to point out to him that a fat package of photocopied stories arrived from a press-cuttings agency every morning and was read by Bryony almost as soon as it landed on the doormat at six-thirty.
He smiled warmly up at her. It was a rare occurrence these days. Foy was diminished by events. His eyes were watery with regret. They looked for sympathy but mostly found none. Tita, his wife of forty-nine years, seemed to blame him for what had happened. His youngest daughter, Hester, appeared a couple of times a week and was overly solicitous, fetching him cushions and making him unwanted cups of tea. It was her way of silently highlighting the fact that Bryony, the child she perceived as her father’s favorite, not only had finally come unstuck but also was in some way precipitating his decline.
“Don’t try and flatter me into submission.” Ali smiled despite herself.
“So you do know more than you’re revealing,” said Foy.
“Save the analysis for later,” said Ali, quoting back one of Foy’s favorite phrases to him.
“There might not be any later for me,” said Foy, only half joking. “My body is giving up on me.”
“Don’t be so maudlin,” said Ali.
“Do you know that last night I had a dream that I was young again?” Foy said. “It’s the first time that’s happened for years. I think it’s a sign I’m about to pop it.”
He dropped the newspaper cutting onto a pile on the floor, inhaled deeply, and carefully put a hand on each armrest. He splayed his fingers as wide as they could go and dug them into the expensive upholstery to gain purchase. Then he tried to push himself up out of the chair. His arms trembled with the effort, and for a few seconds his hips hovered above the seat. Within seconds he slumped back down, looking forlorn.
“Damn legs,” he muttered.
Ali turned away from him toward the table, knowing that he wouldn’t want her to see the humiliation in his eyes. She heard him grunt as he tried to catch his breath.
“I was at a party and all my friends were ther
e,” Foy wheezed, ignoring what had just occurred. “They had aged, but I looked exactly as I did in my early thirties. People kept coming up to me and telling me how well I looked. Julian Peterson, do you remember him? He’s Bryony’s godfather. He told me in great detail about all his problems with his prostate and how he had to get up four or five times in the night to pee but his stream was reduced to a trickle. He said the doctor was the first person to stick his finger up his arse in twenty-five years.”
“I can’t imagine Mr. Peterson speaking like that,” said Ali in disbelief. She recalled the polite, quiet man who came for lunch at the family home in Corfu at least a couple of times in the summer.
“Well, it was a dream,” acknowledged Foy, grateful at last to have Ali’s full attention. “I couldn’t believe it, either, because he’s only marginally less buttoned up than Eleanor, and they’ve been married for fifty years and I just couldn’t imagine her doing that to him.”
“Absolutely,” agreed Ali, wondering whether bemusement or shock was the quickest way of derailing this unexpected outburst.
“Then I realized it was all just an excuse to overwhelm me with his superior medical knowledge,” continued Foy. “He started talking about partial prostatectomy and how the doctor stuck a resectoscope up his penis.”
“But Mr. Peterson isn’t a doctor, is he?” asked Ali.
“Quite right,” agreed Foy. “He was deputy director general of the BBC. But Julian always likes to remind me of his superior intellect and the fact that I never went to university.”
“Does he?” said Ali, reminded of her own lack of qualifications.
“Then he said that it had made him impotent,” said Foy. “And I felt this huge sense of gratification, a tsunami of satisfaction, pour over my body. Because it’s the loss of desire that makes you feel old, not the fact that you can’t remember someone’s name, and I felt at that moment as though I had won a significant battle.”
What the Nanny Saw
2022, Mystery & thriller, 1h 30m
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What the Nanny Saw
It’s the summer of 2008. For the past decade Nick and Bryony Skinner and their four children have ridden high on the economic boom, but their luck is about to run out. Suddenly, the privileged family finds itself at the center of a financial scandal:
their Central London house is besieged by the press, Nick disappears, and Bryony and the children become virtual prisoners in their own home. And Ali, their trusted nanny, watches it all. As the babysitter, she brings a unique insider-outsider perspective to the family, seeing far more than even the family itself is capable of. But when a reporter with a personal connection to the story comes asking her for the inside scoop, will Ali remain loyal to the family who never saw her as anything other than the help? Or will she tell her side?
Written with Fiona Neill’s delicious humor and addictive style, What the Nanny Saw is a keenly observed, often comical chronicle of the urban wealthy elite, of parents who are often too busy to notice what is going on under their own noses, of children left to their own devices, and of a young nanny thrown into a role she doesn’t know how to play. It is a morality tale of our time, a tale of betrayal, the corrosive influence of too much money, and why good people sometimes do bad things.
548 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
About the author
Fiona Neill
Fiona Neill is a novelist and journalist. She was born in 1966. Her first novel The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy, based on her column in The Times Magazine every Saturday, was published in 2007. It was widely acclaimed and went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller that sold in twenty-five countries.
Brought up in Norfolk, she now lives in London with her husband and three children.
Fiona is presenting a five-part series on BBC Radio 4 called Famous Footsteps, starting on January 12th. Find out more about the series by visiting the BBC Radio 4 website.
What the Nanny Saw
It’s the summer of 2008. For the past decade Nick and Bryony Skinner and their four children have ridden high on the economic boom, but their luck is about to run out. Suddenly, the privileged family finds itself at the center of a financial scandal:
their Central London house is besieged by the press, Nick disappears, and Bryony and the children become virtual prisoners in It’s the summer of 2008. For the past decade Nick and Bryony Skinner and their four children have ridden high on the economic boom, but their luck is about to run out. Suddenly, the privileged family finds itself at the center of a financial scandal:
their Central London house is besieged by the press, Nick disappears, and Bryony and the children become virtual prisoners in their own home. And Ali, their trusted nanny, watches it all. As the babysitter, she brings a unique insider-outsider perspective to the family, seeing far more than even the family itself is capable of. But when a reporter with a personal connection to the story comes asking her for the inside scoop, will Ali remain loyal to the family who never saw her as anything other than the help? Or will she tell her side?
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When I began reading What the Nanny Saw I wasn’t overly impressed or bowled away by the first few chapters. It seemed slow to start and only mildly interesting. However, as I delved deeper into the book, I found it harder and harder to put down. The plot was absolutely compelling.
If I were to rate this book on character development alone, I would probably give it a two. While the story is rich with characters, I found that I was indifferent to them. The main character Ali is the nanny who sees a When I began reading What the Nanny Saw I wasn’t overly impressed or bowled away by the first few chapters. It seemed slow to start and only mildly interesting. However, as I delved deeper into the book, I found it harder and harder to put down. The plot was absolutely compelling.
If I were to rate this book on character development alone, I would probably give it a two. While the story is rich with characters, I found that I was indifferent to them. The main character Ali is the nanny who sees all in her three years working for the wealthy, powerful, and relatively dysfunctional Skinner family. The story is a recount from her memories and perspective, but in third person. She’s not the most interesting character I’ve ever read…far from it, to be honest. While on occasion she did one or two surprising things, overall I found her to be rather bland. This was a stark contrast to the Skinner family, all of whom had very loud or dominant traits. It was wise of Fiona Neill to use an outsider to tell the story. Ali’s role in the family is very intriguing—they can’t function without her and yet she’s not quite a family member and is judged by different standards. She represents the perfect blend of propriety and impropriety.
The plot is where the fun lies. I couldn’t help thinking repeatedly how this would make a fantastic movie. I really wouldn’t be surprised if a year or two from now, I see a movie “based on What the Nanny Saw”. The intriguing family dynamics mixed with society’s expectations and norms set the basis for the rise and fall of this story. Very much a part of London’s high society, the Skinner adults do their best to keep their status as clean and regal as possible while the Skinner children explore pushing their boundaries in inappropriate ways. A glimpse into the lives of other families like theirs provides an interesting and juicy ‘gossip’ factor. Everyone wants to know what and how the other families are doing to slip up. The torrid affairs, corporate lies, and societal fallout when things start to go downhill for the Skinners makes you want to turn the pages as fast as possible to know what comes next.
Despite my initial misgivings and my lack of investment in the characters, I was glued. Thanks to the tangled and fun plotline my rating for the book shot up much higher than I expected it to be! Definitely a good casual read.
At first glance you might think that this book is another story of a young female being overworked while caring for privileged children of rich snobby parents, ala The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin. But if you keep up with this story you come across a much deeper read that involves the 2008 banking crises, family interactions and even the theme of trust and loyalty.
Nick Skinner is the managing director of an investment bank connected with a major US investment bank. Bryony owns a financial pu At first glance you might think that this book is another story of a young female being overworked while caring for privileged children of rich snobby parents, ala The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin. But if you keep up with this story you come across a much deeper read that involves the 2008 banking crises, family interactions and even the theme of trust and loyalty.
Nick Skinner is the managing director of an investment bank connected with a major US investment bank. Bryony owns a financial public relations firm. These two self-centered, career-obsessed and high strung adults have a life of privilege. They live in a huge mansion in a prestigious area of London. They go on vacation to Corfu, Greece where Bryony’s parents, Foy and Tita Chesterton, own a villa and olive orchard. They send their children to an exclusive London school, throw lavish dinner parties, and spend money on clothes never worn and food eaten. They also seem to go through nannies at a regular pace.
Enter twenty-one year old Ali Sparrow. In 2006 Ali is almost finished with her English degree at the University of East Anglia but for financial and tutor reasons she must take a leave of absence. Her father is a fisherman in Cromer, a small old fishing town. Her mother desperately tries to help Ali’s older sister, Jo, kick a heroin habit which threatens to destroy the family. So instead of heading home during her educational break Ali looks to London for a temporary job.
Ali is hired as the nanny to the Skinner’s four children. Jake is about to turn 17 years old and getting ready to move on to higher education while Izzy is their 15 year old daughter beginning to experiment with life (think drugs and sex). Then there are the five year old twins, Hector & Alfie, who are so connected both mentally and physically that they seem to be just one person. The children are given everything but parental love and Ali finds that she becomes their parent for attention and even love. And in return she begins to care for the Skinners as if they were her own family
For the next two years Ali is absorbed into the family structure as she is given a wonderful room, great pay and even taken on international trips. The only other staff member in the house is the Philippine housekeeper, Malea, who keeps to herself and is of little help to Ali. Over time Ali becomes invisible to family and guests and as such is able to watch the family situations and interactions as if a fly on the wall. Ali’s observation of a family that starts to implode both mentally and financially as the US banking crisis crosses the ocean due to greed, arrogance and unethical behavior makes for an interesting story. At times the family is like the saying “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” But it is Nick’s ethical and moral actions that become a mystery to everyone.
There is a bit of business terminology and writing in the book that might throw those who have no business or financial knowledge but that should not stop anyone from reading this wonderful book to find out just “what the nanny saw.” And how what Ali saw ends up having the most powerful impact on the Skinner family. Neill is a London Times columnist and author of the best selling Slummy Mummy. A great read for anyone who likes contemporary fiction, English families, domestic fiction, business fiction and stories about family secrets.
‘What the Nanny Did’ or ‘What the Nanny Didn’t Do but Should Have Done’ or even ‘Who the Nanny Did’ would have all been better titles for this book.
This book was terrible. And the funny thing is that the person who read it before me agreed as well! I picked this book up at my local thrift store, and the previous reader had made notes all along the margins correcting the authors spelling, grammar, and loop holes. So that was an added bonus to this story.
I only read this book for a personal read ‘What the Nanny Did’ or ‘What the Nanny Didn’t Do but Should Have Done’ or even ‘Who the Nanny Did’ would have all been better titles for this book.
This book was terrible. And the funny thing is that the person who read it before me agreed as well! I picked this book up at my local thrift store, and the previous reader had made notes all along the margins correcting the authors spelling, grammar, and loop holes. So that was an added bonus to this story.
I only read this book for a personal reading challenge, and I purposely did not look up any reviews or even read what this book was about before I began reading it, so I didn’t know what to expect.
Truthfully, I should have stopped reading this book. I have not finished a book in a long time that disgusted me as much as this book has. Besides the five year old twins, there was not an honest soul in this book. Affairs ran amuck between nannies and husbands, husbands and best friends spouses and husbands and baby-sitters, and the «protagonist» (I «» because I can’t give anyone credit who is willing to have an affair with a married man whom she baby-sits for) has no sexual moral compass.
Neill writes in a way that makes all nannies under the age of 30 seem as though they are willing to ruin children’s lives by sleeping with their male boss, and that the only nannies who won’t sleep around are overweight unattractive elderly women.
Furthermore, this book has so many loose ends, and Neill did a HORRIBLE job at actually keeping within the theme of the book. If she wanted to incriminate Nick more, she should have written more about his actions than the fact that Jake and his nanny were sleeping together all the time.
Yes, there was a lot that the nanny saw, but very little had to do with what Nick was doing. Mainly she saw: affairs wreck marriages and families, a teenager in her care suffer with anorexia yet was too afraid to address this with the parents (her employers), saw this same teenager in a drunken sexual act that was being filmed (unbeknown to the girl) and STILL didn’t mention this to her employers, neglected children left right and center because their parents were too busy pursuing the «big life» to pay attention to them, and incompetent parents who don’t know how to work dishwashers and washing machines because there was «help» for that. And yet, through all of this, this nanny that I assume we are supposed to root for, didn’t have any courage to quit, speak up, or even address her concerns.
I’m a nanny, and from my perspective, this girl was a HORRIBLE nanny. Not only did she fail to address issues like anorexia, dangerous drunken and drug induced sexual promiscuity but she slept with her bosses teenage son, and a former tutor (who she happened to baby-sit for).
I could relate to Ali (the nanny) on one level: I know what’s it’s like to be the glue of a family. I’ve worked for many families in my past, and some people seriously can’t function unless someone is taking care of their children for them. Live in Nannies can have it rough.
But I have also worked for wonderful families who just needed an extra hand, and we had a great relationship. Believe it or not, you can be a nanny and not sleep with your boss.
I am going to thoroughly enjoy getting rid of this book.
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What the nanny saw
It wasn’t always like this. Back in the olden days, when butter was scarce and all women wore petticoats, all but the richest parents tamed their own children and thus didn’t have to fret about the childminder being privy to family secrets. Live-in nannies were the preserve of the moneyed classes and were just one of a cavalry of servants, who had their own quarters well away from the master bedrooms.
Alas, it is all different now. Ever since the Home Office «invented» au pairs after the war as a way of encouraging cultural exchange (note: not «as a way of legitimising scandalously underpriced childcare»), an increasing number of middle-class families have been welcoming young foreigners into their homes to live and look after their children on the cheap. While it is important to note the distinction here between nannies, who have childcare qualifications and are paid proper wages, and au pairs, who don’t and are not, when either type live in, problems can begin. Blame the enforced intimacy.
«We see everything,» says Svetlana, a 24-year-old au pair from the Czech Republic. «Even if I don’t especially listen in and can’t hear what’s going on, I can feel when there’s tension in the house.» Like many au pairs and nannies, Svetlana doesn’t have her own granny flat, but a small room within the main house. She shares a bathroom and kitchen, plus general living space with the two children, aged six and seven, and their parents. There is no avoiding her employers’ rows.
Imagine no more. «Do we gossip?» says Kristiana, a 24-year-old Slovakian au pair working with a family in London. «Of course we do!» Happily, the dirt generally stays within the nanny or au pair’s inner circle. «If we were not to say about the things we have seen, we would go insane,» says another.
Sally, a 39-year-old mother of two who has gone through three eastern European au pairs over the past few years, admits to worrying a little about what her au pairs see and hear. «I’m quite lucky in that none of my friends has an au pair, so mine can’t gossip with theirs,» she says. «It’s not so much that I’ve got anything to hide, but I wouldn’t like the idea that my comments about others might be passed on.»
By way of example, Sally confesses to having «quite a regimented, military attitude» towards food. «My kids aren’t allowed Turkey Twizzlers and I don’t approve of other parents giving them to their children, but I wouldn’t want them to know I said that,» she says.
Carol, a lawyer in her early 40s, has an antipodean nanny living in the house with her husband and two preschool children. She counsels that if you are precious about what outsiders know about how your family functions, don’t even try live-in childcare. «You’ll hate it,» she says. «I love it, but then I wasn’t one of those people desperate to move out of a shared house at the end of my student years. It’s great if, like me, you’ve essentially always longed to live in a commune, but bad if you cherish total privacy.» Carol’s idea of a commune, it should be noted, includes a handy flat at the top of the house with its own front door, kitchen and bathroom.
There is an unavoidable trade-off when taking the decision to employ someone in your own home. Unless you have a truly palatial residence and an au pair who has no desire to partake in family life apart from minding the children (which actually goes against the whole philosophy of being an au pair, its meaning being «on par» or equal, after all), you can’t expect him or her to vanish once you get home. In other words, you can’t have your cake and eat it.
«You have to be pretty laid back,» says Sally. «With my first Slovenian au pair I didn’t mind so much when she rearranged the furniture and rolled up the rugs and put the pans in different cupboards, but when she started to interfere with the way I raise my children, enough was enough.»
Former au pair Andrea Conrad set up her agency, Au Pairs Direct, in 1989. She says that families who complain about their au pairs invading their personal space have forgotten, or indeed ignored, the nature of their employment. «Those clients who assume that the au pair is only there to look after the children have misunderstood the nature of the au pair arrangement,» she says. «It’s a cultural exchange and they only get £55 a week, so the au pair is certainly not there for the money.»
Conrad says that the biggest mistake that families make is not setting ground rules at the beginning of the relationship. «From the start it’s so important that both sides are agreed on how much time they are going to spend together and in what capacity,» she says. Unsurprisingly, this is one reason why she advocates going through an agency rather than plucking an unscreened applicant off the internet. «If you don’t go through the proper channels and things go wrong, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself,» she says.
When things do take a turn for the worse, your nanny might not get much cash off the Sunday tabloids for her story, but if you fear her reports may reach undesirable ears, here’s a simple solution from one mother. «Be insanely dull, live a really boring life,» says Carol, «then you needn’t worry about anybody gossiping about you.»
· Some names have been changed.