Nanny Confidential

by Philippa Christian

  For my Gran

  This is a work of fiction. While a number of real-life celebrities are referred to by name in this book, they are included for context and realism only, and none of them were actually involved in any of the events described herein. Similarly, none of the characters in this book bear any resemblance to any real person the author may have worked for as a nanny, and all characters and the events described are entirely created by the author.

  First published in 2015

  Copyright © Philippa Christian and Amy Molloy 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76011 101 4

  eISBN 978 1 74343 962 3

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  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

  Acknowledgements

  1

  As I sprinted down Rodeo Drive, racing to get to a beautician’s appointment, with a child bouncing in a Bugaboo pushchair and a Louis Vuitton handbag slung over my shoulder, I kept a watchful eye out for paparazzi. Those guys are never far behind me. Neither is my personal bodyguard, who I could hear huffing, puffing and muttering, ‘Why couldn’t she just bring the damn chauffeur like a normal person?’

  The problem is, having a chauffeur-driven Mercedes at your beck and call isn’t considered ‘normal’ where I come from. I might look like the stereotypical Hollywood yummy mummy, with my blonde hair swishing in the breeze and my diamond watch glittering in the sunlight, but appearances can be deceptive.

  In fact, the child isn’t mine, the handbag was a freebie and it’s the three-year-old girl in the stroller who is booked in for a facial and a pedicure. I’m just there to act as her chaperone.

  My name is Lindsay Starwood and I’m an elite VIP nanny. Although nobody knows my name, they certainly know the names of my employers. I’ve cared for the children of the richest parents on the planet, from presidents to movie stars, oil barons, hotel heirs and supermodels. I’ve worked for so many celebrities that gossip magazines are like my version of Facebook—that’s the way I keep up to date with the lives of my past and present celebrity bosses. My CV reads like the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  In a sense I am rich and famous by proxy, because being linked to a famous family opens every door in the city. I can get a table at any restaurant, as long as I’m with the children. I’ve flown on private jets and lived in a mansion the size of two football pitches. And that’s really only the tip of the iceberg.

  I’ve seen wealth that I could never have dreamed of back when I was growing up in a small country town in Australia, but my job isn’t quite the Mary Poppins fantasy that you’d imagine. It’s a labour of love and a test of endurance. These parents’ expectations are high, and thankyous are hard to come by. I’m often asked if the children I care for are spoilt, but they’re really just following the examples set by their elders. Let’s just say I’ve never come across a baby who was born a diva—it’s a case of nurture over nature. I once knew a mother who named her daughter ‘Your Highness’. How was she supposed to grow up to be well-adjusted with that on her birth certificate?

  As a VIP nanny you see and hear it all, from domestic arguments to dodgy business deals, unwanted pregnancies and the aftermath of plastic surgery. Oh, but the handcuffs are golden! I’m only twenty-seven years old and earn up to $500,000 a year, without paying any living expenses. I live in the lap of luxury, holiday at the best hotels in the world and have a wardrobe that’s worth a large fortune. On top of my generous pay packet, I have been ‘tipped’ with expensive jewellery, vouchers for plastic surgeries, a convertible BMW and even a prize-winning pony that I could keep in the family’s stables.

  So how did a small-town girl from rural Australia find herself caring for the tots of Tinseltown? I’m not a wannabe actress who came to Hollywood chasing stardom and then had to find a backup plan when it all fell through, if that’s what you’re thinking. It sounds like a cliché but I just genuinely love children, and they seem to love me too.

  Take the three-year-old currently bouncing around in my stroller. Lavender Appleby is one of the six daughters of movie director Cameron Appleby and his soap star wife, Alysha. Sorry, that’s ‘Sir Cameron Appleby the third’ to you and me.

  I’ve only been working for the Appleby family for a fortnight since leaving my previous role and yet, last night as I tucked Koko in to bed, she wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered, ‘Lindsay, will you be my mommy, and mommy can be my nanny?’

  Either she’d already grown attached to me in the past two weeks—it does happen—or the mature little girl had done the maths and realised that if her mum were her nanny, rather than a celebrity and socialite, then she’d be more likely to spend quality time with her children. That morning on my way out the door Alysha had given me one instruction: ‘Don’t let the children nap during the day, nanny. When I get home from work I need them to be too tired to ask me to play with them.’ Truly unbelievable but, depressingly, not unusual.

  That’s why doing my job, and doing it well, is so important. A nanny is one of the few constants in the lives of richie-rich children, and it’s rewarding to see the difference I can make to their wellbeing.

  I’ve always been drawn to babies, ever since I was given a bag of flour with stick-on eyes as part of a school project and was charged with the task of keeping it ‘alive’ for a week. I was so frustrated by the other students’ apathetic attitudes towards their bags of flour that I ended up setting up a corner of the classroom as my ‘nursery’ for looking after everyone else’s ‘babies’. Unfortunately, as an only child, the number of real babies in my vicinity was limited. I was born in a country town called Hamilton in south-east Australia, which only has a population of just over 8000 people. We knew absolutely everyone in our town, and there were only three girls in my year at school.

  That’s why, when I was fourteen years old, my parents decided to move to Melbourne to give me a better education. When I was growing up they ran the local convenience store, which sold everything from groceries to camping equipment. It also had a coffee shop in the back, and they were the first to offer computers with internet back in the days when computers were still mystical. They might have been from a small town, but they were always thinking ahead, and they weren’t shy of hard work. I remember my dad getting up at the crack of dawn to help our neighbours milk their cows before working an eigh
t-hour shift at the cafe. I also remember thinking it was unfair that, for all the hours he was working, we couldn’t afford to turn the hot water on more than one day a week.

  I had a very sheltered childhood, in a sense. I wasn’t allowed to watch television for more than one hour a night, and I didn’t set foot in a cinema until we moved to Melbourne. On the first weekend after we relocated to the city, my mum took me to see The Princess Diaries. My dad decided to stay at home after checking the price of the tickets. I wasn’t allowed popcorn, but we brought Vegemite sandwiches from home. I was the only person in the audience who stood up and cheered at the end of the movie, because I found it so spellbinding. This was probably because my childhood entertainment up to that point had revolved around picking blackberries and skimming stones in the river.

  How times have changed since then. I’ve been on countless movie sets, watched music videos being filmed and sat in green rooms next to my childhood idols. The novelty soon wears off when you’re trying to keep a group of kids amused without getting under the feet of producers, directors and actors.

  When I was younger my ignorance of popular culture probably worked in my favour. When I got a babysitting job, aged just twelve, I was vaguely aware that the parents I worked for were ‘somebodies’, but I wasn’t as starstruck as my school friends would have been. My mother worked as a shop assistant in a clothing store and met Eliza Shawshank when she came in to buy a hat for the Melbourne horse races. They’d got talking in the changing room and Mum had mentioned that she had a teenage daughter. The following Friday I was dispatched to a mansion on the other side of the city, left in charge of three children, and told I could help myself to anything in the fridge. I had my first taste of caviar that night, and spat it straight into the garbage.

  I was naturally nosey and toured the house when the children were sleeping, piecing together clues about the family’s background. The first giveaway was the recording studio in the basement, where the walls were decorated with gold and silver records. Above the children’s beds was a framed photograph of them with Michael Jackson. In another photo they were hugging Kylie Minogue. On the mantelpiece in the living room was a pile of sparkling invitations to parties taking place across the world, including the Grammys and the MTV Europe Awards.

  Eliza and Jason Shawshank certainly had an active social life and, for almost two years, I spent every Friday and Saturday night at their house. I developed a bit of a girl-crush on Eliza, to be honest. I used to arrive half an hour early so that I could sit on her bed and watch her get ready. It amazed me that a woman came around to do her hair and make-up. She always lets her six-year-old daughter choose her earrings to go with her outfit.

  I went to a strict Catholic school, which didn’t let students miss classes unless they presented a medical certificate. One day, I pulled a sickie so I could accompany the Shawshanks on a daytrip to Disney World in Florida over the weekend. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that photographers followed them everywhere. That evening my teacher spotted me on the evening news boarding a private jet in Orlando, wearing a pair of Minnie Mouse ears. She wasn’t impressed when I came in on Monday, with a note from my mother that claimed I’d had a stomach bug.

  I had been planning to go to university to study child psychology, but as my final school exams rolled around, Eliza made me an offer. Would I be interested in moving in with the family and taking care of their children full time, as their nanny?

  She then named a salary that, to an eighteen-year-old student, sounded like a fortune. A lot of my school friends were taking a gap year to travel around Europe. If I moved into the Shawshanks’ mansion it would be like a working holiday. I’d heard my parents arguing about how they were going to be able to afford to send me to university and I didn’t want my dad to have to get a second job.

  ‘I’ll just do it for a year,’ I told my mum. ‘I can save enough money to get myself through university without needing to get into debt.’ Of course, it didn’t work out like that. A year became a career and my university place was deferred and then given away.

  Shortly after my nineteenth birthday an email arrived from the manager of a Hollywood actor who was planning a trip to Australia. He needed a nanny to take care of his four sons during their holiday and wondered if I’d fly to Sydney to stay with them on a yacht on the harbour.

  I wasn’t really looking for extra work but I wondered if the universe was sending me a message. When they asked for my fee I quadrupled my rate, just to see what they’d say. I told them my standard fee was $500, per child, per day, which meant I’d be paid $14,000 for a week’s work.

  I fully expected them to look elsewhere, and couldn’t believe it when the agent emailed back. ‘My client is happy with that fee,’ it read. ‘They will also cover your living expenses, including accommodation, travel and food, and provide you with an appropriate wardrobe.’

  At the end of the holiday they asked me to return with them to Los Angeles and work for them. They already had a nanny, who later sued for unfair dismissal, as she only found out she’d been replaced when I walked into her bedroom carrying my suitcase. The Hollywood hiring process can be fast and fickle. I sometimes feel like I’m only just hanging on by my fingertips. But what other career would give you the perks of fame, without needing to actually be famous? I may work like a slave but I live like a queen.

  •

  ‘Lindsay, why is there a photo of Daddy without his clothes on, and what does “sexting” mean?’

  This was the moment I knew I had to leave my last position and find another family to work for.

  The hardest part of my job is watching kids grow up and realising they don’t need me anymore. I give a little piece of my heart to every child, and when it’s time for me to move on, that little boy or girl keeps it forever. Sadly, modern nannying is not the same as in Victorian times, when you were signed up at a baby’s birth and still present at their wedding. My contracts are relatively short—anything from a week to eighteen months on average—because famous parents move around a lot. I work for musicians on tour and football stars on loan to different countries, and it’s easier to recruit a new nanny every time they relocate. You can’t take it personally; it’s just part of the culture.

  Sometimes it’s my choice to leave a role, although this doesn’t happen very often, as I pride myself on my loyalty. But every now and again working for a parent becomes so difficult that I have no choice but to plan an escape route. I hate it, because I feel as though I’ve let down the children, but sometimes it’s necessary for the sake of my own sanity.

  Before joining the Applebys, I had spent the previous three years working for the nineties boy-band heartthrob Steven Stavros and his far-too-forgiving wife, Barbie. Even if you’re not a music fan, you’re probably familiar with the sight of Steven’s bare chest and Y-fronts. They’ve been splashed across the front pages of newspapers all over the world, thanks to his habit of sending indecent texts, and his inability to cover his tracks.

  The first year of working for the Stavros family was relatively quiet and peaceful. Then his band’s fame began to wane, and his sex drive began to rocket.

  ‘Isn’t it terrible how the newspapers make up lies?’ said my mum, every time I went home for Sunday lunch. ‘As if he could hide these things from his wife. And how would he find the time to juggle all these women?’

  I’d shrug and change the subject. Most people don’t realise how much free time musicians have on their hands, especially when there’s not an album to record or promote. They might have an occasional dance rehearsal or shopping-centre appearance, but spend a lot of time hanging around the house in between, buying boys’ toys off the home shopping channel and browsing dating websites.

  After a Las Vegas showgirl claimed they’d spent the night together during a bucks’ party, the floodgates were opened for more girls to step forward. I knew that some of the stories were lies. Steven couldn’t possibly have been in bed with those two strippers when he wa
s playing Scattergories with the children and me that evening. However, he clearly wasn’t squeaky clean, because one night he accidentally sent a text message to me that was meant for a girl called Lauren, inviting me backstage after a gig. Steven didn’t seem particularly embarrassed when he realised his case of mistaken identity.

  Which of the stories were true and which were girls looking for a payout, probably only Steven and his genitals will ever know for certain. However, the kiss and tells came so frequently—and the details were so juicy—that for a while Steven was the prime target of every gossip columnist in the world.

  One morning Steven called me into his study and handed me a mobile phone. I was puzzled.

  ‘Umm, thanks, but I’ve already got an iPhone, Steven. You pay the bill, remember? Is this a new phone for one of the children?’

  My boss shook his head. ‘No, this is a second mobile phone for you to carry. It’s pay-as-you-go, so it won’t be traced by reporters. Only Barbie and I have the phone number, so if it rings it can only be us.’

  The reason for the second phone soon became clear. It would only ring in one unique set of circumstances—when Steven had been caught in an illicit clinch (again!) and the children and I needed to prepare ourselves. Over time, I came to refer to the phone as the ‘scandal hotline’.

  I knew the drill when it rang. I even had overnight bags ready and waiting. I had to bundle the two children, aged three and seven, into my blacked-out Jeep and exit the house by the back gate, before the paparazzi arrived en masse. I then had to drive as fast as legally possible to the family’s holiday home on the coast. They’d purchased the property under their cleaner’s name to keep it a secret from the press.

  I privately referred to this house, which was the seventh in their portfolio, as the ‘infidelity bolthole’. When I was talking to the children I called it Hogwarts, which made sense, as it did have turrets and stone gargoyles around the swimming pool. The kids and I pretended that it was under an invisibility cloak, which was why they couldn’t tell their friends that it existed. (You try explaining to a seven-year-old and a toddler that their father has been caught with his pants down, so they have to go into hiding.)