Nanny Confidential

by Philippa Christian

  ‘Look, I know you’re in the office but I just had to call you. I’ve had such a fun day. Wait until I tell you who I met . . .’

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Clearly my excitement wasn’t being reciprocated. When Will finally did answer he sounded impatient. ‘Lindsay . . . look, I’m a little busy right now. Can I call you back later? I’m right in the middle of something.’

  What? I was taken aback. Will was never too busy to talk to me. Granted, it was Monday morning in Hamilton, but I’d been to his office. We’re talking a small country accountancy firm—it’s not exactly the New York Stock Exchange. There’s a reason they have a ping-pong table in the back room and their pot plants always die from being overwatered.

  I wanted to spill my exciting news to him like I would have when we were kids, but I had to be an adult and appreciate he had responsibilities. I wasn’t going to let Will know how rejected I felt. ‘Sure, sure, babe,’ I quipped. Then I instantly regretted my choice of words. Will and I do not have a ‘babe’ type of relationship and to him it would sound like such an Americanism.

  ‘I mean, sure Will,’ I corrected myself quickly. ‘Shall I call you in an hour? Or later tonight after I put the kids to bed?’ Bedtime for the girls would be late afternoon in Hamilton. I knew that a lot of people in Will’s office only worked part-time and left in the afternoon to pick up their kids from school, so I thought he might be grateful for some long-distance company.

  ‘I’m actually pretty busy all day, and I have plans tonight so I need to leave on time.’ He sounded sheepish. ‘Can I call you when I have some free time? Maybe over the weekend?’

  In any other friendship this wouldn’t be a big ask, but there are reasons I always call Will and not the other way around. Number one, I have to go to a pay phone for privacy. Number two, my schedule is insane, so the chances are if he called me I probably wouldn’t be free.

  I started to explain this to Will (for the hundredth time) while trying not to sound too self-important. He let out a disgruntled sigh. ‘We’re both busy people, Lindsay. I have a career too, you know, and a life to try and maintain outside the office. Look, can you at least set up a Facebook account so we can send instant messages?’

  This wasn’t the first time he’d raised the Facebook topic, and my response was always the same. ‘You know I’m not allowed a Facebook account, Will,’ I sighed. ‘If my boss found out I was on social media she would fire me.’

  It might sound extreme because of Alysha’s carefully managed presence on social media, but she banned anyone else in the household from even having a Facebook account—her children and staff members. This is very common rule set by parents in the spotlight. They fear their children will be targeted by trolls and pestered by reporters if they have an online presence. It’s a hard ban to enforce with older children, and I’ve heard of nannies helping teenagers set up pseudonymous Facebook accounts using their real first name and a fake surname created by typing their actual surname in to a thesaurus (guess who Jonas Voyage is?).

  It’s also a matter of security, especially if I’m working for a member of a royal family or a high-profile politician, whose children could be targeted by kidnappers.

  The frightening reality is that it’s not hard to hack into someone’s Facebook page and use it to track their location. A friend of mine worked for the White House and got into serious trouble for ‘checking in’ to Air Force One on Facebook with their exact location over the Indian Ocean.

  It had been a topic of dispute between Will and me on more than one occasion. ‘I can’t believe you let your employers have that much control over your personal life,’ he huffed. ‘I really can’t understand why having a Facebook page would be such a bad thing.’

  My employers spent a fortune on agents, managers and publicists to control their public image, and a virtual portal into their real life could do a lot of damage.

  I knew a British nanny who was fired for posting a ‘selfie’ taken in her boss’s kitchen. The mum was a celebrity chef and the face of a national supermarket. In the background of the photograph you could see a supermarket receipt stuck to the door of the fridge. The problem was that the weekly food shop hadn’t been done at the supermarket the chef represented, but at their cheaper competitor. An eagle-eyed reporter zoomed in on the photograph and broke the story with the headline, ‘The taste of hypocrisy.’ Her boss lost a three million dollar endorsement deal, all because the nanny wanted to tweet a photo of her new haircut.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand all the fuss about Facebook,’ I replied. ‘It just seems like such a waste of time to me. If I have a moment to myself I’d rather sleep or phone you for a proper conversation. I want to hear your voice, not just look at a photo of you that was taken at the Easter show seven years ago. You need to update that, by the way. It’s false advertising.’

  I had once searched Will’s name on Facebook just to see what his profile said about him. Because I couldn’t log in to the site all I could read was his age, his job title and the fact his favourite film is The Man from Snowy River.

  But that was just another reason I didn’t want a Facebook account. ‘What would I update anyway?’ I asked Will. ‘I wouldn’t be able to write anything about my job or the children that I work for, and what topics would that leave me with?’ My friends, hobbies and worries all revolved around my work, which is a sad realisation when you’re meant to be in the prime of your life.

  ‘It’s not all about you, Lindsay,’ he laughed, and then seemed to remember he was at work and lowered his voice. ‘You can use it to keep track of your friends back home, like me. Tons of people are just Facebook watchers and don’t write anything. They’re just interested in other people.’

  That didn’t sound like much fun to me. I’d rather not read what people that I went to school with are doing. ‘Rachel just got engaged. Hayley is having a baby.’ I suspect that my old school friends back in Hamilton would envy my life in Los Angles, but the reality is I’ve been working full time since I finished school, and a constant stream of Facebook announcements of engagements, house purchases and newborns would give me pangs of envy for normality.

  I feel like I grew up too fast sometimes. While my friends were sneaking in to nightclubs and kissing boys, I was doing night-feeds and singing nursery rhymes. I’ve been at the mercy of a boss and a handful of children since I was still a child myself, and sometimes I can’t help feeling like I’ve missed out.

  As a sixteen-year-old, I used to get embarrassed when I had to take the Stavros children to the shopping mall, in case I bumped into any of my old school friends. On the benches outside the cinema, there’d always be a group of girls from my high school, flirting with the popular boys. I’d be pushing a stroller with a wailing baby, juggling nappies and wiping kids’ noses.

  I certainly didn’t look like a celebrity back then. I looked like a teen mum who needed a lesson on contraception. If I walked past a group of grandmothers, one was sure to make a derogatory comment. ‘No ring on her finger. What is the world coming to?’

  I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years because our lives have moved in such different directions. When my sixteen-year-old school friends had been excited by the launch of a new range of crimping irons, I was buying diapers and knew far too much about nappy rash cream.

  I’m sure those popular girls would be envious of my glamorous life now, but I also felt a twinge of jealousy when I heard about theirs. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to own an apartment, where I could invite friends over for dinner.

  I could have explained all this to Will but it sounded so depressing and insecure. ‘It’s fine,’ I sighed. I overheard someone talking to him in the background—it sounded like the receptionist telling him his next meeting had arrived. ‘Why don’t you call me whenever you’re free. I’ll keep my mobile on me and if I don’t answer straight away I’ll call you back from a phone booth as soon as I can.’ It seemed like a compromise and would hopeful
ly appease Will, who was obviously growing impatient with my restrictions.

  I haven’t admitted this to anyone, but for the past year I’ve been having the same anxiety dream at least once a week. I’m standing in my old street in Hamilton, in the ball gown that I wore to last year’s Oscars party. A huge diamond the size of a boulder is chained to my ankle, as if I’m a prisoner. I realise that I have no job and no money. I’m knocking on my old front door but my parents aren’t home or don’t want to answer.

  8

  ‘Lindsaaay, the chef has quit. You’re going to have to cook until we find a replacement.’

  As if my life wasn’t busy enough, now I had to add chef to my repertoire. You’d think that Alysha would be able to find another cook in a heartbeat, but she’s particularly picky when it comes to her kitchen hands. The last chef had been headhunted from a Michelin starred restaurant in New York City. Her last words, as she stormed out of the house, were ‘I’d rather work at McDonald’s than around this madness!’ The reality television producers loved the drama and asked the chef if she could do a second take, but this time look even angrier. ‘Maybe you could throw a punch at Alysha as you walk out the door?’ asked the producer hopefully. The chef didn’t agree, although it must have been tempting.

  Her resignation was brought on by Alysha’s latest weight-loss regime, which was called the ‘air diet’ and was more of a non-eating plan. The chef had to prepare Alysha’s favourite meals, which she would then hold to her nose and sniff, but not eat. For the chef, this latest diet was the final nail in the coffin. She saw it as an insult to her culinary talents—and who could blame her? It reminded me of an actress I worked for who would buy all of her favourite foods—meat pies, doughnuts, tubs of frosting—and then stand at the kitchen sink, chew mouthfuls and spit them down the plughole. She claimed it was the secret to her sixteen-inch waist, as she could satisfy her tastebuds with none of the calories.

  I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of cooking for six children and a staff of twenty, but it’s not unusual for a nanny to be asked to flex her culinary muscles.

  A lot of wealthy mothers have never made a single meal for their children; even something as simple as chopping up an apple or mixing a bottle of formula. They’ll insist they don’t have the time or the skills, which might be the case, but when they’ll happily take singing and acting classes, even ‘American accent classes’, while insisting they don’t have time to take a short cookery course, it’s clear that it’s really a matter of priorities.

  As with all Alysha’s food fads I knew the air diet wouldn’t last long, so I wasn’t too worried about the dangers. My size-zero boss was just having a crisis of vanity, because she’d seen the first cut of her television pilot and thought she looked fat. ‘We’re going to have to reshoot it all,’ she ordered the producer, who looked like he was going to have a heart attack, and then asked me if I could get the contact details for Sharon Osbourne’s gastric band surgeon.

  She’d also put a padlock on the fridge and kitchen cupboards, which only the chef had the key to. I tried to turn this into a game for the children so they wouldn’t need therapy. ‘We can pretend we’re pirates,’ I said. ‘It’s like a treasure hunt and this is our treasure chest!’ I don’t think I convinced them, as seven-year-old Goldie had given me a disbelieving look and asked, ‘Did Mommy stand on the bathroom clock and get angry again?’ In the end I figured out that by ‘bathroom clock’ she meant the scales.

  One of the trickiest aspects of my job is dealing with bizarre Hollywood diets, especially when these rules and restrictions are forced upon the entire family. It can be a nightmare trying to keep up with the latest celebrity food fads, and it was a sour subject that often came up at our Sunday-night nanny gatherings.

  Last week, at the burger bar, Rosie had begged for my advice on how to handle her boss’s culinary commandments. Her A-list employer was slimming down for her latest rom-com and had put the entire household on a vegan diet, including her three- and eight-year-old daughters.

  ‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ vented Rosie, whose British accent gets posher when she’s angry. ‘I wouldn’t care if she actually had a moral issue with slaughtering animals, but this is just another fad. Every week it’s something different.’ Prior to veganism her boss had been a devotee of the Paleo diet, during which time Rosie had been sent to South America on a private jet to pick up a crate of beef jerky. The week before that she’d put the kids on a three-day fruit cleanse, but all the fruit had to be grown and picked within fifty kilometres of their house. When Rosie asked why, her boss answered, ‘Because I watched a documentary on it,’ but didn’t elaborate any further.

  It was no wonder Rosie was struggling to keep up with the ever-changing fitness fads. ‘As soon as I get a grasp of one diet she moves on to the next,’ she moaned. ‘It’s playing havoc with the kids’ digestion, and the chef is having a major meltdown. I don’t know what to do, Lindsay, help me!’

  Whenever one of my nanny friends butts heads with a mother about dietary regimes the first question I ask them is whether the children are actually in danger or whether the mother’s demands are simply inconvenient. If it’s dangerous then it’s their duty to speak up, even though this can be difficult when faced with a famous mother with strong opinions and who is not used to being challenged. On the other hand, if the children aren’t actually at risk, the best option is often to stay silent and wait for the fad to pass, as frustrating as that is. ‘You have to play the game,’ I told Rosie. ‘I know it’s difficult when you disagree, but you just have to do what you’re told and try not to overthink it. You are hired to be a surrogate parent, but no mother actually wants you to challenge her opinion. The parenting decisions are still up to them.’

  This might sound overly submissive but I’ve learnt over the years that a nanny has two options when faced with a difficult employer. ‘You either have to accept the situation or leave the situation,’ I told Rosie. ‘If your boss is really too much to handle then it could be time to move on, rather than try to change their ways. If not, you just have to suck it up!’

  I did feel sorry for Rosie because I could appreciate what she was going through. Alysha’s tastebuds are equally erratic. If a celebrity is photographed in a magazine carting a smoothie or a takeaway food container, she zeroes in on the logo and orders me to find out where they’ve been shopping so she can copy them. In her eyes, making an unfashionable food choice is the equivalent of carrying last season’s ‘it’ bag.

  She’s not the only mother who feels this way, which is why packing a kid’s lunchbox is such a minefield. If you send a child to school with ‘last season’s snack’ it will be the talk of the school gates. I’d recently been in trouble for giving Lavender her favourite chocolate bliss balls when everyone knows that trendy kids tuck into ‘raweo’ cookies (a raw, vegan version of an Oreo).

  The hardest part of my job is when a parent asks me to put their child on a diet—especially when the kid in question isn’t even slightly overweight. Since I’d started working for Alysha and witnessed her warped relationship with food, I’d been dreading the day she’d give me that order. When she asked me to take over from the chef, she clearly saw it as an opportunity to target her oldest daughter. ‘I think Harlow could do with losing a few pounds, don’t you?’ she said. ‘I want her to set a good example for her little sisters.’

  I should have said no, as Harlow is a perfectly healthy eight-year-old; however, Alysha didn’t give me a chance to answer.

  ‘I’m thinking of booking her in with my hypnotist to see if she can help,’ she continued. ‘In the meantime, can you cut out all fat from her diet? And sugar as well? And if that doesn’t work then try gluten too. And can you find out how Suri Cruise stays so skinny when she’s always eating so much candy?’

  I dug my fingernails into the table. I’ve studied child nutrition and know all about the dangers of removing fat from their diet. This also seemed like an eating disorder waiting to happen.
However, I’ve been in this situation before and knew that if I said no, Alysha would remove me from the equation and get someone else to do her bidding. There are far too many private doctors in Hollywood happy to prescribe weight loss pills to schoolgirls, just as there are plastic surgeons willing to give boob jobs to thirteen-year-olds.

  I’d just have to come up with a way that I could trick Alysha into thinking I was following her orders, without putting Harlow’s health at risk or leaving the little girl with a complex and major body image issues.

  When I was quiet, Alysha must have sensed my reluctance, but wrongly assumed that I just didn’t want the extra workload. ‘Oh, don’t worry, you won’t have to cook for long,’ she added. ‘I’ve just found an amazing chef from Chicago. Everything on his menu is cooked using wood or has an ingredient with wood in the name. His signature dish is salmon with wood-fired apples. Doesn’t that sound delicious? I’m having the kitchen redecorated next week with a $60,000 wood-fired oven from Brazil.’

  She then pulled an inhaler from her pocket, took a drag and coughed. The smoke smelt of chocolate and almonds, as if Nutella had been vaporised. This was part of her ‘breatharian’ regime. The inhaler wasn’t for a medical condition—it was an appetite suppressant that was meant to satisfy sugar cravings.

  The sickly sweet smoke had the opposite effect on me. After Alysha dismissed me, I went straight to my bedroom, reached into my knicker drawer and pulled out the family-size block of Cadbury Dairy Milk I keep there for emergencies, along with a big bag of fairy floss. The diet could start tomorrow. Today, I felt like rebelling.

  •

  Maybe it was the sugar high keeping me awake, but that night I couldn’t stop tossing and turning. Around 1 a.m. I gave up and decided to use the extra hours productively. I sat up in bed, pulled a notepad from my bedside table and wrote a list of ways I could follow Alysha’s orders without emotionally or physically scarring Harlow.