Nanny Confidential

by Philippa Christian

  The general public love seeing celebrities looking terrible but the truth is, even when you live with a star, you rarely see the ‘real’ them. These women wear make-up morning, noon and even overnight. I don’t think even Alysha’s children had ever seen her without make-up before.

  Although it’s rare, I do have evidence of a few famous mums in their natural state. On my laptop I have a photograph of Steven Stavros’s second wife, Jamie. In the picture she has no make-up on and her mouth is hanging open because she’s yelling at a cleaner. A magazine would have a field day. They could run it next to one of Jamie’s modelling shots, with a big ‘before and after’ headline. Yet, even though Jamie was the boss from hell, I still haven’t sold her out. Nor have I deleted the photo, though—I like to keep it just in case she ever breaks Steven’s heart.

  Without her cosmetic mask I found Alysha far less intimidating and instantly more likeable. She looked even tinier than usual, wrapped in a Gap hooded sweater, which was the most unstructured item of clothing I’d ever seen her wearing.

  I considered how hard the last few months must have been for my boss, knowing that soon the whole world would know her business and probably see her as a victim. No wonder Sir Cameron had been reluctant to let the reality television crew visit him in Morocco, and had guarded his privacy so fiercely. This was clearly the skeleton that he’d been hiding in this study.

  ‘Is it true that he had an affair?’ I couldn’t believe I’d been brave enough to ask the question. This was seriously overstepping our usual boundaries, but Alysha’s vulnerability made me feel bolder.

  Alysha looked shocked for a moment, and then just defeated. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ she said. ‘He came clean almost a year ago. It was just before we hired you, actually. He said he planned to divorce me but wanted to wait until his next movie came out before making it public. That would have given me a few more months to prepare myself. But now she’s . . . now she’s . . . now she’s . . .’ Alysha sunk her head onto the countertop and dissolved into sobs.

  From her position on the floor, Harlow helpfully filled me in on the details. ‘Daddy is having another baby,’ she piped up from the floor, ‘but it’s only going to be half a baby to us, because it’s not being made in our mommy’s tummy.’

  So the rumours were true. Sometimes magazines do get it right. This meant that Alysha’s ordeal was far from over, as the press would have at least eighteen months of juicy material before they lost interest—photos of each stage of the pregnancy, the baby shower, the birth and the child’s first birthday. Journalists and the general public don’t get bored with stories like this quickly.

  As Alysha continued to sob onto the table, I stood frozen at the entrance to the kitchen, desperately wanting to hug her. The problem was, Alysha had written a ‘no touching’ clause into her contract. I was allowed to make physical contact with the children but I was never allowed to lay a finger on her, even to brush a piece of dust off her shoulder.

  The only other adults in the room were her agent, publicist and lawyer, and none of them reached out to hug her either. I wondered where Alysha’s real friends were, and whether her mother was on her way. It must be sad when your support network is your staff, who aren’t even there by choice.

  It reminded me of the time Rosie was hired by the wife of a businessman who worked away from home 230 days of the year. The couple’s son was seventeen years old, so Rosie was surprised they’d even hired a nanny as he was fully self-sufficient. She was also surprised when the mum started inviting her on shopping trips and to dinner, or to see a movie. The teenage son was never interested in going with them, and Rosie would joke that it felt like she and the mother were dating. It soon became clear that the mum was desperately lonely and really just wanted a friend-for-hire. Her teenager didn’t need a babysitter but she was willing to pay $400,000 a year for a companion.

  Alysha had never tried to bond with me in this way, but I still found it hard to watch anyone suffer. I’d never met Sir Cameron so didn’t feel any loyalty to him, but I’d shared a home with Alysha for over a year, and this made us family, in a sense . . . sort of.

  Suddenly my boss raised her head and shrieked, ‘I have got to get out of here! I feel like a prisoner.’

  Her agent, who’d spent the last ten minutes checking Facebook on her mobile, finally spoke up. ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Alysha,’ she argued. ‘We should wait until you’re feeling better to make your first public appearance.’ We all knew that she really meant ‘we should wait until you’re looking better’. Alysha’s publicity team would want to choreograph every moment of her big reveal. I bet Fernando had already been emailed a brief, asking him to submit ideas for a make-up look that matched ‘heartbreak chic’.

  ‘My husband has knocked up an actress!’ yelled Alysha. ‘I am not going to get over this overnight, and I can’t stay in this house forever while he’s on the other side of the world gallivanting around, playing happy families.’

  At this point I excused myself to go to the bathroom, so I could splash cold water on my face and try to think straight. I’d been awake since 4 a.m. and my jetlag was starting to kick in.

  I was also still reeling from my argument with Will, who hadn’t contacted me to apologise before I left, despite the fact I’d seen him drive past my house three times, while I peered through my bedroom curtain. I also felt guilty for neglecting my parents during my trip back, although they insisted they understood. ‘What a weekend,’ I told my reflection in the mirror. Little did I know, it was about to get even more bizarre.

  •

  ‘Lindsay, you’re going to be my decoy.’ It had been a mistake leaving the kitchen because by the time I returned Alysha had come up with a plan, and it all revolved around me.

  ‘We need a way to distract the paparazzi,’ she exclaimed. ‘You can pretend to be me and then I can sneak away.’ I was to put on one of Alysha’s outfits and drive her Mercedes out of the front gate so that the paparazzi herd followed me.

  She thought it was a stroke of genius. I thought she’d had too much coffee.

  Unfortunately, her agent, her publicist and her lawyer were in agreement. She’d even summoned one of the reality television cameramen, who’d agreed to sneak her out of the gates in the back of his truck—on the proviso they were allowed to film her great escape.

  I could have said no but my conscience got the better of me. My purpose as a nanny is to look out for the wellbeing of the children, and that included making sure the woman who gave birth to them didn’t have a breakdown in front of them.

  So I followed Alysha to her bedroom, where she dressed me up as her doppelganger. Once I had on Alysha’s leather jacket, oversized Gucci sunglasses and a Karl Lagerfeld leather baseball cap, I did look surprisingly like the soap star herself.

  ‘I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,’ I said to Alysha, giving her a twirl, but she reached out to stop me before I left the bedroom. She slipped her wedding band and diamond engagement ring from her finger and handed them to me.

  ‘It’s all about the attention to detail,’ she explained. ‘The photographers will zoom in on your finger because they’ll want to see if I’m still wearing my wedding ring. This will convince them that you’re me.’

  I had to hand it to Alysha. Even in her hour of need, she knew how to play the game. I didn’t think I’d given her enough credit.

  As I drove out of the driveway in a Mercedes with the personalised number plate that read ‘90210’, the paparazzi leapt to attention. When they spotted a flash of blonde hair through the tinted windows, they jumped into their own vehicles. Soon I was being followed by a fleet of cars as photographers raced to get the first photograph of the starlet nursing a broken heart.

  Luckily this wasn’t the first paparazzi chase I’d ever been in. ‘You’ve trained for this moment, Lindsay,’ I muttered to myself. ‘You can do this.’ It was time for my training in defensive driving to come into action. Whether you’re dodging
photographers or an assassin, the basic skills are the same. You can’t freak out when a car is tailgating you. It’s important just to keep calm and think three steps ahead.

  ‘Just keep driving until I call you to say I’m clear of the house,’ Alysha had told me. I was glad that she had a full tank of petrol. I wished the traffic wasn’t so heavy, because every time the car stopped or slowed down a different member of the pack would pull up beside me and try to take a photograph.

  I pulled down the visor of my cap and hoped that the car’s tinted windows would make it impossible to get a clear shot. I wondered how many magazine covers ‘fake Alysha’ would be on the next day. That would be one for my scrapbook.

  This wild-goose chase went on for nearly an hour. Gradually the paparazzi got bored and dropped off until only two cars remained. They were driven by two eager paparazzi in their early twenties, who’d probably been warned by an editor that their jobs depended on getting a photograph. I could see them both talking on their mobile phones, probably to each other. Sometimes the paps work together to get an exclusive shot and then split the profit.

  I couldn’t quite believe what happened next. As we drove onto a stretch of highway where the traffic split into three lanes, the two cars sped up to overtake me, one on either side, like I was in a sandwich. Then, to my astonishment, they both turned into the centre lane and collided head on with each other, right in front of my car. The crushing of their bonnets was deafening, and I slammed on my breaks just in time to avoid hitting them.

  There was no doubt in my mind they’d crashed on purpose just to force me out of the vehicle. I’d heard about underhand tactics like this before, but it was the first time I’d been on the receiving end.

  As smoke billowed from their crushed bonnets, the paparazzi quite calmly got out of their cars, with their cameras still in hand. They’d managed to position the cars so they blocked the entire road, a one-way street, so there was nothing I could do but wait. With shaking hands, I locked the doors of my car. There was no way I was getting out until the police arrived.

  I decided to take my own advice. ‘Just play the game. It isn’t real,’ I muttered. I turned up the radio, closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was back home in Hamilton. I was lying in a field near my parents’ house, feeling the grass on my back and the sun on my face.

  My fantasy was so effective that I fell asleep for a moment, until I was woken by a tap tap tap at my car window. I expected to look into the face of a policeman or one of the photographers, but to my astonishment I found myself looking into the eyes of Tommy Grant. To be honest, he looked just as astonished to see me as I was to see him.

  ‘Lindsay, is that you?’ he asked as I wound down the window a centimetre. ‘I was a few cars behind you and recognised the number plate, but I thought it was Alysha driving. The kids aren’t with you, are they?’ He peered into the backseat of the car and looked relieved when he saw that it was empty.

  ‘No, I’m on my own,’ I said. ‘But the paps think I’m Alysha. It’s a long story, but I’ve got to get out of here before any more reporters arrive. They’ll have a field day with all of this.’

  Tommy looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said, and marched over to the pair of lurking paparazzi, who turned their camera lenses on him. This story was getting better and better in their eyes—a famous golfer rescuing a heartbroken soap star from a car crash.

  I watched as Tommy gathered the photographers in a huddle. As he spoke I saw their faces change from sceptical to interested and finally to delighted. They then put the lens caps back on their cameras and retreated to their vehicles.

  Frantically, Tommy signalled for me to get out of the car and follow him. I did as I was told, wondering what he’d planned with the slimeball photographers. Whatever it was, my instinct told me to trust him. ‘Ready to leg it?’ asked Tommy, glancing down at my sneakers.

  He grabbed my hand and we ran, weaving through the traffic jam that had been caused by the paparazzi pile-up. We didn’t stop running until we reached a taxi rank, where he opened the door of a cab and bundled me inside. He then handed a wad of banknotes to the driver. By the time I got my breath back, the taxi was speeding back to Alysha’s house and my rescuer was far behind us. I couldn’t even remember saying goodbye to him.

  My head was still spinning the following morning when I logged on to The Daily Juice website, expecting to read about Alysha’s near-crash. It seemed that my boss could breathe easily for a moment, however, as a new piece of gossip had captured their attention.

  ‘GOLFING GOLDEN BOY SPLITS FROM GIRLFRIEND,’ screamed the headline. ‘Sports star says he’s a dating disaster.’ Under a photograph of Tommy looking wistfully at the camera were the names of the two paparazzi that had got the exclusive. It seemed that Tommy Grant had thrown himself into the fray for me.

  I wanted to thank him, but I had no way to get in touch with him. Contact details were closely guarded secrets here in Hollywood. More than that, I desperately wanted to know why Tommy had made such a sacrifice for me, in this town where reputation was everything. He’d laid his own privacy on the line for me . . . and I had no idea why.

  15

  To Lindsay Starwood and guest

  Will Marsden & Heidi McPherson request the honour of your presence as they join their hands and lives in holy matrimony.

  Please help us to celebrate this very happy union.

  Saturday 26 August

  Town Hall, Hamilton

  It was starting to feel like my world revolved around marriages and break-ups. The term ‘whirlwind’ didn’t even start to cover it. It had been six weeks since Sir Cameron had officially left Alysha and since then life had moved at breakneck speed. The divorce had already been finalised and Alysha had got the house, custody of the kids, a hefty monthly allowance and a 10 per cent cut of the profits from all his future movies. She also kept her wedding ring and the Fabergé egg they received as a wedding gift. Hell hath no fury like a woman with a vicious divorce lawyer.

  I was actually responsible for hooking Alysha up with her divorce lawyer, Ivan Sandy, who was the go-to guy for scorned wives in Hollywood. (Alysha had decided her usual lawyer didn’t have enough ‘break-up’ experience.) As you can imagine, he was never short of business. He could find a loophole in any pre-nup and was not afraid to use dirty tactics. According to Fernando, who had been desperate to know the details, Alysha had threatened to leak a story about her husband’s ‘unusual’ sexual preferences to the press if he wasn’t accommodating. The whole deal was signed and sealed within a week.

  A quickie divorce was in everyone’s interest as Cindy Berry hit her third trimester. Sir Cameron and his new leading lady made their first public appearance as a couple at the Met Gala. They didn’t have to confirm the pregnancy, because her bump spoke for itself.

  I’d heard through the grapevine that they’d already hired a nanny, who’d been told to update her passport so she could spend two weeks in France with them the following summer. I suspected this meant they were planning to get married. A lot of celebrities fly to France to get hitched, because the paparazzi laws are stricter there, and photographers can’t get away with flying over the venue in helicopters or hiding in the crypt of the church.

  Alysha was dreading the moment the pregnancy was confirmed, but it actually worked in her favour, thanks to a slip-up by Cindy. The mum-to-be had agreed to give an interview to The Daily Juice on the proviso that she only talked about her latest movie, not her private life. Unfortunately, her agent had underestimated Caesar’s powers of persuasion.

  ‘CINDY BERRY CALLS ALYSHA APPLEBY A “FAILURE” FOR NOT GIVING BIRTH TO A SON’ screamed the headline the next day. Cindy claimed she had been misquoted, but the damage was done as women around the world turned on her. Meanwhile a ‘Team Alysha’ page was set up on Facebook, and she instantly earnt the sympathy of any woman who’d experienced infertility or infidelity.

  Suddenly every television station and m
agazine wanted a piece of Alysha. She was a household name at last, but was acting unusually coy. ‘I really, really don’t want to talk about it,’ I heard her tell her agent over the phone. ‘I just don’t want to. Stop asking me.’ She finally accepted an invitation from Oprah, but said no to every other interview request.

  I’d seen a distinct difference in Alysha since the divorce. She was far quieter at home and, instead of going out for dinner every evening, she had asked if she could eat with the children and me in the kitchen. ‘Umm, Alysha, you don’t need to ask my permission,’ I answered. ‘It’s your house and they’re your daughters.’

  I even saw her eat a carbohydrate, when Koko fed her a piece of alphabet spaghetti from her fork. This was a miraculous event.

  One evening I caught her watching Cherry and me as we played on the living room floor. I was tickling Cherry, who wiggled on the carpet, letting out happy snorts and giggles.

  ‘Lindsay, can I ask you a question?’ Alysha asked quietly. ‘How do you know how to play?’ It always amazes me how many parents don’t have this natural instinct. If a director told Alysha to jump, skip or laugh she could do it for the cameras, but she had no idea how to create spontaneous fun. I had faith that she could do it; she just needed to be pointed in the right direction.

  ‘Cherry,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you sing your mummy the song I taught you yesterday? I’m sure she’d love to hear it.’

  The song was ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’. I know nannies who teach their kids pop songs, but I like to be more traditional, and that’s always a crowd-pleaser. Both Cherry and her mother looked hesitant, unused to having each other’s undivided attention.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I encouraged. ‘Why don’t the three of us sing it together? Alysha, you must know the words from when you were a little girl. Come on, Cherry!’

  I stood up in the centre of the room, took a deep breath and began to sing as loudly and tunelessly as I could manage. When I got to the first clap Cherry couldn’t resist joining in, her pigtails shaking as she nodded her head in time.