Secret Nanny Club

by Mackle, Marisa

  “However, I decided a while ago not to continue being a victim. I didn’t have a childhood but I want to enjoy my life from now on. My aim for the future is to be the best mother I can be to Lisa and not let the destructive cycle continue.”

  A lot of what Sheelagh was saying was making sense. I admired her strength. Here she was in strange country with no contact from her parents and an estranged husband, and in spite of her harrowing childhood she was so fantastically strong. Her outlook was so positive and she radiated goodness.

  “By the way,” she brightened suddenly, “you’ll be glad to know that on your excellent advice I contacted three local shops to see if they would take a small order from me to try my cakes out, and guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Two of them agreed! I’m over the moon about it!”

  “Oh my God, that’s fantastic news, Sheelagh. Well done, you!”

  “Well, I might not have done it if you hadn’t suggested it. Now the orders are very small – just some cupcakes, scones and muffins, but if they sell the shops have promised to re-order so that’s exciting.”

  Her enthusiasm was intoxicating. I was so delighted for her. She deserved the business and I was sure it would take off. Sheelagh’s baking was to die for.

  Claudine was back in the room. “Are we celebrating Sheelagh’s good news?” she asked with good humour.

  “Yes, isn’t it exciting?”

  Sheelagh smiled. “I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have Claudine to help me with Lisa. You know what it’s like trying to do everything yourself.”

  “I do indeed,” I nodded. “It was so hard before I got Tanya. When Samira left us suddenly I was rightly stuck. But what could I do? She was homesick and wanted to go home so that was that.”

  Claudine turned to me with a look of surprise on her face. “But Samira didn’t go home,” she said. “She’s still in Ireland, working for another family. I’m in touch with her on Facebook.”

  She could have knocked me down with a feather with this startling news. I was dumbfounded. Samira hadn’t gone home to Bosnia? She was still here? God Almighty,

  I felt like a right fool.

  “I had no idea that she went to another family,” I said in a small voice. “Wow, okay. That’s a revelation.” I was stumped. “But no worries, I hope she’s happy where she is now. It might have suited her to work with older children.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Claudine, blushing slightly. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew. She met a lady at the mummy and baby yoga classes who offered her a job and promised to pay her a little more than you.”

  Sheelagh gasped. “Oh my, I can’t believe somebody went and poached your au pair! How brazen of them! And it’s all my fault for recommending the damn yoga classes.”

  “No, it’s fine, honestly, it’s just fine. Nobody is to blame. She wasn’t right for us and Tanya’s with us now so it’s all worked out fine for everyone.”

  I forced a smile but deep down I was stung. Samira had made me look like an idiot. Why couldn’t she just have been honest and say she was going to another family instead of feeding me that complete bull about homesickness?

  When I got home later Tanya had the place looking spick and span and had even put flowers on the kitchen table to brighten the place up. I felt like hugging her and planting a big kiss on her cheek. It was like I had died and gone to heaven the day Tanya came to live with us. I was sure that my guardian angel up there or maybe my dad had sent her to me to help me get my life back on track. She was up first thing every morning, had the kitchen polished, the floor swept, the bathroom spick and span, and John up, dressed, fed and watered before

  the postman had even arrived. She had an abundance of enthusiasm and fun. Nothing was ever too much for her. Baby John adored her and she doted on him too. Tanya would skip off to the park with him before noon every day, and then pick up the groceries on the way home. She had a permanent smile on her face, always looked fresh and as pretty as a

  picture and was unfailing in her goodwill. What amazed me even more was that she was always thanking me rather than the other way around. As though I was doing her some kind of favour!

  There was no tension in the house whatsoever. If I needed some time by myself Tanya seemed to instinctively know and would take John out for little walks or else play with him on his play mat in the sitting room. She kept telling me over and over again that she was so grateful for her new job and that she was no longer exhausted from having to mind Joanne’s children, tiptoe around her cranky husband and slave away with the household chores. She even said she didn’t need Saturday and Sunday off but I insisted. I wanted to treat her as well as possible. I think if you treat people well you get back what you put into the relationship . . . well, unless you’re dealing with the likes of Samira . . . or Bernadette . . . or Sally . . . or Clive . . . But one thing’s for sure, nobody stays somewhere where they are undervalued. Not in the long run anyway.

  I asked Tanya if she would like to go to English classes. Her English was really good as it was but lots of au pairs go to classes and it’s a nice way to meet friends in a foreign country.

  But Tanya seemed surprised at the question. “Classes?” She looked at me blankly.

  “Well, yes, I mean, you won’t learn any English from John and I know you said your dream was to be an interpreter one day. I’m sure you were learning a lot more from Joanne and all her kids. You would probably find the classes sociable too.”

  But despite my encouragement Tanya didn’t seem that keen. “I have my own friends already,” she said. “I always meet the girls from the Secret Nanny Club when I’m out and about. So I’m not at all lonely. Honest!’

  I decided to quietly drop the matter. If she didn’t want to go to classes she didn’t want to go to classes and it was none of my business. However, I did think it was strange for somebody who wanted to become a professional translator not to want to go to English classes. I decided not to dwell on something that didn’t really concern me. It was time to focus on my own life now and try and get back into some kind of routine.

  I took a deep breath and phoned my boss, Creea, to say I was ready to come back to work part-time in the office, in addition to working from home. I had thought she’d be pretty pleased to hear from me as Sally had emailed me on Facebook several times to say they were snowed under with work and extremely short-staffed at the moment. But I was disappointed to find her response was lukewarm at best.

  “When exactly are you coming back?” she asked without even enquiring about me or Baby John. She sounded harried and fretful.

  “I was thinking of next Monday?”

  “Monday,hmmm, well, that might be a problem because we have two interns here at the moment filling in for you and they take turns at using your desk and computer so we don’t have a desk for you right now. Monday week would suit better. Then we have our

  monthly meeting and you can get straight back into things.”

  “Oh, okay!” I tried to sound upbeat.

  “By the way, did you get the group email I sent this morning?”

  “This morning? Oh no, I’m afraid I haven’t even opened the laptop at all today. Was it important?”

  “Well, it’s not great news to be honest, Kaylah. Everyone here at the magazine has been told we need to take a five-per-cent pay-cut with immediate effect. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the orders come from the top. We’re all in the same boat . . . magazine sales are way down . . . you know yourself . . . it’s tough out there.”

  “I know,” I said in a small voice, feeling crushed. “I know it is.”

  Then I thanked Creea for her call even though I was the one who had called her and I said goodbye. I think I may have also said that I was looking forward to coming back to work but I’m not sure. It’s all a bit of a blur now.

  I remember feeling dizzy anyway. I was really struggling as it was. How on earth was I going to be able to pay Tanya and buy nappies and food for the three o
f us? How was I going to afford my electricity bills and health insurance bills which were already crippling me? Winter was looming and it was going to be a harsh one, there was no doubt about that.

  “Is everything okay?” Tanya asked, looking concerned. She had Baby John in her arms and her head was slightly cocked to one side. How did she know I had just got bad news? That girl was able to read my mind so much it was uncanny.

  I sat down on the sofa. I was almost shaking. “Not really, but it will be fine.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. Tanya may have been foreign but she had already grasped the Irish way of life. No matter how bad things are, or how many problems we have, we always manage to find the solution in a nice hot cup of tea.

  “Thanks, Tanya. I would love one.”

  She handed my baby to me and I cuddled him close. He smiled at me, so full of trust and love. I knew I had to cope with this bad news. But I was already stretched to the limit financially and there was no point asking John’s dad for any maintenance as when I had phoned him to tell him we were having a boy after having my twenty-week scan, he told me that he wasn’t interested, and that he had a lot on his mind after being forced to take a fifty-per-cent pay cut at work. He also told me that he was now sharing a bedsit with his brother as he could no longer afford the rent on the swanky bachelor pad.

  Everybody that I knew was up to their neck in debt and there didn’t seem to be any shining light at the end of the tunnel. Tanya was back with the tea and a biscuit which she placed on the coffee table in front of me. “How bad is it? Or should I not ask? Tell me to mind my own business if you like.”

  I gave a wry smile. “It’s bad but it could be worse,” I said. “I have a lot to be thankful for. I have my health and I am mother to a beautiful boy. I shouldn’t really complain. It’s just that things have not been good for me financially since I went part-time in the magazine and

  now they’re looking even worse. I’ve been asked to take a significant pay-cut.”

  Tanya didn’t bat an eyelid. “I see,” she commented without any emotion whatsoever. “But you won’t starve this winter, will you?”

  “I’ll try my best not to,” I sighed. “But the price of everything is going up and wages are going down. I don’t know how the government expects us to keep going like this.”

  “At the village where I come from people survive on very little,” said Tanya thoughtfully. “When I was growing up the only designer clothes we saw were in foreign magazines. I wore my sisters’ clothes and never got anything new. We got one pair of shoes a year if we were lucky.”

  “I suppose we were spoiled here in Ireland the last few years,” I said, putting John back down on his play mat. “We all thought we were rich. Everyone was telling us that we were rich. And we weren’t.” I sipped my tea. It was comforting.

  “Some people are rich, or else they act like they are very rich. Take some families in America or England for example,” Tanya continued. “I talk to the girls in the Secret Nanny Club online and they tell me about the huge houses they work in and how the ladies wear

  something once and then they bin it because they don’t want to be seen wearing the same thing twice.”

  “Well, I didn’t know anyone pre-recession who was that extravagant myself. But it’s true that for a while in this country we all went a bit crazy spending money that we never actually had. And the banks are mostly to blame because they gave money they didn’t have to people who could never afford to give it back. We couldn’t stop spending on the never-never and now we’re broke. I am thankful I have a job to go back to. Some of my friends who had great jobs a couple of years ago are now on social welfare.”

  We sat in silence for a while. I lost myself in my gloomy thoughts and Tanya cradled John, rocking him until he drifted off to sleep. I wondered if I could possibly do anything – anything – to boost my income. But unfortunately fashion stylists weren’t exactly in hot demand in the middle of a recession. There was a time I could have demanded a fee of a couple of grand just to take out some clothes from a shop and dress models for a day in a fancy location. Not anymore. Now the same clients wanted you to do the same work for half the amount they used to pay. Even very big clients such as major clothing companies now approached you and asked you to email them your fee. They would get all the known stylists around town to put in their respective fees and then, in most cases, choose the cheapest one. It really was dog eat dog in this industry. Or stylist eat stylist.

  I hadn’t seen many of the stylists since giving birth to my son. We weren’t friends as such but we all knew each other socially of course because we would bump into each other regularly at press days, or be seated next to each other in the front rows of prestigious fashion shows. The older stylists who were well established and had their own clients for years always seemed stand-offish and reluctant to welcome any new kid on the block.

  The stylists guarded their clients like trained Rottweilers. You could almost see them baring their teeth if you stepped onto their territory. Most of the stylists were female although you did get the odd male who was as bitchy as or even bitchier than them.

  When I started out as a freelance a few years ago there were only a handful of stylists on the scene but now it seemed like every second woman in the country was a stylist or at least had aspirations to become one. The market was getting saturated and the competition for clients was fierce. You needed to network like hell to remain at the top of this cut-throat industry and I was at a big disadvantage living out in Bray like a hermit.

  You see, anyone can be a stylist. You don’t need to have a qualification. All you need is a phone and an email address to get started. I have a degree in science which is about as far removed from being a stylist as you can get. I just fell into the whole styling thing actually. I had always assumed I’d go into research and maybe find a cure for something important but then I shared a flat with a girl I met online called Emily. Emily was a stylist and got great

  discounts on fashionable clothes and always seemed to be invited to celeb-filled fashion shows where people guzzled champagne like mother’s milk. She regularly appeared on

  TV talking about the season’s trends and every second day the postman would arrive with a parcel containing a bag, or a scarf or a bracelet or something nice. I used to hate the

  way the only post I got were brown envelopes and wished I could have a job like Emily.

  Emily, despite her wonderfully glamorous job, was quite a lazy thing though. Often she would hit the town after the fashion shows and wouldn’t get home until all hours. Then she would be all hungover in the mornings, curled under the duvet with the curtains closed. She would beg me to go to the shop to get her some Lucozade and sweets, and then she’d bribe me to take clothes back to shops. Half of Emily’s life seemed to be spent taking clothes from shops for fashion shoots and then delivering them back again after the shoots. Some of the shops were very strict about wanting the clothes returned to them the very next day. So if Emily wasn’t feeling the best, she would ask me to go to the shops with the clothes and

  sign them back in again.

  After a while the shop girls started to recognise me and some even believed that I

  was the stylist! Then one day I had to go to an upmarket boutique to give back a luxurious coat that Emily had borrowed for a photo shoot and the shop manager asked me if I would

  be attending their fashion show later that evening. I said I would love to but I hadn’t received an invitation. Immediately she put my name on the guest list. I went along that night with my mother and we were put in the front row with a glass of champagne in our hands and

  treated like celebrities. I watched in awe as the glamorous models sashayed up and down the catwalk and I also tried not to get too excited as I spotted some high-profile celebrities sitting opposite me showing off their designer bags and shoes.

  My head had been turned. The night of the fashion
show had definitely been one of my best nights out so far and it had been completely free. Even better, on our way out, my mother and myself were handed goodie bags containing mini-perfumes, a snipe of champagne, some chocolate and a scented candle. We were like two kids after Santa had arrived, giggling on the bus home as we rummaged excitedly through the bags. I had been due to start work in a laboratory the following week but I decided not to take the job. I was going to be a freelance stylist just like Emily. I too wanted to start living the dream.

  Soon afterwards I started approaching magazines and newspapers with ideas for shoots. The most important thing about being a stylist is that you have a contacts book because the shops, and especially the higher-end shops, are extremely strict about whom they lend their clothes to. But as Emily’s unpaid ‘assistant’ I already knew a lot of the shop staff by name at this stage. I remained on their good side by always returning the clothes in impeccable condition without so much as a lipstick stain or a thread pulled and more often than not I dropped a little thank-you present, such as a box of chocolates, in to the staff afterwards. I didn’t just sign the clothes in and out abruptly with no conversation either. Instead I took my time to chat to the staff and become friendly with them. That way I found out about all the upcoming style and fashion events. I started getting invited to more and more champagne events and I even got my photo taken at a few of them.

  When I started appearing in the social columns in society magazines I was chuffed with myself. Imagine! I could be spending all day in a lab wearing a white coat and goggles, but here I was being treated like some kind of celebrity.

  But then one night I was out at a fashion show and I bumped into Emily unexpectedly. “What are you doing here?” she asked suspiciously, not looking one bit pleased to see me. “I thought you were supposed to be going out with your mum tonight?”