The Turn of the Key

“Come on, sweetheart.” I bent down, with some difficulty—as I was holding Petra—and took her wrist, trying to pull her up, but she only let out a scream and wrenched her arm out of my hand, slamming her little fist onto the gravel.

“Ow!” she screamed, redoubling her sobs and looking up at me with angry, red, tear-filled eyes. “You hurt me!”

“I was just trying—”

“Go away, you hurt me, I’m going to tell my mummy!”

I stood for a moment, irresolute over her angry, prone form, unsure what to do.

“Go away!” she screamed again.

At last, I gave a sigh and began to walk back up the drive towards the house. It felt wrong leaving her there, in the middle of what was, basically, a road, but the gate at the foot of the drive was shut, and it would be at least half an hour before Jack returned. Hopefully she would have calmed down long before then and I could coax her back into the house.

On my hip Petra had begun grousing, and I suppressed another sigh. Please, not a meltdown from her as well. And where the hell was Maddie? She had disappeared before her parents left, flitting off into the woods to the east of the house, refusing to say goodbye.

“Oh, let her go,” Bill had said, as Sandra flapped around trying to find her to kiss her goodbye. “You know what she’s like; she prefers to lick her wounds in private.”

Lick her wounds. Just a silly cliché, right? At the time I hadn’t dwelt on it, but now I wondered. Was Maddie wounded? If so, how?

*

Up in the house I sat Petra in her high chair, strapped her in, and checked the red binder in case it gave instructions for what to do if the children disappeared off the face of the earth. The whole thing must have been at least three inches thick, and a cursory flick-through after breakfast had told me that it contained information on everything from how much Calpol to give and when, through to bedtime routines, favorite books, nappy-rash protocol, homework schedules, and which washing capsules to use for the girls’ ballet uniforms. Virtually every moment of the day was accounted for, with notes ranging from what snacks to serve, right through to which TV programs to choose, and how much they were allowed to watch.

The one thing it didn’t cover was total disappearance—or at least, if it did, I couldn’t find the page where it was mentioned, but as I skimmed down the carefully annotated “typical weekend day,” I saw that Petra was overdue for lunch, which might explain her irritability. I didn’t really want to start preparing food before I’d tracked down Maddie and Ellie, but at least I could give Petra a snack to tide her over and stop her grumbling.

6:00, the page began. All the younger ones (but particularly Ellie) are prone to early wakings. To that end, we have installed the sleep-training “Happy bunny clock” in the girls’ room. It’s a digital clock with a screen image of a sleeping bunny that soundlessly switches over to an image of a wide-awake “Happy bunny” at 6:00 a.m. If Ellie wakes before this, please gently (!) encourage her to check the clock and get back into bed if the bunny is still asleep. Obviously use your judgment regarding nightmares and toilet accidents.

Jesus. Was there nothing in this house that wasn’t controlled by the bloody app? I scanned the page, skipping past suggested outfits and wet-weather clothes, and acceptable breakfast menus, down to midmorning.

10:30–11:15—snack, e.g., some fruit (bananas, blueberries, grapes—QUARTERED for Petra, please), raisins (sparingly only—teeth!), breadsticks, rice cakes, or cucumber sticks. No strawberries (Ellie is allergic), no whole nuts (nut butters are okay, but we only buy the sugar-/salt-free kind), and finally Petra is not allowed snacks containing refined sugar or excess salt (older girls are allowed sugar in moderation). This can be hard to police if you are out, so in that scenario I suggest taking a snack box.

Well, at least the app didn’t prepare the snacks. Still, I’d never encountered anything like this level of detail at any other nannying job—at Little Nippers the staff handbook was a slim pamphlet that concentrated mostly on how to report staff sickness. Rules, yes. Screen time, sanctions, red lines, allergies—all of that was normal. But this—did she think I had spent nearly ten years in childcare without knowing you had to cut up grapes?

As I closed the scarlet folder and pushed it away from me across the table, I wondered. Was it the unsettling changes of staff that had made Sandra so controlling? Or was she just a woman desperately trying to be there for her family, even when she couldn’t be physically present? Bill, it was clear, felt no compunction about leaving his children alone with a comparative stranger, however well qualified. But Sandra’s binder spoke of a very different type of parent—one very conflicted about the situation she was in. Which begged the question of why, in that case, she was so determined to be with Bill rather than at home. Was it really just professional pride? Or was there something else going on?

There was a huge marble fruit bowl in the center of the concrete table, freshly stocked with oranges, apples, satsumas, and bananas, and with a sigh, I ripped a banana off the bunch, peeled it, and placed a few chunks on Petra’s tray. Then I went into the playroom to see if Maddie had returned. She wasn’t there, nor was she in the living room, or anywhere in the house, as far as I could tell. At last I went to the utility room door, the one she had left by, and called out into the woods.

“Maddie! Ellie! Petra and I are having ice cream.” I paused, listening for the sound of running feet, cracking branches. Nothing came. “With sprinkles.” I had no actual idea if there were sprinkles but at this point I didn’t care about false advertising, I just wanted to know where they both were.