Secret Nanny Club (19 page)

I remember so well the day the magazine was supposed
to be out and I went to my local newsagent’s first thing in the morning. I was almost shaking with excitement and anticipation as I scanned the magazine rack. But, alas, I couldn’t see the magazine at all. The guy behind the till said it hadn’t been delivered yet but they were expecting it in later that day. I must have made at least five trips to the shop on the same day but no luck. The magazine hadn’t been seen at all. I was engulfed by disappointment. This was as bad as waiting for exam results. Actually it was worse, because when I was in school I hadn’t particularly cared about exam results.

Reluctantly, I accepted that I
wouldn’t see the magazine until the following day. And then, when I eventually saw it the following morning, I stood in the shop with trembling hands, flicking over the pages frantically until I saw the shoot with Reena. If the magazine had bee
n
Vogu
e
and the model had been Kate Moss herself I couldn’t have been happier. She looked beautiful and the clothes looked amazing on her. I bought five copies, then headed off to the off-licence to buy a bottle of champagne to celebrate and hailed a taxi to my mother’s house. My mum was really proud when I showed her my name in the credits. She said she was going to buy five copies of the magazine myself, including one for my grandmother. We cracked open the champagne, toasted my first ever solo shoot and then I treated my mum to a late lunch in a popular little Indian restaurant around the corner from her house.

“Well done, you! I’m so proud of you, my love,” my
mother said as we toasted each other again in the restaurant, this time with sparkling wine. “This is all just so exciting. How much are you getting paid for the shoot by the way?”

I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Eh . . . I’m not sure.
I didn’t like to ask, you know.”

“What? Now, that’s a mistake,
Kaylah. You need to get over your shyness. If you want to work for yourself, and compete in the big bad world you’ve got to grow a pair.”

“I know, and you’re right,” I said, looking down at
the menu and flicking the pages absently. “It’s just that I didn’t want to start asking about money before I’d got the job done. I felt like I needed to prove myself. It’s tough out there.”

“It was always tough. Life is tough, and you have to
fight for everything that’s worth having.”

“I’m well aware of that.” For God’s sake, as if I didn’t
know! “Anyway, the good thing is that I’ve been asked to do another photo shoot for the next month’s edition of the magazine so I can’t complain. I’m happy.”

And I
was
happy. Walking on air. Until I arrived back at my flat later that evening to find Emily waiting for me in the hall. She was holding a copy of the magazine in her right hand and her face was like thunder. “What the hell is the meaning of this?” She held the magazine up in the air. “I want answers and I want the
m
no
w
.”

I was shocked by the look of anger in her face. I
mean, I had just had a fashion shoot published and I was elated. It wasn’t as though I had committed a crime or anything. But the way she looked at me accusingly was actually making me feel guilty. Maybe I should have told her I was doing it. But then again, she didn’t tell me every single job she was booked for. Were we supposed to tell each other everything now? Were we now like a couple joined at the hip?

“There is no law against me doing this, as far as I am
aware,” I said, trying to speak calmly. I had no idea why I was being forced to justify myself. “I can’t believe your reaction.”

“This is my territory,” she snapped, almost spitting in
my face. “You are completely stepping on my toes here, Kaylah. It just isn’t on.”

“Sorry, Emily, but you are being unreasonable. It’s
not like there is a law stating that there can only be one stylist in the whole of the country. Lots of people are stylists just like there are lots of nurses and taxi-drivers out there. We’re all free to do what we want. I’d have

thought
that you would have been happy for me.”

Emily’s eyes narrowed. “You obviously did not think
I’d be happy,” she seethed. “Or else you would have told me about this photo shoot! You went behind my back. What do
you
know about styling? I thought you were going to be a lab technician. You’re trying to steal my

life
. You’re like that character from the fil
m
Single White Femal
e
. This is outrageous!”

“But you don’t even work for this magazine,” I said,
feeling the earlier effects of the day’s happiness ebb away from me. “If you worked for them, maybe, just maybe, I would understand your reaction, but you don’t!”

“I am a freelance, as you very well know,” she said.
“So I work with everyone and anyone that’s willing to work with me. It’s tough in this business to keep your head above water. I had been hoping to work for this magazine too before you came along and swiped the opportunity.”

“What? That’s utter nonsense,” I said, defending
myself. “It’s not like they’re only going to work with just me. Phone them up tomorrow and pitch an idea, I don’t care. There’s room in this town for us both.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, “there may be room in this
town but there’s certainly not enough room in this apartment for the both of us. I’m moving out. I can’t deal with this anymore.”

I shook my head. “I honestly cannot believe you’re
being so dramatic.”

“Can you not?
Really? Well, to you this is drama, maybe. But to me, it’s my entire livelihood. You learned everything about styling from me and from me alone. I trained you and you turned around and stabbed me in the back. I will never help anyone again because you get no thanks for it.”

Close to tears at this stage, I nevertheless pointed out
that Emily had been quite happy for me to be her practical slave for months, dragging bags around town and getting no thanks for it whatsoever. But she didn’t want to hear that bit. When I was in the middle of talking to her, she started walking away from me. She disappeared into her room and slammed the door shut behind her. And the next day, true to her word, she packed up her belongings and left the place we shared together. And ever since, even though we both work in the same industry, see each other at various functions and a lot of time has passed since our infamous bust-up, we have never exchanged a single word.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Years ago, an auntie of mine called Kitty told me about
a cruise liner she had once been on. She had taken a round-the-world trip with some of the money she had got from her husband’s life insurance after he had sadly passed away.

“It was the most beautiful ship imaginable,” Kitty
told me, “and the service was second to none. Every cabin was assigned its own personal butler. It was actually embarrassing how much they looked after you. Nothing was too much for them. If you so much as sipped from your glass of water, the staff would top it up for you the moment you put it down.”

Kitty had spent a lot of money on that cruise. No
wonder the staff had been at her beck and call! She obviously tipped well too. I loved hearing the stories from the cruise and all about the characters that she had met on board. One lady on the ship was from California and had been on it for six months, probably because her family thought it was better than bundling her into a dreary nursing home. The Californian lady had been married four times but was a widow when she met Kitty. Kitty told me that the lady would arrive at dinner every night dripping in jewellery and would entertain fellow guests with wonderful tales about meetings with Hollywood stars. I was fascinated about it all, but especially about the private butlers whose sole job was to look after a single guest each. If the guest wanted the laundry done, he organised it; he made sure the cabin was full of fresh flowers; he would even come with you to the self-service buffet to make sure you didn’t even have to serve yourself if you didn’t want to. And he would dance with you in the evening if nobody else asked.

Now the reason I started thinking about Kitty’s butler
on the cruise ship was because it seemed like I had my very own butler in the form of Tanya. Okay, she didn’t dance with me, but she more or less attended every whim. In fact, she was so attentive sometimes I had to ask her to take a step back. She wouldn’t let me do anything. She was up well before me, and had all John’s bottles made up and ready for the day, had the apartment looking like a brand-new pin, as well as having the coffee made and the eggs boiled as soon as I got up. Sometimes she would even bring me breakfast in bed. She was an absolute treasure. It was like having my very own butler although I wasn’t wealthy – far from it in fact. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve this wonderful person in my home. In contrast to the last au pair who’d always looked like she was carrying the world’s worries on her shoulders, Tanya smiled morning, noon and night. John adored her and I found myself feeling normal again after the whirlwind of my pregnancy and then the months since I had become a mother. I had wind in my sails now and I couldn’t wait to go back to work. I knew I could trust Tanya with John and that I wouldn’t be feeling guilty about leaving him behind. Well, hopefully not too guilty.

Anyway, going back to work full-time would surely
help raise my self-esteem a bit. I longed to have a purpose again besides being just a mummy to John. I know that might sound awful but I really felt like I had lost myself somewhat. And while I was grateful for having found a new friend in Sheelagh, she was getting on with her baking business, and I yearned for office gossip and working to deadlines again. And I needed to get back in the office and in a position to hang on to my job. I knew that the recession had hit hard, especially in the media, and it wasn’t the fun place it used to be to work. Magazines were worried sick about losing advertisers and readers, so keeping their in-house stylists happy was the least of their worries. We were very much a replaceable breed anyway. It didn’t take a genius to work that out.

Tanya seemed to enjoy her nights off. She would go
out late and stay out late but, no matter how long she stayed out, it never seemed to have any effect on her mood or her work the next day. She was always the same bright breezy bubbly girl from morning to night. She

didn’t
drink alcohol, not even a drop. She told me she didn’t believe that people should put their hard-earned money down their throat when all it did was make them act foolishly and then ensure they were ill the following morning. She said that her father had drunk too much

when
she was growing up and that he had been selfish, only thinking of himself. She said she didn’t have to drink to have a good time. The girls from the Secret Nanny Club all seemed to be great friends. Tanya never was short of company. She would spend all her evenings off with them. I told Tanya that she was more than welcome to invite the girls

around to watch a DVD and have some supper for them
one night, but she said that probably wouldn’t happen because all the girls lived either in the city centre or the north side of the city and that Bray was a bit too far out for them to travel to. But she thanked me profusely for the offer all the same.

My father once told me that if something seemed too
good to be true it usually was. And although I berated myself for it, I sometimes wondered how somebody as beautiful and as hard-working as Tanya was working in my apartment for mere pocket money. Most au pairs became au pairs to learn a language but Tanya’s command of the language was excellent. She could have easily got a job in one of the top restaurants earning great tips instead of scrubbing my floors (her choice, not mine!) and changing dirty nappies. But when I said this to her, she shook her head and said she didn’t want to be working in restaurants until all hours of the night serving drunks. She said she was happy living with me. She also said she liked living in Bray because of the sea and she would never be able to afford her own place in such a nice town. She told me that where she came from there was no sea, just a lake a couple of miles away, and it had always been a dream of hers to live by the sea. The way she explained it to me so simply made me wonder why I ever questioned her. I also wondered how on earth Joanne and her husband had treated this gem of a girl so badly. Really, how could they have been so cruel! Oh well, I thought, their loss would be my gain. I