bed, crumpled by relief. And when my heart stopped trying to punch its way through my rib cage I wondered if I’d heard her right, or if the new drugs I was on were every bit as brain-mangling as the last set.
Even if you hear something down there, please stay out.
Hear something?
What the hell was in that basement?
7
are you going to die?
NOW
My memories of that first month are pretty hazy. Suffice it to say that looking after two Tasmanian devils single-handedly and without any forewarning of their talent for finding sharp objects and scaling dangerous heights faster than lightning, or of their need for constant enraptured attention, was a baptism by boiling lava.
I spent a good part of the time seeking out ways to escape, and had I not been so leached of energy I might well have attempted to swim up the fjord all the way back to the airport. Caring for a ten-month-old was like trying to lasso a hurricane. I began to perceive parents as heroic but very deranged masochists. For the first three weeks “Daddy and Daughters Day” did not happen, and the sacred promise of rest that I’d clung to all week popped like a leftover party balloon. Lack of sleep turned me into a cloud that wafted around after Gaia and Coco, whose combined energy could power South America for years to come.
But wait—I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the beginning. To the moment I entered the seventh circle of hell.
Stepping into my role as nanny felt like entering the Roman Colosseum to face a gladiator armed with flails and scourges. I was quite literally just off the plane and expected to have had a bit of time to adjust to my surroundings. Well, I guess I had some time—twenty-six minutes!—which was enough to put on some deodorant, stare at the mad schedule Maren had given me for Gaia and Coco, and do some frantic googling.
Messy play: Developing cognitive and fine motor skills through the medium of a bag of flour thrown liberally around the room.
Slime time: Literally involving slime, which I’d possibly have to make using shaving foam and contact lens fluid, before encouraging the kids to slime each other.
Montessori: “Child-centered intellectual exploration merely guided by a teacher.” I had a vague sense of what that meant. I figured that “intellectual exploration” likely meant reading and collecting leaves and pine cones, and I thought back to the time I’d taken little Matty Barris to the local park while his mum slept off a hangover on our kitchen floor. We’d gathered up all the beer cans around the slides and spent the afternoon making a beer-can sculpture. He cut his hands a few times and I filched a few syringes out of the cans before Matty got to them, but our end product was Tate Modern–worthy, if I do say so myself.
At three o’clock I ventured along the hallway to the nursery, where I was supposed to find Coco emerging from her nap. At the far end of the cot I could see her little blonde head, damp with sweat, and a chubby arm wrapped around a comfort blanket. A pacifier was wedged in her mouth and she sucked at it rhythmically, like a real-life Maggie Simpson.
I sat down in the green rocking chair by the window and glanced at the clock. A minute past three. Hadn’t Maren said Coco was meant to wake up at three o’clock? Should I wake her? I waited another five minutes. Finally, Maren appeared in the doorway, her hands clasped and a tight smile on her face.
“Everything all right?” she said, and I nodded.
“I think . . . she’s still sleeping.”
Maren pursed her lips—I noticed she did this when there was a job to be done, and one that ought to be done by someone other than her and she wanted to remind them of their responsibility—and clapped her hands. Coco jolted awake at the sharp, sudden sound in the peaceful room. Her eyes flicked open and she sat upright with a loud gasp. After a few moments she burst into tears, scared and still half-asleep. I glanced at Maren, who raised her eyebrows in a way that signaled I was to sort out the crying.
I reached down into the cot and lifted Coco out. She was heaving long, bitter sobs, the kind that suggested she was none too pleased about being wrenched from the deepest of slumbers. She felt warm and surprisingly heavy in my arms,