and I bounced her for a bit to calm her down, but as she began to wake up she focused her eyes on me and fell silent. Good, I thought. See? I’ve always had a way with babies. But just then, as she took in the sight of me, this weirdo she didn’t know from Adam, she burst into fresh howls and squirmed, trying to wriggle out of my arms.
“Now, now, Coco,” Maren chided, grabbing her and setting her on her hip rather roughly. “This is Sophie, your new nanny. She’s the one who looks after you.” Then, tapping her foot: “Shall we bring Coco to find Gaia? I expect she’ll be waiting for you.”
Maren led Coco and me back to the playroom, where she showed me a cupboard stacked neatly with paint pots, sheets of card, wooden animals, train sets, books, and—oddly—kitchen utensils, such as whisks, pans, sponges, and wooden spoons.
“You’ll find no princesses or Barbie dolls in here,” Maren said. “Aurelia was against such things.”
“I like her already,” I said, and she flinched.
Gaia raced into the room then, pulling chairs and a small table from a corner of the room and setting it up with a crayon holder and sheets of paper.
“Now, now,” Maren said, wagging her finger at Gaia. “I’m afraid drawing time isn’t until five o’clock. Right now is flash card time.”
I saw Gaia’s face fall. “She loves drawing,” Maren said, in a tone that suggested drawing was on a par with skinning dead rodents. “Here are the flash cards.” She handed me what resembled a large-scale set of playing cards featuring frogs and umbrellas. Then, her work done: “Have an enjoyable afternoon. Dinner is at five thirty.”
I felt a sense of relief when she left. I turned back to see that Gaia was already in the middle of a drawing, hands splayed on either side of the page and her face so low it was almost touching it. Her teddy—Louis—was sitting on the seat beside her, and every so often she’d look down at him, as though to check he hadn’t leaped off and run somewhere. I sat in the chair opposite with Coco on my lap and held up one of the flash cards to Coco. This one featured a large letter R in both upper- and lowercase, with a cartoon rainbow.
“See, Coco?” I said. “R for rainbow.” Blimey, I was doing pretty damn well. I was responding to the name “Sophie” without batting an eyelid, and my accent was legit BBC Radio 4. Nannying was going to be a piece of cake.
Coco gave me a cross look. I lifted another card. S for snake. She reached out and grabbed the flash card, shoved it in her mouth, and chewed off a corner. Without looking up, Gaia said, “Coco hates flash cards.”
“Does she?” I muttered, trying to retrieve the chewed piece of card from Coco’s mouth. When she chomped down on the end of my index finger I gave a loud “Fu-uh!,” stopping just in time before the whole word came out, and she looked at me with alarm before bursting into a loud laugh.
“Say that again,” Gaia said. “She likes it.”
“Say what again?” I said. “Fu-uh?”
Coco laughed again, louder.
“Best not,” I said.
“Fuh!” Gaia said to Coco, sending her into fits of laughter. “FUH!”
I glanced at the door, waiting for Maren to emerge with a concerned look on her face. I found the appropriate flash card and held it up to Coco. “Fuh for fox. See?”
“Here,” Gaia said, thrusting a picture at me. “It’s for you.”
I tried to make sense of the heavily colored shapes on the page. A rainbow, I could make that out, and beneath it five hollow-eyed figures that appeared to be walking on stilts whilst holding hands.
“That’s you,” she said, pointing at one. “And that’s me, that’s Coco, and the small one is Louis.”
“Who’s this?” I asked, pointing at the tallest of the figures.
“That’s Mumma,” Gaia said. “She’s holding your hand because she wants you to take care of me.”
“Is she?” I said, swallowing hard, and before I could change the subject Gaia fixed her jade-green eyes on me and leaned close to whisper in my ear. “Mumma told me that she wants you to take care of me.”
“How did she tell you that?” I asked.
Gaia looked puzzled. “Mumma tells me lots of things,” she said, shrugging.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. She took a fresh page and started on another drawing, which started as two large