“Rhiannon is fourteen going on twenty-four. She’s at boarding school—not really our choice; I’d prefer to have her at home, but there’s no secondaries close enough. The nearest day school is more than an hour’s drive, and it would just be too much every day. So she boards over near Inverness and comes home most weekends. It breaks my heart a little bit every time she goes, but she seems to enjoy it.”
If you want her at home that badly, why don’t you move? I thought.
“So I won’t meet her?” I asked. Sandra shook her head.
“No, unfortunately not, but to be honest your time would be spent mostly with the little ones. Anyway—it means we can have a lovely chat now, and you can get to know the kids tomorrow. Oh, and I’m afraid my husband—Bill—can’t be here either.”
“Oh?” It was a surprise—a shock even. I wasn’t going to meet him, then. I had been so sure that someone would want to meet the person they were considering hiring to look after their children . . . but I tried to keep my face neutral. Nonjudgmental. “Oh, that’s a shame.”
“Yes, he’s away, working. It’s been a pretty horrendous struggle, I have to say, with so many nannies leaving this year. The children are understandably very destabilized, and the business has really suffered. We’re both architects in a two-man firm. Well, one man, one woman!” She flashed a smile, showing very white, perfectly even teeth. “It’s just me and him, and it means that in busy periods when we’ve got more than one project going on, we can get terribly stretched. We try to juggle it so that there’s always one of us around, but with Katya leaving—she was our last nanny—it’s just been chaos. I’ve had to pick up all the slack here, and Bill’s been trying to hold the business together—I need to be completely honest and say that whoever does get the post isn’t going to get a very smooth introductory period. Normally I try to work from home for the first month or so to make sure everything is going okay, but that just won’t be possible this time. Bill can’t be in two places at once, and we have projects that desperately need me to be there and on the ground. We need someone very experienced who isn’t going to be fazed by being left with the kids early on, and they need to be able to start ASAP.” She looked at me, a little anxiously, a furrow between her strongly marked brows. “Do you think that describes you?”
I swallowed. Time to shed my doubts and step into the role of Rowan the Perfect Nanny.
“Definitely,” I said, and the confidence in my voice almost convinced myself. “I mean, you’ve seen my CV—”
“We were very impressed with your CV,” Sandra said, and I gave a little blushing nod of acknowledgment. “Quite frankly, it’s one of the most impressive ones we’ve had. You tick all the boxes we need in terms of experience with the various age groups. But what’s your notice period like? I mean obviously”—she was talking quickly now, as if slightly uncomfortable—“obviously getting the right nanny is the most important thing, that goes without saying. But actually we do need someone who can start pretty much . . . well, pretty much now, if I’m being completely honest. So it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that’s not a factor.”
“My notice period is four weeks.” I saw Sandra’s mouth twist in a little worried moue—and added hastily, “But I think I could probably negotiate an earlier finish. I have quite a bit of annual leave left . . . and I’d have to sit down with a calendar and do the sums, but I think there’s a good chance I could get it down to two weeks. Maybe less.”
If Little Nippers were prepared to be flexible, that was. God knows, they hadn’t given me much reason for loyalty.
I didn’t miss the flash of hope and relief that crossed Sandra’s face. But then she seemed to realize where we were.
“Look at me, keeping you talking in the hallway. It’s hardly fair for me to be interviewing you before you’ve even got your coat off! Let me show you to your room, and then we can retreat to the kitchen and have a proper talk while you get some food inside you.”