Can you keep it down please? You’ll wake Lily.’
‘I have many, many problem with the hours you expect me to be working. None of the other nannies who am my friends work as long days as I must.’
‘But Elka, your hours are hardly long. At least, not compared with mine, they’re not …’
‘Look at time now! Five thirty a.m.! And already you are going to office, which mean I am in care of Lily. You meant to be home at seven in the night times so I can have free time for me, and you never are. Ever!’
Okay, I’m momentarily silenced here. Because actually, the girl does have a point. Technically I’m supposed to be home at seven-ish in the evening so she can clock off, but … well, for the past while, it’s been a tiny bit later than that. Like eleven p.m. Or even midnight.
‘All other nannies have evenings free! They am all meeting for coffee and beer and movies. All having good time in Ireland! All have boyfriends and days off and nights out! But never me! No fun for me, ever. I tell you I am sick of it, have enough! Is total crap!’
‘Shhh! Elka, please will you keep your voice down,’ I stage whisper at her, but madam’s having none of it. Instead she’s whipped herself up into a right frenzy and there’s no stopping her now.
‘No, you must be listening to me. Because you am working late, I must too. It’s too much and I want to quit!’
‘I hear what you’re saying and I completely understand but can I also remind you that this is the nature of my job?’ I tell her as soothingly as I can, knowing full well she has me backed into a corner now. Because if she walks out on me … Oh dear God, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘And if you don’t like the schedule I have to work Elka, well … I’m really sorry but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Believe me, I don’t like working such long hours, any more than you do. So if you’re looking for someone to blame, then take it up with … Eurozone leaders and the global economic meltdown. Or … blame the Arab Spring in the Middle East, which is hardly my fault, now is it?’
‘I no understand … you must use little words for me!’
I take another deep breath.
‘I’m so sorry Elka,’ I tell her as calmly as I can, given that I should have been out the door ten minutes ago and even though the day has barely started, I’m now already well behind schedule, ‘but if there’s a big news story, the editor has to be there to oversee it. That’s my life. News doesn’t take time off and therefore neither can I. Editors at the Post don’t sit around. In fairness, I did make this perfectly clear to you when I hired you. Plus, can I point out that I pay you far and above the rates all your other nanny pals are earning? But of course,’ I tack on brightly, hoping against hope that this might just work, ‘if it’s a question of giving you yet another salary increase, I’d be perfectly happy to discuss it with you later.’
No, not even that sways her though. In fact, I might as well be talking to the back of my hand.
‘You work too long days and it no good for Lily, as well as no good for me,’ she lobs in, a cheap shot if ever there was one. The old emotional guilt-card thrown at a busy working mother.
‘She miss her mama so much when you not here. All the time she ask me, when is Mama coming home?’
‘Come on Elka, that is blatantly ridiculous and deeply hurtful …’
‘Even at the weekend time, when you should be with her, you am still in the office. Always, always working.’
Now that bloody stung, and just as this conversation was heating up, temporarily stuns me into silence. I mean, yes, of course I wish I could spend twenty-four hours a day with Lily, I mean, who wouldn’t? But how can I possibly?
I get a lightning-quick flashback to the first year she was born, when somehow, I seemed to manage just fine; got to spend whole weekends with her, even managed to get home relatively early most nights. I can do this, I thought; I can have the best of both worlds. I can be Superwoman. I had my whole work/life balance sussed back then and can honestly say it was the happiest time of my life. By far.
But then the recession hit hard and the staff cutbacks started and that was the end of that. Suddenly I was expected to do the work of three people for the same money or else get out, that was it. Well, it was worse than Sophie’s bleeding Choice. Because much as I love and adore the ground Lily walks on, work is a hugely important part of my life too and if these are my new working hours, then bar resigning, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.
In brutal moments of introspection, I just know I’m someone who’d go off her head in less than a week without a full-time career to nourish my soul. Sure, parenthood is a huge high, but then so is my job. Peppa Pig and Barney videos could never possibly give me the same buzz. So, if it’s not too much to ask, can’t I just have both? I mean, plenty of other women do, don’t they?
But I have at least established clear boundaries with the office and made it perfectly clear to everyone that my Sundays with Lily are sacrosanct. The one day out of an otherwise mental week when I get to read her stories and make pancakes with her, then maybe take her to a Disney movie, or else to feed the ducks in the park. You know, spoil her rotten. Be a proper mummy.
Mind you, ever since the most recent staff culling started, I reluctantly have to admit that Elka might have a point and that even Sacred Sunday Mummy Time seems to have been seriously curtailed lately. Last week for instance; I’d made Lily her breakfast, played imaginary tea parties with her small army of dolls and was just about to take her to the toystore for a very special treat, when I got a call to get into the office ASAP. There was an emergency news conference about a breaking story developing in Afghanistan, so what else could I do? I had to be there, simple as that. Goes with the job.
And I may not let it show, but I love my little Lily so much that it physically aches to be away from her for any length of time, never mind for the eighteen-hour days I’m practically expected to put in right now. For God’s sake, don’t I have enough guilt of my own to deal with at being apart from her, without having it flung into my face by someone who I’m employing? And at premium rates too, I might add?
‘Tell you what, I have a suggestion Elka,’ I say, evenly and deliberately locking my voice into its lowest register, which I’ve learned is absolutely the best way to deal with any confrontational situation. And I should know, having been through more than a fair few in my time. ‘Is it too much to ask that you just get on with your job, let me get on with mine and then this evening when I’m home from work, we can discuss this calmly, at a more appropriate time. Come on now, what do you say to that?’
But madam’s in no mood to listen to reason.
‘I say to all the other nannies, you have no husband, you have no boyfriend, no man, instead you are married to your work.’
And … bam.
‘Excuse me, what did you just say?’
‘… all other children I know each has each mother and father, but not Lily. She only have mother. So the mother need to be here for her more. Much, much more.’
Okay, now that feels exactly the same as a hard wallop across the cheek and hurts so much it momentarily stuns me. So of course, the second I come to, I snap right back at her, the way I seem to snap at everyone these days. But there you go, that’s what deep, ongoing exhaustion and off-the-scale stress levels will do to you.
‘Elka, I made it perfectly clear to you from day one that I was a single parent,’ I tell her crisply. ‘I don’t have a problem with it and neither does Lily, but if this is some kind of issue for you, you really should have said so before now.’
‘Single parent need to spend more time with kids, not less.’
Okay, so now I’m fuming, feeling like smoke is physically puffing out of my ears, cartoon-like. Because she’s hit my weak spot square-on, with all the accuracy