Allison Pearson - I Don't Know How She Does It

“Jeez,” my boss says, tearing a granary roll in half, “taking things a bit far, aren’t you?”

By the way, Rod says he has some business he wants Momo and me to pitch for. Stone something. “One Stone with two birds, geddit?”

I say fine, but we will need more resources.

“Can’t increase the head count, Katie,” says Rod. “You just gotta get out there and kick the fucking tires, kid.”

SO I RUSH HOME FROM WORK and when I get through the door I call out, but there’s no reply. There are squeals coming from the sitting room and my first thought is pain — they’re in pain — and my heart flubs over and I go in and there’s Paula on the sofa with Emily and Ben, all snuggled up together with Toy Story on the TV and giggling uncontrollably.

“What’s so funny?” I say, but they’re laughing too much to answer. Emily’s laughing so much she’s crying. And seeing the way they are, so snug and happy there, I suddenly think, You’re paying for this, Kate. You’re literally paying for this. For another woman to sit on your sofa and cuddle your children.

So I ask Paula if she hasn’t got something better to be getting on with, and I hate the sound of my voice: priggish, pious, lady of the bloody manor. And they all look at me, eyes widening in amazement, and then they start giggling again. Can’t help it. Giggling at the silly lady who’s come in and tried to stop the fun. As though you could turn fun off just like that.

Sometimes I think Paula’s too close to them; it’s not healthy. Mostly, I’d do anything for her to stay. A teacher at Emily’s school told me she’s known mothers who sack the child minder every six months, so the children don’t get too attached. I mean, how selfish can you get? Denying them a familiar loving presence just because you want it to be you and it can’t be you.

Of course, I sometimes find myself worrying that she doesn’t talk to the children as I would talk to them. When I was a kid, I used to say dinner for lunch and tea for dinner, but now I’ve joined the professional classes I teach my kids lunch and dinner, and then Paula comes along and teaches them dinner and tea. I can’t complain, can I? Richard corrects them. “Loo,” he says firmly, as Emily demands once again to go to the toilet, but to be honest I feel more comfortable with the common words myself. I know Paula lets them watch quite a bit of TV, but in other ways I can see she’s much better than I would be — consistent, more patient. After a weekend with them, I’m screaming to be let out of the house, but with Paula it’s steady as she goes. Never raises her voice. A lot that’s good in their characters comes from her.

When I went in to school for a meeting with the teacher the other night, the headmistress took me aside and said that if Emily was going to have any hope of getting into Piper Place she would need — how to put this? — more of the right kind of stimulation at home. Children with mothers who didn’t go out to work were being taken on regular visits to museums; they had a broader perspective. Even if they ate Alphabetti Spaghetti, it was always in sodding Latin. Whereas homes with both parents out at work? “Well, there can be a tendency to rely on the te-le-vis-i-on,” said Miss Acland, getting five syllables out of the dreaded word. “Emily,” she said, “seems to have a quite remarkable knowledge of Walt Disney videos.”

This was her way of telling me Paula wasn’t good enough.

“Emily,” continued Miss Acland, “will need to show a wide range of interests to secure a place at a good secondary school. Competition in London is very fierce, as you know, Mrs. Shattock. I suggest an instrument — not the violin, too common now; perhaps the clarinet, which has plenty of personality — and you could consider one of the more unusual sports.” Rugby for girls, she believed, was gaining in popularity.

“Emily needs a CV at the age of six?”

Maybe I should have tried to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“Well, Mrs. Shattock, in certain home situations where neither parent is present, these kinds of things can, shall we say, slip. Did you learn an instrument yourself as a child?”

“No, but my father sang a lot to us.”

“Oh,” she said, the kind of Oh that kind of woman holds in a pooper-scooper.

Hideous money-grubbing education witch.

In her last job, the one before us, Paula worked for a family in Hampstead. Julia, the mother, said the kids weren’t allowed to watch TV.

“And Julia worked in telly, making all this crap for Channel 5,” Paula told me one day, laughing loudly at the memory. “And it’s like her kids weren’t allowed telly because it’s evil!” At the weekends, Julia and her husband Mike stayed in bed while the kids were downstairs watching videos. Paula found this out because Adam, the youngest, told her one Monday when she caused a row by trying to switch the TV off. When I think of that story, I can feel myself redden. Aren’t I guilty of the same double standard? I tell Paula that Ben must have water not juice and then, at the weekend, if he asks me for apple juice, I give in quickly to buy myself some peace and quiet. And because I see him so little, I want our times together to be happy. So I want my nanny to be a better mother than I would ever be: I expect her to love my two like they’re her own, and then, when I come home and find her loving them like her own, they’re suddenly My Children and to be loved by nobody except me.

As I unload the dishwasher and start to wash by hand all the plates that aren’t properly clean, I can see Paula looking at me from the other end of the kitchen. She’s brushing Emily’s hair and really looking at me. I wish I knew what she thought. She said to me once that she would never have a nanny if she had kids of her own; she knew too much about what went on — the girls who suck up to the mums and then, as soon as they’re out the door, it’s on the mobile calling their mates.

Emily lets out a cry as the brush snags on a tangle. “Hush now,” Paula chides, “princesses have to have their hair brushed a hundred times every night, don’t they, Mummy?” She looks across the room, seeking an act of conciliation and consent.

No, I don’t want to know. If I knew what she really thought, it would probably kill me. Still, a part of me wishes I knew what she thought.

EMILY’S BIRTHDAY ALWAYS MEANS the start of summer for me. When my waters broke six years ago and I took a cab to the hospital, there were people sitting at café tables on the pavements and spilling into the street and it felt as though the whole city was in carnival for the arrival of my child.

The day before her party, I do the supermarket shop with Ben. Do the supermarket shop. Who could imagine that such a small sentence could contain so much pain: an Oresteia of suffering.

First off, I try to liberate one of the extra-wide trolleys, which is in coitus with the trolley outside the store; I pull and push with one hand, holding on to runaway toddler with the other.

An aviary on wheels, the extra-wide trolley is roughly as maneuverable as the Isle of Wight. I try to persuade Ben to sit in the baby seat. He declines, preferring to ride in the cargo hold where he can eject any purchase he disapproves of. In desperation, I crack open a box of Mini Milks and give him two; while both his hands are full of lolly, I slip him into the seat and snap the clips (bad, bad, bribing mother). Now all that remains is to track down the thirty-seven items on my list. After I threw the radio at him this morning, Richard said he thought the whole birthday thing was perhaps stressing me out a little. Why didn’t I take a break and he’d do the supermarket shop? Impossible, I said, he would buy all the wrong things.