‘Is the circus here?’ asked Lavender, peering out of her bedroom window. I could understand her confusion. With three trucks, seven trailers and a marquee in the driveway, it did look as if the circus had come to their garden.
The Appleby house had been thrown into complete chaos thanks to the arrival of the reality television film crew, who were now permanently living in the courtyard. A team of twenty men worked in shifts, eating and sleeping in trailers when they were off duty. There was never a moment when a camera wasn’t rolling and there was a constant stream of crew members crashing through the house at all hours of the day and night.
On top of this, cameras had been installed in all of the light fittings, which were constantly whirring overhead, and red lights flickered in all of the pot plants. Alysha had also ordered fifty full-length mirrors, which were installed on every wall in the house, to ensure she could check her appearance at all times. It felt like I was being trapped in a giant changing room, with reflective surfaces everywhere you looked. It also meant the last shred of privacy I had was taken away.
I usually have breakfast at 4 a.m., because it’s the only time of the day I can let my guard down. Alysha rarely wakes before midday and the night nanny is on call until 4.30 a.m., so it’s usually my only moment to myself. However, as I discovered on the second day of filming, there is no downtime in reality television.
As I tiptoed into the kitchen wearing the clothes I’d slept in—skimpy shorts and a singlet (my monogrammed pyjamas were in the wash)—I collided with a burly, bearded crew member, carrying a lasso of electrical cords over his shoulder. ‘Well, good morning,’ he chuckled, as I glanced down to check how revealing my top was and found it was worse than I feared.
‘Umm, good morning,’ I replied, not wanting to appear rude. To cover my embarrassment I opened the fridge and buried my head in the top shelf, pretending to look for something. ‘Where’s that orange juice?’ I muttered. The bottle was right in front of me, but I needed time to compose myself.
I could hear the technician chuckling behind me and wondered what was so funny. Then I heard the buzz of a walkie-talkie. ‘Testing, testing,’ he said. ‘Is that picture clear enough for you, boys?’
That’s when I spotted a flashing red light coming from behind a pot of coconut yoghurt. I couldn’t believe it. They’d hidden a camera inside the fridge, looking outwards at chest height. This meant that, as I bent over, a crew member in a trailer somewhere was getting an eyeful, right down my top. I glared at the camera, before grabbing an apple and retreating to the safety of my bedroom.
I couldn’t really complain seeing as I’d signed the production company’s contract, which had included the statement, ‘This show may include scenes of nudity, sex and violence.’ Also, I wasn’t really worried that my nipple flash would make the final cut. My modest assets weren’t the stars of the show, or even impressive extras, as Cherry had recently pointed out to me when I’d taken her to a swimming lesson. ‘Lindsay, your boobies aren’t nearly as big as Mommy’s,’ she’d pointed out helpfully, in front of ten other children and their nannies. Thank you, Cherry. Obviously, Alysha didn’t have to worry that my breasts would steal her attention.
‘I hear you got caught on “cleavage cam” this morning,’ laughed Fernando, when our paths crossed in the hallway later that morning. He was on his way to give Alysha a vajazzle and I was taking Goldie to her web design class. This was the trendiest extracurricular activity among Hollywood kids, as every parent wanted their child to be the next Mark Zuckerberg—with better dress sense, of course.
The plus side of having a crew permanently at the house was that Fernando had been asked to work for Alysha full time, as she needed constant hair and make-up.
He was now there from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day and on call during the night for ‘cosmetic emergencies’. I couldn’t be happier about having an ally nearby, especially as Fernando still spoke his mind even when the cameras were rolling.
He was the only staff member who had refused to sign the consent form, which meant his face had to be blurred when he was in a shot, like a criminal in Cops. ‘It makes me seem mysterious,’ he explained, ‘plus I don’t give away my talents for free. If they want me that badly, they can give me my own show, baby!’
If it was anyone else, I suspect they’d be fired, but as usual Fernando lived by his own rules and everyone else had to work around him.
Alysha was certainly taking her reality television role very seriously. She even had a director’s chair especially made with her name splashed across the back in big, glittery letters. She also changed her outfit up to seven times a day to keep her look ‘fresh’. Her stylist had her work cut out, begging designers from across the world to lend Alysha free outfits.
As well as the film crew, make-up team, a stylist and all their assistants, who seemed to spend their days drinking Diet Coke and dropping their cigarettes in the fountain, a team of six lawyers were also living at the house.
Alysha was taking no chances with how she was represented and the lawyers were assessing every snapshot of footage. The other day I’d heard one poor cameraman being scolded for filming Alysha eating a stick of celery. Instantly, a lawyer appeared out of nowhere. ‘Do I need to remind you of clause 23 of the contract?’ she hissed. ‘My client is never, ever to be filmed eating.’ It was all I could do not to let out a giggle. Alysha’s pet hate is the sound of other people chewing, and it would be her worst nightmare to be filmed with her mouth full.
There were cue cards posted around the house with reminders such as ‘chin up’ and ‘hover off the chair’. The last order was from Alysha’s stylist. ‘When you sit on a chair it makes your thighs spread out,’ she warned. ‘Can you try and just hover about a centimetre off the seat?’
I decided pretty quickly that any reality star who says their show isn’t staged is lying. Even if other shows are only half as stage-managed as Alysha’s, that still means there’s a fair amount of fakery involved. They tell certain people to make certain comments; they set up phone calls and scenarios where you ‘bump into’ long-lost friends and relatives. Some of these relatives aren’t even really related to the star but are actors hired to play a part.
‘Do you know that my daddy has stick-on hair?’ The conversation around the kitchen table halted as Cherry made her announcement without even looking up from her colouring book.
Alysha and her producer had been debating whether or not a film crew should be sent to India, where Sir Cameron was currently working. So far, the only cameo he’d made in the show was a two-minute Skype conversation, where he’d said ‘Hello’ and then the screen had frozen. He didn’t seem keen to take part and had even banned the film crew from stepping into his study, which only made them more keen to do so.
‘It will seem more real if he appears in the show,’ argued the producer. ‘Otherwise it might look like you’re hiding something and viewers will grow suspicious.’
That’s when Cherry had decided to pipe up with her revelation about her daddy. Luckily, she was distracted when her red crayon snapped in half (hashtag ‘preschool problems’) and the adults quickly glossed over the subject and moved on.
I didn’t blame Sir Cameron for setting boundaries to protect his privacy. I was actually surprised that Alysha was letting a television crew inside her real home, instead of renting another property to film in. When a celebrity is photographed ‘at home’ it often isn’t really where they live at all. A lot of reality television stars just hire a mansion, put some family photos on the mantelpiece, move the pets in and pretend they’ve lived there for years—despite the fact their kids don’t know the way to the bathroom.
It seems like lying comes second nature to some starlets, who are so desperate to impress that they fabricate entire layers of their lives. I know one wealthy housewife who is a notorious storyteller. She told all her friends that she was an FHM model. When they asked why none of her photos were on the internet, she claimed her husband had them all taken down. She also claimed to have ordered five Bentleys, which were mysteriously never delivered, and that she had been an Olympic downhill skier. The clincher was when she said the Molton Brown was coming to her Molton Brown–themed birthday party . . . until someone pointed out that Molton Brown is not actually a person, just a product name.
However, Alysha had decided she wanted to be ‘authentic’ and allow cameras into her real home. This was funny because in every other area of her life she was happy to fake it. I happened to know that her new Chanel handbag was hired at a cost of $1000 a week, because she couldn’t get to the top of the waiting list to buy one. She had fake hair, fake eyelashes and fake nails; even her age was fake.
She’d even hired a ‘social media ghostwriter’ who now updated her Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds for her. I felt sorry for Alysha’s fans who were excited to get a reply from a soap star, not realising that it wasn’t actually her writing back to them. Instead, Alysha’s social media accounts were managed by a 25-year-old technology graduate called Crystal, who had turned down a job with NASA to work with Alysha. ‘It’s only for a year until I pay off my student loan,’ Crystal told me. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much I get paid for writing a few Facebook posts.’ She’s previously handled the Twitter account of an actress from Gossip Girl, so she was used to tweeting like a celebrity.
It really is amazing how much of your life can be outsourced when you have an unlimited budget at your disposal.
I was just thankful that the children were being kept relatively out of the pantomime and hadn’t been included in any of the scripted scenes. They were more like extras than cast members and were filmed running around in the background, but weren’t the focus of the film crew’s attention.
‘You might face a backlash if the kids are too involved,’ I’d overheard Alysha’s lawyer warning her. ‘You won’t come off favourably if you’re seen as exploiting them for ratings.’ Alysha knew this was true, as she was friends with a British model who’d come under fire for putting her children at the centre of a reality TV show. She didn’t want to risk the same criticism.
I’d been told to keep the children out of the house as much as possible between 3 and 6 p.m., the time when the sunlight was the most flattering for filming. This wasn’t hard because the children’s social calendars were busier than Paris Hilton’s in the nineties, with afterschool clubs, birthday parties and press events to attend. They were on the VIP list for the opening of every toy store, junior sample sale and kids-movie premiere in the city. I had to set up an online calendar for each of them just to keep track of where they should be and, as their surrogate parent, I also had to attend all of the activities. In Hollywood, even the baby classes where adults sit in a circle and sing nursery rhymes tunelessly with their babies in their laps are often called ‘Nanny and me’ rather than ‘Mommy and me’.
The children never really complained about their schedules, because they didn’t know any different, and all of their school friends were equally busy. However, I constantly felt guilty as I shipped them between appointments. I think young children need rest, structure and stability, not press conferences and photo opportunities.
I do not think it’s healthy, on a Tuesday evening, to chauffeur a six-year-old straight from school to a hair salon to have an ‘up-do’ before a charity fundraiser. However, try telling this to Alysha, who is determined that one of her children will be mentioned in TIME magazine’s list of the ‘50 youngest philanthropists in America’.
As well as late-night events there were also early-morning gatherings. Every day, on the way to school, I had to stop off at Starbucks. This was a ritual shared by all of the girls’ classmates, who each had Starbucks credit cards they could just swipe at the counter. ‘It will make them more alert for their lessons,’ explained Alysha, although I put my foot down when it came to giving them caffeine. Currently, the fashionable drink for schoolgirls was a babycino made with frothed almond milk and sweetened with agave nectar. It was a bizarre sight, seeing a cafe full of children chugging down their ‘coffee’. Many of them looked as tired and stressed out as businessmen.
I could tell the constant presence of the reality film crew was taking its toll on Goldie when one morning she asked me to supersize her Starbucks order. The previous evening she’d had a triple-whammy of activities, going to pony club, then an etiquette lesson and then a yoga class, and hadn’t got home until midnight.
As we queued at the counter she pulled at my shirtsleeve and looked at me with wide eyes. ‘Lindsay, I just don’t think I can function unless I have an espresso pronto,’ she cried dramatically. ‘And pleeease can you make it a double’. I was having a deja vu moment, as her mother had barked the exact same order at me the morning before. It’s amazing how impressionable kids are at that age.
‘Do you actually know what an espresso is, sweetie?’ I asked gently. ‘It’s a drink for grown-ups and will probably make your tummy feel sore.’
She stared at me as if I was keeping something from her. ‘But Mommy says it’s magic,’ she said questioningly. ‘When she’s grumpy she just needs to drink out of one of her teeny tiny cups and she’s happy again, and doesn’t even need to eat lunch.’
At this moment I could have attempted to explain the science behind caffeine, but I doubted Goldie would understand it until she was a few years older. Instead I opted for the nanny’s last resort—a little white lie. When we got to the counter I ordered Goldie a babycino but asked for it in an espresso cup, to fool her. After one sip she perked up instantly and began bouncing around the room, bumping her cup against her classmates, and saying ‘Cheers’ in a fake British accent.
I felt guilty that I had indulged her with a placebo, but it could have been worse. As we left the cafe, one of Goldie’s school friends was standing outside sucking on a lollypop stick. Her mother was barking into her mobile phone, with a cigarette hanging from her fingertips.
•
I make it my mission to try to inject some normality into the kids’ lives—although this can be easier said than done at times. They spend so much time around adults, participating in age-inappropriate activities, that I see it as part of my job to balance it out. How do children outside the Hollywood bubble enjoy themselves? What does their playtime look like?
The problem is that, even when I try to engage the kids in low-income fun, it somehow always ends up with a Hollywood twist. The day we set up a lemonade stall was the perfect example.
‘When I was a little girl I used to sell homemade lemonade from the end of my parents’ driveway every weekend,’ I told the little girls as we squeezed lemons into crystal jugs (Alysha doesn’t allow plastic crockery in the house, as she has a phobia of picnics. Really. She says there’s no way to sit flatteringly on a picnic rug). I was pretty pleased with myself for coming up with the Sunday activity. I had visions of the girls handing out lemonade cups to people in passing cars in exchange for fifty cent coins. It would be a lesson in the value of money, and the fun that can be had when you work hard.
I’d been to the market that morning and bought a huge tub of lemons, smuggling in a bag of sugar—the white stuff is forbidden in this household. Alysha spent every Sunday morning cocooned in a full-body detox wrap in her bathroom (her ensuite has a sauna, sunbed and oxygen chamber in it). I hoped that would keep her busy until we’d mixed up the sugary cocktail. Unfortunately we were delayed after Cherry squirted lemon juice in her eye and I had to make her a pirate’s eye patch out of the back of a cereal box to cover it. She didn’t actually need it; her eye was fine, but she’d never miss any excuse to get dressed up. Of course, the fancy dress sesh soon spiralled. Goldie wanted to wear her Ninja Turtle costume, and Lavender screeched for her Elmo bodysuit (a genuine Sesame Street costume used on the show that Alysha had bought for $3400 at an auction). The other children opted for their tried-and-tested onesies.
‘Right, little ones, let’s hit the road,’ I said, when we were suited and booted. At Cherry’s request I was wearing a Pippi Longstocking outfit, with a wig that had long, stiff plaits that stuck out the sides of my head. Move over, Daphne Guinness!
As our gang of characters headed back into the kitchen I was greeted by the sight of my boss, still wrapped in her detox mask, which had hardened to a green shell. I’m not even sure how she’d got herself into an upright position, seeing as she didn’t seem able to bend her knees or elbows.
‘Mommy, are you playing dress-up too?’ cried Cherry, excited by the rare opportunity to actually play with a parent. Alysha ignored her. I saw her eyes—the only part of her visible beneath the bandages—flick in my direction. ‘Lindsay, what the hell is going on here?’ she exclaimed, ‘Why do my children look like they’ve just escaped from a mental asylum?’
I gestured to the pile of lemons. ‘We’re going to have a lemonade stand outside the front of the house,’ I explained. ‘I thought it would be a good . . . teaching opportunity.’
I can never predict how my boss will react to certain situations. When I’m sure she’ll fly off the handle she often stays calm, and when there’s really no reason to be tricky, she can turn into King Kong. I once tried to map her mood swings on an iPhone app, but even a high-tech algorithm couldn’t find a pattern.
If I could have seen her face beneath the detox mask, I’m guessing she’d have looked thoughtful. When she eventually answered she surprised me. ‘That’s a fantastic idea,’ she cried. ‘It’s just the kind of wholesome content we need for the reality show.’
Of course, the show. It was all about the show. Obviously. But at least she hadn’t put a blanket ban on the activity. ‘Sounds good, Alysha,’ I replied. ‘I’m just going to grab a wooden crate from the garage to use as a table and then we’ll be ready to go.’
I should have known it was too good to be true. Alysha’s idea of wholesome fun was a little more high-end than I’d envisioned. ‘Oh no, that won’t do,’ she said. ‘I’ll give Tilly a call. She can design a lemonade stand for you.’ Tilly was Alysha’s interior decorator, who was as much a permanent feature of the house as the furniture she had purchased. The Appleby household was like her Golden Gate Bridge—as soon as one level was redecorated, she started all over again.
‘That’s a very kind offer, but I don’t think it’s really necessary.’ I tried to be as polite as possible. ‘All we need is somewhere to rest the lemonade jugs. I can just lay a tablecloth over the box. It’s what I always did when I was a little girl.’
I realised too late that I shouldn’t have mentioned my own childhood, as it just acted as a benchmark for Alysha to upstage. ‘Oh but, Lindsay, this isn’t some wilderness town in Australia,’ she said. ‘This is Hollywood. We have slightly higher standards. Do you really think cars here will stop at a box by the side of the road?’ Well, yes I did, when that box had six adorable children standing next to it. But you have to choose which battles to fight in my game, and this wasn’t one of them.
The children were rightfully disappointed when I had to explain that we, sadly, wouldn’t be playing lemonade stand today, because we needed to wait a week for a stall to be designed and constructed so that we didn’t bring down the tone of the neighbourhood. I appeased them by freezing the homemade lemonade into sorbet, which we guzzled in front of the TV that evening. It also meant that, by the following Sunday, they were more excited than ever.
As for the lemonade stand, well, Tilly had certainly gone all out. Although that might have been because she charged $450 per hour. She’d built a mini cafe facade with an oak wood frame and a white-and-red striped canopy. It had a vintage lemonade dispenser, like you’d see in an old sixties diner. She’d even found—or custom-made—a neon sign that read ‘Pop Stop’ and ran on a generator that was also connected to a bubble machine. The lemonade stand looked like it belonged in Disneyland, especially when it was manned by six kids in fancy dress outfits.
The TV producer had dispatched a cameraman to hover around us. He didn’t seem too pleased that he had to video our entrepreneurial escapades rather than watching the Dodgers game the rest of the crew were glued to in their trailer. But he soon perked up when our first customer arrived, ten minutes later. As the Jaguar with the blacked-out windows slowed down and pulled over at the side of the road, the children jumped up and down excitedly. Phew! I’d had a secret fear that nobody would stop for them. We’d set the price per glass at $1.50, but famous people can be ridiculously frugal when it comes to opening their wallets. It’s partly because they get so much given to them for free and partly because they rarely carry cash, particularly loose change. If it’s not a hundred dollar bill, it’s not worth anything to them.
The sun was shining in my eyes, so I didn’t clock our customer’s face until he was directly in front of the lemonade stand. I faked a cough to hide my gasp. It was James Bond! Not that he was in character, of course, but it was one of the actors who had played him. (I won’t say who, but let’s just say he’s my favourite Bond of them all.) The children were totally clueless as to the identity of their star customer. They were just excited to be given attention.
‘You should have two glasses. No, have three. Have four!’ sang Harlow, thrusting empty plastic cups into the hands of the Oscar winner.
‘Hang on, girls,’ I stepped in before she could hand over the whole packet of cups. ‘The gentleman probably just wants one glass. He probably isn’t that thirsty.’ But I had underestimated the power of a seven-year-old with puppy dog eyes, as Harlow stared up at her customer. ‘But it tastes like sunshine,’ she bleated, ‘and we made it all by ourselves . . .’ Wow, this girl knew how to do the hard sell.
‘Well, in that case, how can I refuse?’ I was amazed when Bond (sorry, that’s how I’ll always think of him) pulled his wallet from his pocket and took out a stack of notes. ‘How much for an entire jug? Or how about a hundred dollars for the whole lot?’
The girls were over the moon. A part of me wanted to protest. It seemed like easy money for barely any work. Wasn’t I meant to be teaching them the satisfaction of toil and struggle? Oh well, I consoled myself, maybe it’s just a different lesson, on the generosity of strangers.
As 007 drove away balancing the jug between his knees (‘I’m a neighbour so I don’t have far to go. Don’t worry!’) I was just thankful I’d bitten my tongue and not made a ‘shaken not stirred’ reference. Alysha would have killed me if that had been caught on camera. The cameraman had perked up considerably. ‘Well, that was a good cameo,’ he laughed. ‘That’s a wrap. I’m going back to the trailer. You’re not going to top that customer.’
That evening, as I watched Harlow squeeze the hundred dollar note through the slot in her piggy box (she’d decided to keep it ‘safe’ for her sisters), I thought back to my own childhood, when Will and I would run our own lemonade stand. The most we ever made in a day was $19.65 and we were over the moon, counting silver coins into one-dollar piles. This was a different world, and maybe I just had to accept that. A world where interior decorators design lemonade stalls and 007 makes it a sell-out.
The girls had decided that next time they wanted to sell cupcakes instead. I made a mental note to start practising my red velvet recipe in case Martha Stewart happened to drive by.
•
‘Will, it’s me,’ I squealed excitedly into the phone.
It’s a silly thing, but I always get a warm feeling when I call Will and say ‘It’s me’. I love having someone in my life who recognises my voice immediately.
‘Look, I know you’re in the office but I just had to call you. I’ve had such a fun day. Wait until I tell you who I met . . .’
There was silence on the other end of the line. Clearly my excitement wasn’t being reciprocated. When Will finally did answer he sounded impatient. ‘Lindsay . . . look, I’m a little busy right now. Can I call you back later? I’m right in the middle of something.’
What? I was taken aback. Will was never too busy to talk to me. Granted, it was Monday morning in Hamilton, but I’d been to his office. We’re talking a small country accountancy firm—it’s not exactly the New York Stock Exchange. There’s a reason they have a ping-pong table in the back room and their pot plants always die from being overwatered.
I wanted to spill my exciting news to him like I would have when we were kids, but I had to be an adult and appreciate he had responsibilities. I wasn’t going to let Will know how rejected I felt. ‘Sure, sure, babe,’ I quipped. Then I instantly regretted my choice of words. Will and I do not have a ‘babe’ type of relationship and to him it would sound like such an Americanism.
‘I mean, sure Will,’ I corrected myself quickly. ‘Shall I call you in an hour? Or later tonight after I put the kids to bed?’ Bedtime for the girls would be late afternoon in Hamilton. I knew that a lot of people in Will’s office only worked part-time and left in the afternoon to pick up their kids from school, so I thought he might be grateful for some long-distance company.
‘I’m actually pretty busy all day, and I have plans tonight so I need to leave on time.’ He sounded sheepish. ‘Can I call you when I have some free time? Maybe over the weekend?’
In any other friendship this wouldn’t be a big ask, but there are reasons I always call Will and not the other way around. Number one, I have to go to a pay phone for privacy. Number two, my schedule is insane, so the chances are if he called me I probably wouldn’t be free.
I started to explain this to Will (for the hundredth time) while trying not to sound too self-important. He let out a disgruntled sigh. ‘We’re both busy people, Lindsay. I have a career too, you know, and a life to try and maintain outside the office. Look, can you at least set up a Facebook account so we can send instant messages?’
This wasn’t the first time he’d raised the Facebook topic, and my response was always the same. ‘You know I’m not allowed a Facebook account, Will,’ I sighed. ‘If my boss found out I was on social media she would fire me.’
It might sound extreme because of Alysha’s carefully managed presence on social media, but she banned anyone else in the household from even having a Facebook account—her children and staff members. This is very common rule set by parents in the spotlight. They fear their children will be targeted by trolls and pestered by reporters if they have an online presence. It’s a hard ban to enforce with older children, and I’ve heard of nannies helping teenagers set up pseudonymous Facebook accounts using their real first name and a fake surname created by typing their actual surname in to a thesaurus (guess who Jonas Voyage is?).
It’s also a matter of security, especially if I’m working for a member of a royal family or a high-profile politician, whose children could be targeted by kidnappers.
The frightening reality is that it’s not hard to hack into someone’s Facebook page and use it to track their location. A friend of mine worked for the White House and got into serious trouble for ‘checking in’ to Air Force One on Facebook with their exact location over the Indian Ocean.
It had been a topic of dispute between Will and me on more than one occasion. ‘I can’t believe you let your employers have that much control over your personal life,’ he huffed. ‘I really can’t understand why having a Facebook page would be such a bad thing.’
My employers spent a fortune on agents, managers and publicists to control their public image, and a virtual portal into their real life could do a lot of damage.
I knew a British nanny who was fired for posting a ‘selfie’ taken in her boss’s kitchen. The mum was a celebrity chef and the face of a national supermarket. In the background of the photograph you could see a supermarket receipt stuck to the door of the fridge. The problem was that the weekly food shop hadn’t been done at the supermarket the chef represented, but at their cheaper competitor. An eagle-eyed reporter zoomed in on the photograph and broke the story with the headline, ‘The taste of hypocrisy.’ Her boss lost a three million dollar endorsement deal, all because the nanny wanted to tweet a photo of her new haircut.
‘Well, I don’t understand all the fuss about Facebook,’ I replied. ‘It just seems like such a waste of time to me. If I have a moment to myself I’d rather sleep or phone you for a proper conversation. I want to hear your voice, not just look at a photo of you that was taken at the Easter show seven years ago. You need to update that, by the way. It’s false advertising.’
I had once searched Will’s name on Facebook just to see what his profile said about him. Because I couldn’t log in to the site all I could read was his age, his job title and the fact his favourite film is The Man from Snowy River.
But that was just another reason I didn’t want a Facebook account. ‘What would I update anyway?’ I asked Will. ‘I wouldn’t be able to write anything about my job or the children that I work for, and what topics would that leave me with?’ My friends, hobbies and worries all revolved around my work, which is a sad realisation when you’re meant to be in the prime of your life.
‘It’s not all about you, Lindsay,’ he laughed, and then seemed to remember he was at work and lowered his voice. ‘You can use it to keep track of your friends back home, like me. Tons of people are just Facebook watchers and don’t write anything. They’re just interested in other people.’
That didn’t sound like much fun to me. I’d rather not read what people that I went to school with are doing. ‘Rachel just got engaged. Hayley is having a baby.’ I suspect that my old school friends back in Hamilton would envy my life in Los Angles, but the reality is I’ve been working full time since I finished school, and a constant stream of Facebook announcements of engagements, house purchases and newborns would give me pangs of envy for normality.
I feel like I grew up too fast sometimes. While my friends were sneaking in to nightclubs and kissing boys, I was doing night-feeds and singing nursery rhymes. I’ve been at the mercy of a boss and a handful of children since I was still a child myself, and sometimes I can’t help feeling like I’ve missed out.
As a sixteen-year-old, I used to get embarrassed when I had to take the Stavros children to the shopping mall, in case I bumped into any of my old school friends. On the benches outside the cinema, there’d always be a group of girls from my high school, flirting with the popular boys. I’d be pushing a stroller with a wailing baby, juggling nappies and wiping kids’ noses.
I certainly didn’t look like a celebrity back then. I looked like a teen mum who needed a lesson on contraception. If I walked past a group of grandmothers, one was sure to make a derogatory comment. ‘No ring on her finger. What is the world coming to?’
I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years because our lives have moved in such different directions. When my sixteen-year-old school friends had been excited by the launch of a new range of crimping irons, I was buying diapers and knew far too much about nappy rash cream.
I’m sure those popular girls would be envious of my glamorous life now, but I also felt a twinge of jealousy when I heard about theirs. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to own an apartment, where I could invite friends over for dinner.
I could have explained all this to Will but it sounded so depressing and insecure. ‘It’s fine,’ I sighed. I overheard someone talking to him in the background—it sounded like the receptionist telling him his next meeting had arrived. ‘Why don’t you call me whenever you’re free. I’ll keep my mobile on me and if I don’t answer straight away I’ll call you back from a phone booth as soon as I can.’ It seemed like a compromise and would hopefully appease Will, who was obviously growing impatient with my restrictions.
I haven’t admitted this to anyone, but for the past year I’ve been having the same anxiety dream at least once a week. I’m standing in my old street in Hamilton, in the ball gown that I wore to last year’s Oscars party. A huge diamond the size of a boulder is chained to my ankle, as if I’m a prisoner. I realise that I have no job and no money. I’m knocking on my old front door but my parents aren’t home or don’t want to answer.