I nodded, as though second-home dilemmas were part of my everyday existence.

“Heatherbrae House was a real project,” Sandra continued. “It had been totally neglected for decades, lived in by a very eccentric old man who went into a care home and then allowed it to fall into disrepair until his death. Dry rot everywhere, burst pipes, dodgy electrics—it was a case of really stripping it back to the bones and completely revamping it. Two years of absolute grind, reconfiguring the rooms and doing everything from rewiring to putting in a new cesspit. But it was worth it—and of course it made a wonderful case study for the business. We have a whole folder of before and after, and it really shows that good architecture can be as much about bringing out the spirit of an existing house as creating a new one from scratch. Though we do that too, of course. Our specialty is vernacular architecture.”

I nodded as though I had a clue what this meant and took a gulp of wine.

“But that’s enough about me and the house—what about yourself?” Sandra said, with the air of getting down to business. “Tell me a bit about what attracted you to nannying?”

Wow. That was a big question. About a dozen images flashed through my mind, all at once. My parents, shouting at me for getting Play-Doh in the carpet tiles at age six. Age nine, my mother, shaking her head over my report card, not bothering to hide her disappointment. At twelve, the school play no one bothered to come to. Age sixteen, “What a shame you didn’t revise more for history,” instead of congratulations on the As I got in maths, English, and science. Eighteen years of not being good enough, not being the daughter I was supposed to be, eighteen years of not measuring up.

“Well . . .” I felt myself flounder. This was not part of the story I had practiced, and now I cursed myself for it. It was an obvious question, one I should have prepared. “Well, I suppose . . . I mean . . . I just like kids.” It was lame. Very lame. And also not completely true. But as the words left my mouth, I realized something else. Sandra was still smiling, but there was a certain neutrality in her expression that had not been there before, and suddenly I understood why. A woman on the cusp of her thirties, going on about how much she likes kids . . .

I hurried to repair my mistake.

“But I have to say, I’m in awe of anyone who wants to be a parent. I’m definitely not ready for that yet!”

Bingo. I could not miss the flash of relief that crossed Sandra’s face, though it was quickly suppressed.

“Not that it’s an option right now anyway,” I said, feeling confident enough for a little joke, “since I’m firmly single.”

“So . . . no ties to London then?”

“Not really. I have friends of course, but my parents retired abroad a few years back. In fact, once I’ve sorted things out with Little Nippers there’s really nothing keeping me in London. I could take up a new post almost straightaway.”

I carefully avoided saying your post, not wanting to seem like I was making assumptions that I would get the job, but Sandra was smiling and nodding enthusiastically.

“Yes, as you can probably tell from our talk earlier, I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a significant factor. We’re coming up to the summer holidays, and we absolutely must get someone in the position before the schools break up or I’ll be sunk. Plus there’s a really, really important trade fair in a few weeks, and both Bill and I really need to be there.”

“What’s your deadline?”

“Rhi breaks up towards the end of June, which is what . . . about three or four weeks? But the trade fair begins the weekend before she breaks up. The truth is, the sooner the better. Two weeks is doable. Three weeks is . . . well, just about okay. Four weeks would be starting to get into disaster zone. You said your notice period is four weeks?”

I nodded. “Yes, but I was figuring it out while I unpacked, and I have at least eight days holiday owing, so I can definitely get it down to just over two weeks, if I factor in my leave, and maybe even less. I think they’ll be prepared to negotiate.”

In actual fact, I had no idea how helpful they would be, and my suspicion was, not very. Janine, my boss and current head of the baby room, wasn’t my biggest fan. I didn’t think she’d be particularly sorry to see me go, but I didn’t think she’d bend over backwards to help me. However, there were ways and means—nursery workers weren’t allowed to come into work for forty-eight hours after a vomiting bug. I was prepared to have a lot of vomiting bugs around the middle of June. Again, though, I didn’t say that to Sandra. For some reason, no one wants a nanny with a flexible moral code, even when she’s flexing it to help them out.

As we ate, Sandra ran through a few more interviewing-by-numbers questions of the kind I had come to expect—outline your strengths and weaknesses . . . give me an example of a difficult situation and how you handled it . . . all the usual suspects. I had answered these before in a dozen other interviews, so my responses were practiced, just slightly tweaked for what I thought Sandra in particular would want to hear. My standard answer to the question about a difficult situation concerned a little boy who had come to his settling-in day at Little Nippers covered in bruises—and the way I had dealt with the parents over the subsequent safeguarding concerns. It went down well with nurseries, but I didn’t think Sandra would want to hear about me snitching on parents to the authorities. Instead, I gave a different story, about a little bullying four-year-old at a previous post, and the way I had managed to trace it back to her own fears over starting primary school.

As I talked she looked through the papers I had bought with me, the background check, the first aid certificates. They were all in order, of course; I knew that, but I still felt a little flutter of nerves beneath my ribs as she reviewed them. My chest tightened, though whether that was down to nerves or the dogs, I couldn’t quite tell, and I pushed down the urge to pull out my inhaler and take a puff.

“And the driving license?” she asked as I finished my anecdote about the four-year-old. I put down my fork onto the smooth polished concrete top of the table and took a deep breath.

“Ah, right, yes. I’m afraid that’s a problem. I do have a full UK driving license and it’s clean, but the actual card was stolen last month when I lost my purse. I’ve ordered a new one, but they wanted an updated photo and it’s taking an age to come through. But I promise you, I can drive.”

That last part was true after all. I crossed my fingers, and to my relief she nodded and moved on to something about my professional ambitions. Did I want to get any additional qualifications. Where did I see myself in a year’s time. It was the second question that really mattered; I could tell that from the way Sandra set down her wineglass and actually looked at me as I answered.

“In a year’s time?” I said slowly, frantically trying to figure out what she wanted to hear from me. Did she want ambition? Commitment? Personal development? A year was a funny length of time to choose; most interviewers said five years, and the question had thrown me. What was she testing?

At last I made up my mind.

“Well . . . you know I want this job, Sandra, and to be honest, in a year’s time I would hope to be here. If you were to offer me this position, I wouldn’t want to uproot myself from London and all my friends just for a short-term post. When I work for a family, I want to think it’s a long-term relationship, both for me and the kids. I want to really get to know them, see them grow up a little bit. If you’d asked me where I saw myself in five years . . . well, that’s a different question. And I’d probably give you a different answer. I’m ambitious—I’d like to do a master’s in childcare or child psychology at some point. But a year—any post I took now, I would definitely want to think of it lasting longer than a year, for all our sakes.”