Even if Maria hadn’t memorized the payment breakdown on the new contract, she would have been able to guess this placement was a good one just from the list of requirements that came with it.
The house rules on this job stated that she could use all the property’s facilities: pools, spa, sauna, steam room, grounds, as well as the two-hundred-foot private beach. The only stipulations being that she would need to: keep things tidy, not leave the house unless in the company of the client or the children, and not interrupt any of the client’s phone calls or speak to other visitors. Though why the hell anyone would think she would want to talk to any of the client’s friends Maria had no idea.
The woman who had shown Maria around the house—her chignon too tight, her smile too warm—had also explained how the biometric door lock system worked on the property. That had worried Maria at first. High security often meant shady clients, clients with a reason to be paranoid. She’d had one such experience on a yacht off the coast of Monaco the year before. The number of room searches and security briefings had been enough to put her off working for a certain type of client for life. But the woman who had shown her around this house explained that this client, a single father of two, was just fond of tech. And as the property, with its glass corners and steep staircases was most definitely not toddler-friendly, he had made the decision that only adults should be able to activate the doors between various safety hazards. A childproofing of sorts.
A Silicon Valley guy, Maria inferred, and relaxed. Tech guys were the easiest to work for. The easiest pleased. They knew what they wanted, had no problem telling you, sometimes with eye-watering bluntness, and then often completely ghosted you so you could get on with it.
The woman had placed Maria’s hand on the spotless glass panel and entered her information into the palm-scanner. Maria would be able to go anywhere in the house freely, except, she was told, the locked room at the end of the lower ground-floor passage. A private office, Maria surmised. She could go anywhere but there—so far, so Bluebeard’s castle, Maria thought with an internal smirk. The idea she would care to nose around a tech guy’s office was somehow reassuringly ridiculous.
In a vague way Maria wondered if somehow this privacy was meant to increase her curiosity, if that was the point? She had experienced a few tests in previous jobs. The rich were predictably terrified of being stolen from or cheated in some way. The room downstairs could well be just that, some weird trust exercise. Not beyond the bounds of believability, she’d had stranger: nanny cams, jewelry left out, clients who thought they were paying for more than child care! All of human life was here. It’s best to be on your toes with clients; when the rewards were this high, the risks often were too. And at the back of her mind, she had considered the possibility that this job might not actually be, as sold, covering for their permanent nanny, but rather that she is being actively trialed for the permanent position.
The woman with the too-tight chignon went on to explain that while Maria could go anywhere within the grounds, she wouldn’t actually be able to leave the property through any of the perimeter exits unless accompanied. That was the bit Maria hadn’t liked.
The woman went on to clarify that Maria could leave with the client and the children, on excursions, lunch dates, et cetera, but if Maria wanted to leave alone, she would need to terminate her two-week contract. To do that she would have to call the chignon woman on her direct line; the woman would inform security, who would then escort Maria from the property. It sounded undignified, Maria thought, but then wasn’t it all undignified? What she did and what these rich people couldn’t do themselves—equally undignified.
But dignity didn’t pay for Maria’s lifestyle, and this job did.
So, Maria had squared away that she wouldn’t leave the property, as requested. But she hadn’t been born yesterday. She’d been doing this long enough to have her own assurances in terms of “client risk.” If anything here was even slightly off, a lot of people at the agency knew where she was.
After the woman left Maria remained on her best behavior for a full forty-eight hours.
She unpacked her personal items in the smallest room, showered in her own marble wet room, and slipped into her expensive, if anonymous prescribed uniform. Then she found and gathered what few child-friendly books she could find around the minimalist house. The children’s books seemed to focus on broad pop-culture Central American figures and themes: Frida Kahlo, Botero, Pérez. Figures from her long-left-behind Central American culture to a degree that made her wonder if her heritage had been a deciding factor in her hiring. Perhaps the client also had Colombian ancestry, she figured. After all, the rich could cherry-pick who looked after their children. And if they paid this well and the perks were good—she didn’t know why they shouldn’t pick whoever they wanted.
She just hoped the client didn’t expect her to speak fluent Spanish, because she didn’t. She’d left too young, her parents hadn’t spoken it around her, and her high school had only taught French as a second language.
She lay the bright adventure books out on a soft blanket with gathered cushions and pillows: her thinking being that the children might arrive tired from the journey when they finally appeared, so they could snuggle and listen to stories while she surreptitiously took the measure of their father. But after a few hours of no-show from father and children Maria slipped off her anonymous uniform tennis shoes, lay down herself on the blanket, and let the warm Caribbean sunlight pool at her feet.
She jolted awake two hours later as the integrated air-conditioning kicked up a gear, its hum intensifying in frequency. But still, no one had arrived.
When evening approached, Maria made her way to the fully stocked pantry to cobble together one of her sure-fire children’s hits, bacon-y mac & cheese. The property had been prepped with everything before her arrival, the level of organization a thing of beauty, cans stacked labels-out, jars filled with cookies, pasta, cereals, everything in its place and ready. There were no children’s bowls or cutlery in the cupboards, she noted, but that was easily worked around; it wasn’t particularly unusual in the families she’d worked with for the children to use what the adults used. That and the lack of toys and other accoutrements told Maria that these children, like others she had looked after, must have their entire worlds shipped around in suitcases between global residences. Maria placed the warm, comforting meal on the table at the hour requested in her manual. One adult portion and two children’s portions, but time passed and no one came. Finally she placed the meals in the warming oven and ate her own out on the darkening twinkle-lit terrace, the sound of tree frogs croaking and distant waves crashing her only company.
It was a kind of bliss there. She closed her eyes and told herself to make the most of this quiet before the inevitable storm of children. And when she opened her eyes to the gleaming of the pool lights in the growing darkness, she let herself imagine for a moment that this was her life. Out here, with all of this. This life.
After another hour she removed the meals from the warming oven and packed them away in the fridge, just in case. But the evening ebbed by and when she was absolutely sure no one was coming, she tidied the kitchen and slipped silently into her room for the night.
The next morning, her alarm did not sound, and she groggily woke, instead, to the loud cries of a seabird calling from the clifftop surrounds. Still no one had arrived.
Assuming the client had probably been held up, Maria decided to call the woman with the too-tight chignon. Her suspicions were confirmed.
The woman promised to follow up with more news soon. In the meantime, she told Maria to enjoy the facilities. Maria, wary of doing anything as extreme as that, instead allowed herself the possibility of a nervous swim and sauna in an attempt to clear her jet-lagged head. The flight from her last family in Paris had been a real kick in the circadian rhythm.
On the way to the indoor pool, she passed the locked lower ground-floor door, a door identical to all the other doors in the house except that this one’s biometric lock glowed blue instead of green like the others.
Maria considered the room, the warning she received about it. She hadn’t thought she’d be curious at all, but now she was. Where the hell was this family? What was the holdup? Lingering by the forbidden door Maria vaguely considered pressing the glowing door panel. She contemplated entering the room, perhaps seeing what kind of job might get you a house like this, but then she came to her senses, let out an audible chuckle, and headed to the pool. She wasn’t going to take the bait that soon, if indeed it was even bait.
As she swam Maria weaved a narrative around the room and concluded that if the client’s late arrival and the out-of-bounds room were a form of trust test, these clients would need to try harder than that. Maria had worked incredibly hard to get into Cornell, and even harder to make sure she could secure these premium high-paying private staff contracts—she knew how to delay gratification like no one she had ever met, and in Maria’s heart she was pretty sure she could put up with anything longer than most if she knew it would ultimately benefit her. If this new employer was testing her, if they were hoping to uncover someone with no self-control: More fool them. Maria stepped out of the pool a few inches taller. She didn’t rate most of her personal qualities but she did rate that.
Throughout the day she ran through the scheduled events in the client’s manual, regardless of having no audience, as she waited for the client to arrive—keen to ensure that she would not be caught out should the family suddenly appear. An art station was cobbled together from what she could find about the property, and later some adult pool floats inflated and made ready poolside. A jug of homemade lemonade with huge clunking ice chunks was laid out beside three frosted glasses on the kitchen counter. It was always better to be overprepared, to anticipate needs. Maria had worked out fairly early on as a nanny that the tips and gifts from families at this client level often superseded the original negotiated fees. And she was well aware that clients turning up to find her not ready would not garner her a fat high-denomination stuffed envelope at the end of the two weeks or another Patek Philippe, with a potential resale value of over $200,000. Best to exceed expectations, always.
The next morning she lay out a strawberries, yogurt, and orange juice breakfast, and waited. She vaguely wondered what would happen when the supplies in the fridge ran low, if another member of staff or a catering firm would arrive laden with produce at some point—but she did not linger on this thought. Households like these ran like clockwork, even if their owners didn’t.
The breakfast lay untouched. And once she had finally decanted everything back into the fridge, she decided to call the woman with the too-tight chignon again.
The clients would definitely not be arriving that day. She was encouraged once more to make the most of the facilities.
Maria did as she was told, now safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t be imminently required. She applied sun lotion liberally by the outdoor pool then stretched out on a plush lounger in the sun, a book in hand, her toes dragging lightly into the cool outdoor pool water.
Later she explored the grounds, showered, cooked herself an elaborate lunch, and by the evening even allowed herself the small bottle of wine left for her as a welcome gift along with her manual.
