Chapter Text
“I don’t even like children,” Freddie says as she stares at the advert on the table in front of her.
Her best friend Regina gives her a devastating look, so Freddie backpedals.
“Well, it’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just that I have no experience with them.”
The ad in the paper is for an au pair. The family wants someone to watch their three children, ranging in age from one year old to ten years old, for the entire summer.
Regina gladly gives her opinion.
“I had a nanny when I was a kid, but this is different. An au pair lives with the family. Usually young. A lot of times they’re French. Hence the name.” She tries and fails to light a cigarette.
“Don’t smoke,” Freddie warns her, while also simultaneously reaching for a cigarette from Regina’s pack. “Well, I’m neither young, nor French, so I guess that’s out.”
Regina shakes her head as she lights a cigarette. “Let’s share this one?” She takes a long drag, then hands it to Freddie. “You aren’t old! And you don’t have to be French. That’s just what I always think of. Some French girl who has an affair with the husband while she’s taking care of his kids…”
Freddie laughs. “Oh, God, sounds like you should be taking this job,” she teases.
Regina smacks Freddie playfully on the arm. “Nope. I’m off men. Starting…after my date tonight.” Regina smiles broadly, waggling her eyebrows. “Unless it goes well, in which case, I’ll get back to you.”
Freddie smiles, shaking her head. Regina has been her best friend for years. She can always make her smile, which is a big task at the moment, considering Freddie’s life is as upside down as it could possibly be. Just a week before, her roommate Paula told Freddie she had to move out. Nothing personal, she swore. Just that Paula’s father, who owns the place, wanted to lease the flat to some other clients, at a higher rate. Freddie had stared at her friend and waited for the punchline, but Paula had just tilted her head, smiling, and patted her resolutely on the shoulder.
After four days of sleeping on Regina’s tiny sofa in the cramped apartment she shares with three other people, Freddie was resigned to crawling back home to her parents with her tail between her legs, to stay in her childhood home until she found another flat. The very next day, though, Freddie got the notice that she had lost her job.
Now, she has bitten off all her fingernails imagining the conversation with her conservative parents about the fact she has neither lodging nor employment at nearly thirty years old. That’s without saying that she also doesn't have a husband and a handful of kids, either.
She and Regina have been poring over the newspapers in search of jobs for the past couple of days with not a single bit of luck. Graphic design jobs are few and far between, as is anything even remotely associated with the arts that doesn’t pay in “recognition” or “work experience”. Freddie has started to feel the yawning pit of desperation opening up inside of her. Desperation that leads her to even look twice at the listing for a childcare job.
The one thing about the au pair posting that keeps Freddie’s eye is that room and board is included. That is tempting, considering that the kind of family who might hire an au pair—according to Regina—is one that is wealthy. Still, three children? The only experience Freddie has with children is her little cousin, Sarita, who once ate too much cake and vomited in Freddie’s hair at their aunt’s wedding. Since then, her opinion of kids has been somewhat…skeptical.
“Oh, come on, at least call the number. What have you got to lose?” Regina goads. “So what? You play with some rich kids all summer? How hard is that?”
“Well, for starters, I can’t cook, and I’ve never changed a nappy in my life,” Freddie says, getting more anxious as she talks.
“I’m sure they’ve got a cook,” Regina says, as if it's so obvious. “And the youngest kid is one—they’re out of nappies by then, aren’t they?”
Freddie stares back at her and shrugs.
There’s absolutely no way she’ll be calling about that job posting.
That very night, as Freddie lies awake listening to one of Regina’s roommates have very drunk, very loud sex with her boyfriend in the adjacent room, she covers her head with a pillow and thinks about her options. She can go home to her mum and dad and sister, but that will mean listening to lectures on why she is a twenty-nine years old spinster, and how she’s passed up the opportunity for any decent man to want to be with her. Nevermind that she’s a lesbian. God forbid her parents realize that fact. Not that Freddie has ever said it aloud to them—or ever will. Not willingly, at least.
The noises from the bedroom are getting more frantic, and Freddie prays they’re almost finished with whatever they’re doing (which seems to be tearing the bed apart). Freddie shifts, and a sharp pain shoots through her neck. No, she can’t be almost thirty and sleeping on a sofa where her head juts off one end and her legs the other, curled up like a pretzel and listening to someone else’s unabashed pleasure. It only serves to put into stark relief that Freddie has never, not once, been able to make that much noise during sex. Not even in houses like these, with all of Regina’s roommates, who are open-minded hippie types, would Freddie feel comfortable announcing her pleasure so loudly, so openly. Not with a woman, at least. And the times she’s been with men—well, there was no loud, unabashed pleasure to be had in the first place.
Freddie is just drifting off, grateful for the silence, when she hears a hearty snore starting up in the same room from whence came the raucous sex only moments before.
She can just picture the quiet room with its soft sheets and feathery pillows waiting for whoever decides to take the au pair posting. The house must be lovely, with spaces meant for relaxing, fresh cut flowers on tables. She glances down at the coffee table in front of her—littered with empty beer bottles and ashtrays full of cigarette butts—and sighs. She shifts on the sofa and grimaces when something sharp pokes her in the back.
Freddie closes her eyes, willing sleep to come swiftly, now that she knows exactly what she’s going to do.
Yes, she’s going to be the best damn au pair that family has ever seen.
In the darkness, Brianna tries to make out shapes in the shadows on her bedroom ceiling. She really should have amended that advertisement she sent to the newspaper. When she saw it in print that afternoon, it looked too perfunctory, almost desperate in its brevity. Not that she isn’t desperate, but Brianna certainly doesn’t want it to appear that way.
Brianna shifts under her husband. Chris is almost there. She can tell by his breathing. She just hopes he doesn’t try and draw it out for her sake. Just to make sure, Brianna wraps her legs around his waist and pulls him down even closer. It works. He comes with a stifled little groan and then almost immediately rolls over.
“Night, love,” he says.
He’s asleep in approximately two minutes.
Brianna lifts herself out of bed and heads to the loo. While she’s sitting on the toilet, her mind races. It’s not a new occurrence. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she wasn’t worried about something or the other. She has a prescription bottle in the cabinet for such an occasion: her nerve pills, as Chris calls them. She doesn’t want to abuse them, though. If she popped a pill every time she felt anxious, she’d never be able to function.
Instead, she tiptoes downstairs to her study, where notebooks are strewn out across her desk and several books are open, relevant passages dog-tagged and highlighted. There, among what looks like chaos to others, is her happy place. Brianna flicks on the table lamp and starts reading, hunched over the desk. After a few minutes, she has an epiphany and searches the mess of papers to try and find a pencil. When she doesn’t find one, she pulls her typewriter over instead. Her hands won’t go fast enough for her brain, and Brianna doesn’t even notice that someone is calling out to her until she feels a firm shake of her shoulder.
“Brianna!”
Her groggy husband stands in front of her, staring incredulously at Brianna.
“It’s two in the bloody morning,” he says.
It can’t be, Brianna thinks. She just came down moments ago. When she glances at the clock on the wall, though, she does a double-take.
“Oh, gosh—” She had got so into her thoughts that she lost all track of time.
The clacking of the keys must have woken Chris, who looks at her as though she’s got two heads.
“Come back to bed?” he suggests.
Brianna nods and pulls the paper out of the typewriter, sliding it into a folder on her desk and standing. Her back aches from how she was bent over for so long.
“Emily Ruth was stirring in her cot,” Chris says as they walk up the stairs together.
A pang of guilt hits Brianna deep in her gut, even though she’s not sure what she should feel guilty about. Not being an attentive mother, she supposes, even though nothing actually happened.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters.
“You know how I feel about all this business,” Chris says. “And you know I still want you with me in Paris. After you get all this…” the disdain drips from his voice. “...settled here, you’ll join me in the Fall.”
Brianna nods. They get into bed together, and she lets Chris pull her close.
“I don’t know why you just won’t let me take care of you. You don’t need to fuss with all that nonsense. Come to Paris. Be a wife to me. Be a mother to the children. What’s more important in the world than that, anyway?” He kisses her forehead. “Go to sleep now. And don’t go running off downstairs to those silly books.”
Brianna feels his grip tighten around her and she tries to relax.
At some point, she must have fallen asleep, because Brianna wakes to the sound of crying. She sits up in bed.
Chris is lying on his side, snoring lightly.
“Mummy!” comes Louisa’s voice.
Then, there’s more crying from Emily Ruth.
“Mummy! Jimmy hit me!”
“No, I did not—stupid!”
Brianna shakes her head. She didn’t get nearly enough sleep, but she has no choice but to get up out of bed and trudge down the hall to attend to her children. Chris is still sleeping soundly when she looks back towards the bed. She can’t help but turn to him and stick her tongue out at his sleeping form. It’s childish, but it makes her feel just a tiny bit better.
“Jimmy, we don’t say stupid,” Brianna says to her son as she enters the war zone that is Louisa's bedroom.
Louisa is standing up on her bed crying, clutching her arm, while Jimmy sits cross-legged on the floor with his arms folded defiantly across his chest.
Emily Ruth continues to wail from her bedroom.
Brianna’s head throbs as she heads off to collect the baby, who is red-faced from crying. She lifts her out of her crib just as the phone rings shrilly. She dashes into the hall to grab the receiver there, so it won’t wake Chris.
Who could be calling so early?
“Hello. This is the Mullen residence. Brianna speaking.”
“Yes, hello, I’m Freddie. I’m—”
Emily Ruth starts to wail again, and Brianna can barely hear the woman on the other end of the line.
“Shh, shh,” she coos, bouncing the baby up and down on her hip. “Sorry, what was that?”
The other line is silent for a moment, but then the woman speaks up. “I’m Freddie. I’m calling about the ad in the paper. For the au pair…”
Brianna’s face breaks out into a smile. A call about the ad already? Fantastic!
Just then, there’s a rumbling sensation against Brianna’s hip and Emily Ruth tenses up.
Brianna doesn’t have to look down—she can tell by the smell alone—to know they’ll both need a bath now.
“Hello?” Freddie calls from the receiver. “Are you there?”
Brianna nods, though Freddie can’t see her. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry. That’s excellent news.” She shifts the baby in her arms. “When can you come over for an interview?”