Unsuitable

There was a hand flap as Mia said, “Go way,” but Audrey wasn’t quick enough to salvage her sleeve, the peanut butter fingers were back.

Jessie smiled. “She’s so cute.”

Mia was covered in gobs of something sticky, most of which she was grinding into Audrey’s shirt. She was ornery as an old man with haemorrhoids on a day his arthritis was playing up. She was wearing her limp, tattered fairy dress over jeans and a stripy wool jumper. She’d refused to wear shoes or socks. She had pink highlighter on her face. She looked like an escapee from an old-fashioned lunatic asylum.

If that was Jessie’s definition of cute, big tick.

Huge.

“Thanks for your time, Jessie. I’m interviewing a few people today and I’ll make a decision by Monday and let you know.” Audrey stood with some difficulty, given the lead weight of a manic fairy attached to her clothing. She offered Jessie a hand to shake, and the girl put her water glass in Audrey’s hand instead—awkward. Perhaps it wasn’t the done thing to offer to shake hands with a nanny interviewee in your own home like it would be if you were interviewing in your office. But whoever Audrey hired was going to help raise her daughter, live in her house, do her shopping, prepare her food, occasionally sleep in her guest room and be part of their lives. And that help raise her daughter thing, big, so big—ginormous—so the handshake, the eye contact, the whole vibe of the person was critical.

Audrey was parent central evenings for a few hours and weekends. The new Cameron would be on duty for ten hours a day, five days a week, and longer if Audrey was travelling. So the new nanny needed to be a special person; not only paper perfect, with the right skills and experience, but with a slew of personal qualities that would make them an appropriate influence for Mia in what everyone said were her formative years.

Of course, what Audrey really needed was a wife. A wife would know exactly what to do, to make a household work, to help raise a little girl with laughter and leniency, with the kind of ninja cleverness that would trick Mia into eating vegetables hidden in meatballs, and make drinking milk fun.

Someone who brought to the job a total commitment to forming a partnership designed around Mia’s needs: singing and playing and learning to talk in full sentences, playgroup and kindy gym and patting safe puppies in the park.

Someone who was happy to take direction but had their own initiative that was simpatico with Audrey’s views. Someone Mia could feel secure and happy with. Who’d wipe her nose and patch her knees, hold her hand and remind her Mum would be home soon.

Cameron had been such a wife, and like any break up getting over her was a messy hell. Not hiring on the rebound was another problem. Jessie had all the qualifications needed, all the personal attributes and stunning personal and professional references. But was she wife material? And only someone who was, would allow Audrey to be halfway around the country, or cope for a week in a steamy Asian capital without being out of her head worried about Mia.

Oh God. Cameron. She wanted to weep for their loss in front of Mia and Jessie. How did women do this when it was their husband who walked out the door, taking their hopes for a happy family with them? She couldn’t fathom it. It’d been so much smarter to plan to do without that.

It was bad enough most of the men at work thought she was a bad mother, not that they said it, but it was implied Mia would be ‘trouble’ in that pregnant and on crack before she was sixteen way. Some of the older women thought the same thing. And they were vocal. They’d done it differently, taken career breaks. Why wasn’t that good enough for Audrey? How could she take on being a single parent by choice, wasn’t she worried all the time about leaving her kid with a stranger, what made her decide to have a child on her own anyway? It was brave, by which they mostly meant what Esther meant—it was irresponsible, and therefore, she had no right for it to come easily.

It wasn’t easy. It was what it was, parenting in the age of digital everything, where if you were a thirty something career women who’d never found the one, or even the one to settle with, you did what you had to do to get close to a life you dreamed of, and hang what anyone else thought.

It was a haze of uncomfortable judgements, toughing it out and guilty good times. It was the constant worry the critics were right. Raising a child wasn’t something anyone should voluntarily step up for alone without a lot of thought. The whole it took a village thing was probably true. But there weren’t a lot of villages in the city these days and Mia wasn’t alone being raised by a single parent, and Mia’s single parent had the economic means to provide the best for her daughter, even if that meant a much prettier, cleaner fairy dress with the most amazing detachable wings hung in Mia’s wardrobe, unworn.

And right now it meant more interviews.

While Mia coloured in, refusing crayons for the highlighter she’d stolen from Audrey’s briefcase and Audrey wondered if pink highlighter would come off the polished floorboards, she interviewed Michelle. Michelle was awesome, she’d worked as a birthday party fairy as a teenager. Audrey could picture Mia’s fourth birthday as a fantasy of tiaras and sparkles.

Mia watched The Little Mermaid for an entire fifteen seconds of the interview with Bethany, and clung to Audrey’s leg for the remaining forty-five minutes, eyeing Bethany as if she was a black belt in mother trafficking and would whisk Audrey away with plastic ties on her wrists and feet any minute. Bethany’s black belt was musical, she was an accomplished guitarist.

Mia grizzled for most of the interview with Lee, who was also an experienced chef, while Lee demonstrated exceptional capacity for selective deafness and stoic calm.

And then there was one to go. By the end o

f the day, Audrey would’ve met five highly qualified Cameron approved candidates for the role of Mia’s nanny.

There was no doubt Jessie, Michelle, Bethany and Lee could all do the job. None of them so far had the illusive Cameron quality that made them the obvious choice, but they were all young, highly qualified, star referenced, personable, well adjusted, sociable, pleasant people Audrey could happily employ.

Cameron had given two months notice, so there was still time. Audrey didn’t have to choose from this batch of candidates, though it had taken time to collect these résumés and ideally the new hire would spend at least a fortnight with Cameron before she shipped out.

She watched Mia put one foot on the colouring book and then move it back and forth across the wood floor. She had to wiggle her entire body, arms out at the side like a tightrope walker for balance. She had this look on her face that said, see that, bet you can’t do it. And when it came to replacing Cameron, Audrey wasn’t sure she could. Part two of the interview process would include a trip to the park so they could test drive the new relationship, maybe that would help clarify her decision.

Objectively this shouldn’t be so hard. She made big decisions with widespread implications for other people every day with less mental torture. But she’d misplaced her objectivity about Mia the moment the midwife placed her tiny, squalling body into her hands. On Monday she had to sign off on making fourteen people redundant, today she couldn’t be decisive about getting off the couch.

She checked her watch. Half an hour before the next candidate arrived. Reece was a certified swim coach, had advanced life saving qualifications including a Bronze Medallion, excellent references and was older than the other candidates. Reece would only make the decision harder.

She sat watching Mia talk to herself about, well, who knew really, it was as if she saw things other mortals had no access to, and when the phone rang her wish was granted. A few minutes sanity in the form of Merrill.

“I was thinking Joe and I would bring Thai around tonight.”

Merrill was a genius. “I would be your bestest ever friend if you did.”

“You’re such a crawler. How’s it going?”