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were hard work.” She sighed heavily. “The father was a stay-at-home dad who would boss me around all day. He would never get dressed and would be in his dressing gown all day barking orders at me.”
    “Like what kind of orders?” I asked, intrigued.
    “Well, for example, every morning I would have to hoover and dust the entire house,” she began, “and then I dunno, I might be expected to wash the walls. Or clean the toilets.”
    “Clean the toilets?” I was astonished. Some people had an awful cheek! “But an au pair is supposed to be like a family friend and treated as such.”
    “I thought that too but this family treated me more like a slave than a friend. They would order me to deep clean the oven, or maybe clean the carpets, polish the silver or do some digging in the garden.” I let out a long whistle. “Goodness me, that’s unbelievable. Seriously, I just think it’s shocking that he expected he could get away with that,” I said, scandalised.
    “That’s slave labour if you ask me!”
    “I agree. Au pairs often find themselves open to abuse from their employers because they are vulnerable, being so far away from home.”
    I shook my head. Samira’s story made me feel sad. “If he was a stay-at-home dad then why couldn’t he do the heavy work himself?”
    Samira shrugged. “I think he thought those tasks were beneath him. Men, huh?” She scrunched up her face.
    “Well, I should certainly hope that not all men are like that. I mean, I couldn’t imagine my own father behaving like that when he was still alive. He was a true gentleman.”
    “And what about the father of your child? What’s he like?”
    I opened my mouth to say something but I couldn’t find the right answer. To be honest, I was a bit affronted by the question. I mean, I didn’t think I was going to be interrogated by the new au pair. My love life was absolutely none of her business and I thought she was being a bit too familiar. “He’s fine,” I said with a hunt of coolness, making it clear that discussions concerning Clive were not going to be on the cards. “Hey, why don’t you put on your coat, Samira?” I asked, quite obviously changing the subject. “It seems to have stopped raining now and I’d love you to take little John for a walk as he hasn’t had any fresh air at all today.”
    She got her coat and buttoned it up to her neck. Then she put John in his little raincoat and put him in the pram. He smiled up at her innocently and my heart melted a little bit. I didn’t want to share him with Samira or indeed, anybody, but I couldn’t think of any other option for the near future besides having a live-in au pair.
    Although I was lonely these days being a single mum, I knew that it was not a good idea to become too friendly with Samira. If you became too friendly with your au pair they wouldn’t respect you as much. I didn’t want to encourage her to pry into my personal life. I wondered if there was some way of introducing her to other foreign au pairs so that she could have people of her own age to hang out with in the evenings. The last thing I needed was for Samira to stay home every night and be under my feet. I need a little bit of breathing space for me and the apartment was rather small. Maybe I could join one of those mummy-and-baby forums and see if any other mums were thinking along the same lines as me.
    The next day I logged into one of those mummy sites. When I was pregnant I would visit them a lot, trying to get pregnancy tips about diet, hospitals etc. When your own friends are not pregnant they don’t want to chat about pregnancy-related stuff so it was nice to have this sort of online support communities at my fingertips. But then once the baby came along, I kind of lost interest. Anyway I didn’t even really have the time now for internet surfing. But I went into one of the sites and searched for an au pair community. I met a lady called Sheelagh who lived in the Bray area and had just