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times, and jutted out her chin as though trying to shed a layer of skin, all the time speaking. Her pale skin didn’t color, and her wavy hair bobbed compliantly. “Listen to me carefully,” she said quietly into the phone, “I’ll give him something better on one of my Russians and he might agree to drop it.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, making her lids look heavy, and she pursed her lips. Ali admired the way she gracefully backed out of the door in her expensive-looking high-heeled shoes. This was the first time that she had met a woman who wielded so much power.
    It occurred to Ali that she had never asked the woman who conducted the first two interviews exactly what the Skinners did. She sensed it would be a mark against her, but such was her ambivalence about the job that she hadn’t really been interested. Now it was apparent that not only Bryony’s husband but also Bryony had a significant career, and that fact somehow inflated the importance of the job. She wouldn’t be playing under-mummy for a spoiled City wife, as one of her friends had suggested, she would be the linchpin of the family, helping support the career of one of those women whom Ali usually encountered only on the pages of glossy magazines. For the first time since she had sent her CV and letter of application to the concierge agency charged with searching for a new nanny for the Skinners, Ali decided she actually might want the job.
    Glancing around the empty room, she impulsively leaned over the table, carefully lifted the plastic folder from the briefcase, and began reading its contents. It might give her some advantage over the competition. She didn’t know whether to be gratified or alarmed by the wodge of carefully stapled papers inside. Ali found it surprising that there was so much to say about her.
    The first document was a letter on headed paper from her tutor at the University of East Anglia English department, confirming that Ali was taking a year out “to secure her financial situation” and would then, he hoped, be returning to complete her degree. Professor Will MacDonald had testified to her good character, underlining the fact that she was a model student who produced work of a consistently high standard. Other phrases caught her eye. She was “willing to please,” “loyal and adaptable,” “motivated,” and “methodical and articulate.” He mentioned that Ali was the babysitter of choice for his three children and that he and his wife were very fond of her. Ali stopped reading at this point. His words made her want to cry. It was mawkish and self-indulgent reading a character reference, because of course the person you asked to write it was going to be kind.
    Instead she turned to the copy of her driving license attached to this letter. It was spotless. Testament to the fact that she had barely been behind the wheel of a car since she passed her test a couple of years earlier. Living in Norwich, there was no need to drive anywhere, and her parents had only one car, which they didn’t like to lend out in case there was any trouble with Jo.
    Beneath that was a three-page letter from the concierge agency retained by the Skinners for a hefty monthly fee to resolve any administrative issues ranging from contracting a new nanny to sourcing tickets for a sold-out Coldplay concert. It was signed by the woman who had conducted the first two interviews with Ali. It mentioned that a criminal check had come up clear and that although she was in debt, a £5,000 overdraft had been approved by the bank where her account was held in Cromer. Her debt was related to living expenses as a student. Her biggest expenditures, apart from her rent on the three-bedroom house she shared with friends in an insalubrious area of Norwich, were cigarettes and clothes from Topshop. She had never defaulted on her rent or utility bills.
    Ali momentarily wondered how they had gathered this information, because surely it was confidential. But she was