Their name was Hinde, Claudia and James, and they had three children, not one. The youngest was a baby of nine months. Both parents worked full-time. Claudia—Liv was told to call them by their first names, not that she often got the chance as they were seldom at home—was, like Guy, something important in a merchant bank, maybe the same merchant bank, and James was on the Stock Exchange. Liv described them as “rich” with a dizzy lifestyle. The only time of the day when she had help with the children was at breakfast before the parents left for work. With the phone receiver in one hand and a feeding bottle in the other, Claudia fed the baby while James cut toast “soldiers” for the four-year-old Marcus, his eyes on his electronic organizer. Liv said it was as if, knowing they would have nothing more to do with their children that day but conscious of having some duty toward them, they “got it over with” first thing in the morning when they were fresh. They were always out of the house by eight-thirty when she was due to take Cyrus, the eldest, to school, and necessarily take Marcus and the baby with her.

Supplies arrived at the house twice a week from a food delivery company but she still had to shop. She was expected to drive the Range Rover, a much larger vehicle than any of which she had previous experience. It was on one of these shopping expeditions that she met Jonny, the attendant at the car park she used, sitting in his glass booth taking payment and raising the exit barrier. But that was quite a long time ahead. She hadn’t been in the house more than a couple of days before she realized she was expected to be a nanny, not an au pair. She told Silver she didn’t even like children. With no brothers and sisters of her own, she had no experience of children, yet there she was with a baby to feed and with nappies to change, a four-year-old to look after and amuse, and a bad-tempered, truculent, very big boy of seven to control.