But wait – I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the beginning. To the moment I entered the seventh circle of hell.

Stepping into my role as nanny felt like entering the Roman Colosseum to face a gladiator armed with flails and scourges. I was quite literally just off the plane and expected to have had a bit of time to adjust to my surroundings. Well, I guess I had some time – twenty-six minutes! – which was enough to put on some deodorant, stare at the mad schedule Maren had given me for Gaia and Coco, and do some frantic googling.

Messy play: developing cognitive and fine motor skills through the medium of a bag of flour thrown liberally around the room.

Slime time: literally involving slime, which I’d possibly have to make using shaving foam and contact lens fluid, before encouraging the kids to slime each other.

Montessori: child-centred intellectual exploration merely guided by a teacher. I had a vague sense of what that meant. I figured that ‘intellectual exploration’ likely meant reading and collecting leaves and pine cones, and I thought back to the time I’d taken little Matty Barris to the local park while his mum slept off a hangover on our kitchen floor. We’d gathered up all the beer cans around the slides and spent the afternoon making a beer-can sculpture. He cut his hands a few times and I filched a few syringes out of the cans before Matty got to them, but our end product was Tate Modern-worthy, if I do say so myself.

At three o’clock I ventured along the hallway to the nursery, where I was supposed to find Coco emerging from her nap. At the far end of the cot I could see her little blonde head, damp with sweat, and a chubby arm wrapped around a comfort blanket. A dummy was wedged in her mouth and she sucked at it rhythmically, like a real-life Maggie Simpson.

I sat down in the green rocking chair by the window and glanced at the clock. A minute past three. Hadn’t Maren said Coco was meant to wake up at three o’clock? Should I wake her? I waited another five minutes. Finally, Maren appeared in the doorway, her hands clasped and a tight smile on her face.

‘Everything all right?’ she said, and I nodded.

‘I think … she’s still sleeping.’

Maren pursed her lips – I noticed she did this when there was a job to be done, and one that ought to be done by someone other than her and she wanted to remind them of their responsibility – and clapped her hands. Coco jolted awake at the sharp, sudden sound in the peaceful room. Her eyes flicked open and she sat upright with a loud gasp. After a few moments she burst into tears, scared and still half-asleep. I glanced at Maren, who raised her eyebrows in a way that signalled I was to sort out the crying.