I reached down into the cot and lifted Coco out. She was heaving long, bitter sobs, the kind that suggested she was none too pleased about being wrenched from the deepest of slumbers. She felt warm and surprisingly heavy in my arms, and I bounced her for a bit to calm her down, but as she began to wake up she focused her eyes on me and fell silent. Good, I thought. See? I’ve always had a way with babies. But just then, as she took in the sight of me, this weirdo she didn’t know from Adam, she burst into fresh howls and squirmed, trying to wriggle out of my arms.

‘Now, now, Coco,’ Maren chided, grabbing her and setting her on her hip rather roughly. ‘This is Sophie, your new nanny. She’s the one who looks after you.’ Then, tapping her foot: ‘Shall we bring Coco to find Gaia? I expect she’ll be waiting for you.’

Maren led Coco and me back to the playroom, where she showed me a cupboard stacked neatly with paint pots, sheets of card, wooden animals, train sets, books, and – oddly – a collection of kitchen utensils, including whisks, pans, sponges, and wooden spoons.

‘You’ll find no princesses or Barbie dolls in here,’ Maren said. ‘Aurelia was against such things.’

‘I like her already,’ I said, and she flinched.

Gaia raced into the room then, pulling chairs and a small table from a corner of the room and setting the table up with a crayon-holder and sheets of paper.

‘Now, now,’ Maren said, wagging her finger at Gaia. ‘I’m afraid drawing time isn’t until five o’clock. Right now is flash card time.’

I saw Gaia’s face fall. ‘She loves drawing,’ Maren said, in a tone that suggested drawing was on a par with skinning dead rodents. ‘Here are the flash cards.’ She handed me what resembled a large-scale set of playing cards featuring frogs and umbrellas. Then, her work done, ‘Have an enjoyable afternoon. Dinner is at five thirty.’

I felt a sense of relief when she left. I turned back to see that Gaia was already in the middle of a drawing, hands splayed on either side of the page and her face so low it was almost touching it. Her teddy, Louis, was sitting on the seat beside her, and every so often she’d look down at him, as though to check he hadn’t leaped off and run somewhere. I sat in the chair opposite with Coco on my lap and held up one of the flash cards to her. This one featured a large letter ‘R’ in both upper- and lower-case, with a cartoon rainbow.

‘See, Coco?’ I said. ‘R for rainbow.’ Blimey, I was doing pretty damn well. I was responding to the name ‘Sophie’ without batting an eyelid, and my accent was legit BBC Radio 4. Nannying was going to be a piece of cake.