She wants to escape it all. She runs from it. She gets a chance to leave it all behind. And she does, without thinking twice.
Gabrielle leaves France, her home country, when she finds an offer to babysit in London. She doesn't have a lot of ex...
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In the two weeks I've been living with the Holt family, my life started to fall into some kind of ritual. During the day, I play with Amelia, feed her, get her to sleep and then sometimes help prepare Rosanna dinner, or I watch a TV. I haven't gone out to discover London yet.
I've had to babysit Amelia every day these two weeks. Sometimes even put her to bed at night, because Mrs Holt, as Rosalyn as she insisted on me calling her now, had to work late. And Mr Holt rarely came home for a dinner.
I feared the weekends, though, because Alexander doesn't have school on Saturday and Sunday (not that that means he's not home that much during the week, because he is), but him being home for two whole days straight ... Gah.
But it turned out that he wasn't home at all on the weekends, being God knows where doing God knows what. I stayed clear of him, avoided him as much as I possibly could. When I saw him in the house, I turned around and went the other way.
He wasn't always present at the dinner, but when he was, I never even looked at him. I learned my lesson.
I spent a lot of time talking to Rosanna. I made friends with her and I liked talking to her. I got pretty comfortable around her, so much, I once asked her about Alfred Holt not being home that much. He usually came home pretty late, when I was already sleeping, and went to work before I woke up.
Rosanna told me that he works a lot and has been for years now. When I boldly asked her if he might have a mistress, which wasn't my business anyway, Rosanna just looked at me like I was crazy. "No, Gabrielle. I'm pretty sure Alfred doesn't have any other woman besides Rosalyn. He loves his wife more than himself and anything else. But, in his state ... he needed to find some distractions. That turned out to be work for him."
When I asked her why he'd need a distraction, Rosanna only shook her head and turned away from me. "Prepare a salad, alright?" was her answer to my question, avoiding it.
I didn't ask her about it ever again and I never even tried to make a conversation about Mr and Mrs Holt and their marriage.
Instead, I did ask her about Alexander. I asked her how he was as a little boy, and Rosanna said he was a pretty good and smart boy. She also said that he changed a lot. He started hanging out with the wrong people until he became one.
But, she assured me, he's still a good boy, he just needs someone to bring it out of him.
I didn't comment on that, but I had to bite down on my tongue not to say something really sarcastic.
I also asked Rosanna how come she doesn't babysit Amelia. She told me she's in charge of keeping the house clean and making sure no one gets hungry, but that Rosalyn and Alfred are all for giving chances to young people and it's popular here in London to get someone from abroad to look after the kids, which is why they decided to take that route. They were convinced someone younger might be better suited for someone like Amelia.
