I came to England in May 2001 together with my boyfriend to work as an au-pair for a family with four children. As naïve as most of the young people who wish to learn English and earn some money.
The beginning was nice. The house was quite old and situated in a very small village close to Braintree. There was a huge garden, left without care for far too long, but it was all so nice and peaceful. Unfortunately only for a few days!
It is very easy to overlook the first signs of danger when you have been in a new place for a short time. All the kids were a bit nervous and looked scared, but we thought that it was because they didn’t know us. We were wrong. So very wrong.
When we discovered the first open bottle of vodka we didn’t know how much our life was about to change. True, we saw the mother in a bad mood most of the time; tired, but we didn’t put two-and-two together. Not at first, anyway.
As the days passed by more and more work and even more responsibility lay on us: washing, cleaning, ironing, cooking, helping with the kids' homework and so on. Sometimes we would find the mother flat-out asleep on the sofa or in the garden or just wherever she happened to be and didn’t have the energy to go to bed. We knew that she was suffering from depression and was taking pills, but at that stage we didn’t realize exactly what was going on.
To describe the father, he was a very typical overworked businessman who came home too late and left too early. His only worries were money and cricket.
The first conflict broke out after just about first month. The mother told us that she didn’t want to see us in the family sitting room while they were there. There wasn’t much we could do so we just agreed and went on as usual. The situation got worse after that. Two of the kids got ear infection and high temperature and the medication was not working properly. We took care of them, doing the best we could, but for their mother it wasn’t enough. That was when the scariest thing happened. During my afternoon thirty-minute break I discovered the little girl lying next to her sleeping drunken mother on the playroom floor. Her face and lips were blue and she wasn’t breathing!
I don’t remember exactly what I did, except that I do remember trying to clear her mouth and check her pulse. By a miracle, with my tiny help I believe, she opened her eyes and started crying. The same moment she threw up. I was so relieved that she was ok I didn’t even realize that I had been soiled and was crying.
When we finally woke up the mother, she refused to take the girl to see a doctor. After a forty five-minute fight we put them in the car ourselves and sped to a medical centre. The doctor said she had a nasty throat infection and her temperature was dangerously high. And that’s why she had vomited. Of course nobody had told him that she stopped breathing for God knows how long - only a parent can be present during a child’s examination.
When we wanted to tell the husband what had happened, the mother threatened to kick us out onto the street. We didn’t know what to do.
After this the grandmother arrived. She was the only person we could talk to. She informed us that her daughter-in-law had been an alcohol addict for several years and that she had promised to stop several times. But it had never worked. The grandmother begged us to stay for the sake of her grandchildren.
A few weeks later the father caught a virus .His wife came to wake us up after 11pm, because she had no idea what to do. We persuaded her to call the emergency service because her husband had a heart problem and high blood pressure. He was taking pills so he couldn’t take any other medication without the doctor’s approval. We applied some wet towels to bring down the temperature and gave him some paracetamol. After a couple of hours his temperature finally came down and we were able to go to bed just for couple of hours before having to get up to prepare all the children for school.
Next day we were told by the wife that despite our help the previous night, she wanted us to leave as soon as possible.
We spent the five longest months of our lives in this family, fearing that we would be considered responsible for anything that happened. When we finally left this unbelievable woman and mother the au-pair agency informed us that she was accusing us of stealing money.
We immediately contacted the husband who without hesitation cleared us of the accusation. He told us he had no idea why his wife had accused us of theft.
How stupid we were at that time! Now we know that we should have called the social services but we were too scared and confused, and just happy to run away.
For a long time I had nightmares and felt guilty about leaving the children in this situation so I used to call the grandmother to check on how they were. But as far as I know, to this day nothing has changed. The same chaos and fear as before, and the children are in the same precarious position.
Now, after almost two years I still feel guilty - but I now understand one very important fact: these were somebody else's kids and they were and are the responsibility of their parents, Not of the au pair!
posted by Jazz @ 6:37 PM
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