Ben was a little angel with light hair and light blue eyes, a small copy of his blond mother. “The child has become accustomed to treating his nannies as his personal assistants,” Lisa was warned by his parents on the first day. The small, very cheerful Prince never sat quietly, and Lisa always had to run with him to the children courses, tennis, football, cycling and going out with his friends. Lisa was like his elder sister. Capricious and spoiled by his loving parents, he got almost always what he wanted. For his parents, this long-awaited only child was one and all. Lisa and Ben played educational games and went to tennis courses. Lisa served him his favorite pancakes and other tasty dishes and suffered from all his whims.
He was a lively boy, pretty willful and spoiled—and therefore sometimes obstinate. He did not have any special talents, no pronounced character traits or peculiar feelings and tastes, thanks to which he would have been higher than the normal level of children of his age. But he had none, and instead had deficiencies or defects that would put him below this level. But he was making satisfactory progress. Lisa nourished his sincere, though perhaps not very deep, affection, and her innocence, vitality, and desire to please and inspire gave Lisa a reciprocal feeling, enough to make their communication enjoyable.
Angelica, Ben’s mother, was a well-groomed and glamorous blonde with blue eyes. Just like a real business lady, she was always dressed in expensive designer clothes and sprayed with a brand perfume. With a proud aristocratic attitude, she was a respected manager in a large company. As she told Lisa, she had left home very early, achieving everything in life through hard work. As a powerful woman, she could not leave the role the leader to stay at home, so she and her son only kissed twice a day (on a schedule), and he received his parental love and attention from all kinds of gifts from very expensive shopping malls. It seemed as if she had achieved everything by forty years of age: a successful and handsome husband, a beautiful child, and a dizzying career as a top manager.
Marc was a very good-looking man with dark hair. He invested a lot of time in his appearance, sometimes even more than his wife. For Angelica, having a handsome and intelligent husband was more important than her desire to improve her social status in society, but she utilized him at various meetings, showing him off like a beautiful toy. After working for some time as a manager, he had begun to dream of independence. He had opened a small company and proudly announced to all his friends and acquaintances that he was now his own boss.
Angelica and Marc had met when both were already over 35, which is typical for such careerists. Before marriage, they both travelled the world, built careers, and accumulated some capital. They constantly drank expensive wine, smoked, and drank coffee. Perhaps because of this they lost their first child (a baby who died eight months after birth from suffocation in its lungs).
But even the appearance of a small miracle in their family could not change the essence of the typical manager-careerists in their heads, where the only things were numbers and profits. The appearance of a child, a creature that was not profitable, but only requiring both material and spiritual support, caused surprise. Sometimes they did not know how to deal with the child, because in their posh offices it was a nonsensical being. And then Lisa came to rescue and was the best friend of little Ben.
At four p.m., Lisa rode her bicycle to bring Ben home. Then they cooked and played until nine p.m. when she was free. Even with her modest salary, she had still managed to save some money to buy a cheap little computer. She used it in her spare time to study the language, endlessly performing grammar exercises in anguish.
Sometimes she liked to ride her bike and explore the city. There was a huge shopping center with all kinds of goods. Lisa went and immersed herself in the perfume, clothes and everything else. With smells of expensive clothes and perfumes in her head, she could feel like a princess.
Every day the two strict managers, Ben’s parents, took a shower, put on their freshly ironed suits, and drove to their offices. Everything had to look perfect: they themselves, the child, the house. Each crumb in the house was considered vulgar and had to be eliminated immediately.
But sometimes Lisa had the impression that her host parents had a computer instead of a heart.
This time, Lisa wanted to do everything better and was discussing meals with the family. They said very nicely to her: “You can eat anything from the fridge. There is absolutely no problem.”
That was probably why all the time there was absolutely nothing in the fridge. Apart from two frozen rolls for a dime
One evening, the host mother came home. The fridge was mostly empty, as the risks of making the family bankrupt because of a hungry au pair were calculated to be too high. The only thing in the refrigerator was a mango.
“Where is the mango? Have you eaten it?” the host mother shouted at Lisa suddenly.
“No, it is in the fridge,” Lisa assured her.
“Good!” she whispered, relieved.
Once, when Lisa was eating breakfast, she heard the sound of a moving camera in the kitchen, the typical sound that you recognize from movies. Lisa discovered a tiny device in the refrigerator. From the previous family, Lisa had experience with a baby monitor in every room, and now there was probably a hidden camera in every room of the house.
Lisa felt embarrassed. Even though she was very hungry, she could not dare look in the refrigerator again, out of fear that she was being filmed by a camera and she was under observation. Lisa imagined that possibly every thirty-cent yogurt was equipped with a personal alarm which signalled about the movements of the yogurt in the stomach of the poor creature, similar to the movements of the stock market, so that the family budget decreased.
Lisa began to feel like she was in a well-supervised prison where she was dependent on the whims of the host family for food.
There was only some cereal for breakfast and a piece of bread for dinner. Of course, there were those two frozen rolls, which were kept as a family treasure in the refrigerator. And four yogurts that were probably counted in the fiscal year report in the family budget. And two apples that had to last for two weeks.
A few times Lisa almost dared to eat a roll, but every time Lisa was about to bite into it, the host father suddenly appeared at the door. He had probably installed a more expensive camera to patrol the roll treasure to save some cents.
At first, Lisa was trying to show her host family her generous culture. She would prepare all kinds of dinners. She made casseroles, soups and baked buns. She made cakes and other delicious treats. She loved cooking and she loved sharing her meals. The host family was thrilled. But one day Lisa received a comment that sounded tired from stress: “Everything you think about is food.” Lisa quickly grew accustomed to eating cereal for breakfast and bread for dinner.
Lisa had to get used to the family traditions of the household. They ate granola for breakfast and bread for dinner. It was as simple as that. Her host parents wanted to be as skinny as possible. Lisa would joke to herself that they may as well eat air. The family was egotistic and greedy. Lisa thought that must be the secret to their wealth. They weren't just greedy towards Lisa. They lacked compassion and generosity towards everyone. That included their friends. Their guests weren't invited to the table when the family was dining. They were expected to wait in the corridor until the meal was finished.
The parents stubbornly believed that they replaced their love and attention with expensive gifts. They were outrageously selfish and stingy towards others. Maybe it was the secret of their wealth.
The exhausted hunger tormented Lisa all the time. Sometimes she secretly made flatbread, which consisted only of water and flour. Or she bought cheap chocolate or biscuits. So Lisa survived lunch.