You’ll be a teenager this year, but you were eight when I knew you. I often wonder what you and your sister are like, all these years later – but I particularly wonder about you.
I knew from early on that you would be hard to handle. Parents shouldn’t have favourites, but I was never sure whether it was OK for me, an outsider, to prefer your younger sister to you. I felt guilty about it because it seemed to me that she was your parents’ favourite, too. Did your braces work? I hope so; I’ve never known anyone, child or adult, with more crooked teeth.
Your sister, in contrast, was one of those children whose angelic faces even strangers will remark on. She also looked like your parents, while you bore no resemblance to anyone else in the family. I’m sure this can only have heightened the sense of difference between your personalities.
All my memories of you, I realise now, are shrouded in frustration or even dislike. You were not stupid, but you were often misled by your so-called friends at school. Yet, your obvious fear of your parents’ anger – especially your mother’s fury, which I witnessed on more than one occasion – and your knowledge of the punishments you would earn seemed not to deter you from doing things that you knew would end in trouble for you.
Was I too harsh on you? I certainly had to be firmer with you than with your sister; you pushed the boundaries beyond reason (and for no good reason), and you should have been old enough to know better. Nothing I tried seemed to work: ignoring your bad behaviour, punishing it, asking your parents to step in. By the end I was fed up of being the conduit between your actions and their anger.
I was not your first au pair, nor your last. It’s strange to think that, in time, you and your sister will probably barely remember me. I don’t for a second flatter myself that I was your favourite au pair, but is it selfish of me to hope that you think more fondly of the time we spent together than I do?
Recently I went back to the city where once we all lived, and I toyed with the idea of getting in touch with your family. But the truth is that I only wanted to see you out of curiosity, not because I missed you. I hope I did the right thing. And I hope you have grown into the sensitive, inquisitive boy I saw glimpses of back then.
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