“What can I do to ensure I get the house?” – Laura Bailey
It started with a nothing conversation about who’d handle childcare that weekend. Two nights. That was it. The nanny was off duty, and I was asking her to take one of the nights.
She wanted both nights free. I said no, gently but firmly. It wasn’t an unreasonable ask.
Suddenly, she snapped. “BREAKING UP WITH YOU WAS SUPPOSED TO GIVE ME MORE FREEDOM, NOT LESS!!!” I really think that was the first honest sentence she had said to me in weeks.
I just stared at her. A soft laugh slipped out, more disbelief than humor. “Why would you think that?”
The truth is, Laura had enjoyed more freedom over the previous two years than almost any mother of an infant who isn’t a billionaire. She bragged about it in private. We had 24/6 maternity nurse coverage for the first three months. After that, a full-time nanny. She went on two or three international solo trips most months.
Even when she was home, I did most of the parenting. I was up for the night wakings, the cooking, the chores. I’d carry my daughter in one arm while doing farm chores with the other, until I pinched a nerve in my left shoulder that eventually needed medical treatment.
But logic never won with Laura. And that night, reason wasn’t even invited into the room.
Her expression shifted. Cold. Certain. Cocky. “I can go to the police and tell them you were driving the night I was caught drink-driving,” she said, smiling.
I didn’t really know how to respond. I let out a small laugh and said, “what?”
“Loz told me (Loz being Lawrence Schoeb, Senior Director, Legal & DPO at Samsara) that I can have you done for perverting the course of justice if I say you were the one driving. That’s serious. Real jail time. Up to life.”
I didn’t know how to process it. She’d been caught on camera that night, blew three times the legal limit, clipped some property with the car, and then admitted as much in open court. There wasn’t a world in which anyone would believe her.
“I’m disappointed you’d even say that,” I told her. “Please don’t escalate this in ways you can’t take back.”
She sneered. “It’ll be your word against mine. And Brian (former Crown Prosecutor, OBE, Brian Gunn) says they can go after your immigration status and have you deported. We can make sure you never see your daughter again.”
For a second, the room tilted. It wasn’t just a threat of jail; it was the threat of losing my child. A cold dread washed over me that had nothing to do with the law and everything to do with her.
All this over who would take one night of parenting duty so the other could go out.
It was an early attempt. The first taste of what would become a pattern.
You’re taught by movies and television that pulling off villainy requires tact and planning, so when it comes chasing after you so clumsily in real life, you think it has to be immediately transparent.
Unfortunately, the most dangerous people aren’t the ones with the perfect plan, but the ones with the most profound sense of entitlement.