This was because her reputation for honesty, reliability and common sense travelled before her. In a small town like Portiston, everybody is connected to everybody else in one way or another and everything a person ever does or says is stored in a kind of communal memory bank, to be retrieved at the appropriate occasion. So after Lynnette had looked after our immediate neighbour’s granddaughter one Saturday night, and coped admirably, this achievement was duly noted and soon whenever anybody needed a babysitter Lynnette would get the call.Once she had left for good, there was a big babysitter vacancy in the town. It was a vacancy that I was keen to fill.I had learned from Lynnette that Portiston’s parents were exceptionally grateful to anyone who was kind to their children and simultaneously managed to get them in bed, and asleep, before the parents came home. I also knew that the parents felt disproportionately guilty if they weren’t back at the time they said they’d be. If they promised to be home by 11.30 and didn’t roll in until 1 a.m., then they were likely to double or even treble the agreed fee.
