What is your babysitter doing when you’re not there?

Book blurb

Fifteen-year-old Ashleigh is clever and charming, all too ready to rush to the rescue of parents in need of relief, and she soon becomes the neighbourhood’s favourite babysitter. But she has an appetite for secrets.

Fast-paced, witty and scalpel-sharp, One Woman Crime Wave examines the limits of what money can buy, and how easily the fragile web of middle-class privilege can be torn. In the end, is it really Ashleigh who’s the problem, or is it the fractious and divided community she exposes?

My thoughts

Tara is married to Giles they have a seven year old daughter Betsy. Tara and Giles are going to a dinner party. Enter Ashleigh, the new babysitter. Samina, their nanny, wasn’t available. Tara had heard about Ashleigh from the other mothers. Seems she is the best around. Ashleigh is the perfect babysitter.

Tara is bored with her life once she was in TV, in development, but now she’s just been put to one side, just a housewife and mother, unseen and unheard. She’s trying to regain her life, to return to her TV career, she volunteered with the anti-FGM campaign No Cuts writing a piece on her blog and is ‘now a writer’ developing the blog into a screenplay. No one seems to care.

It’s clear from the start that Tara and Giles are and mix with people who are racist, the men sexist and elitist. They are not very nice people.

Ashleigh has an agenda when she’s babysitting . She’s a snooper, giving it just enough time to ensure the parents are not returning, she is fascinated with gathering information about the families that she babysits for. None of them have any idea what Ashleigh is up to when they are out. Ashleigh has perfected the role of babysitting ‘Angel’ and snooping.

Ashleigh babysits for a small group of mums, Tara who we’ve met, Sophie, Holly and so on we meet them all if only for the briefest moment. She once lived in Tara’s house when it was flats but now lives with her father and sister in the Tanghall blocks.

Samira is studying law. She’s her father’s hope for the future. She and her brother, who works shifts, live together. Samira works hard at her studies and brings in some income from her job as a nanny. So it comes as a shock when Tara fires her for stealing! She didn’t do it. But Tara knows it could only be Samira.

I was almost sympathetic towards Tara it must be hard to get back into work and she is trying, wasn’t she? But Tara’s not what she wants you to think she is! Tara has a nasty streak. She’s not content with just letting Samira go she lodges a formal complaint to the police. Samira might have shrugged it off but involving the police puts her hopes of a career in law at jeopardy. It’s a step too far and Samira has to do something about it.

Holly tries to join in with the mums at the school gate but they aren’t interested. It’s when Holly asks Ashleigh to babysit that things start to unravel.

This is a book that puts the white British (upper?)middle class under some scrutiny in a sharply observed, dark, witty story that shows it up for the scared, unpleasant, self pitying people it can be. It highlights the hypocrisy and ignorance that abound when people feel threatened by those who come from different backgrounds, circumstances, status, religions, ethnicities and cultures.

It’s a thoughtful, interesting and moving read that takes an everyday activity and gives a dark twist to it. As you read it becomes more and more important to find out what is happening, why it is happening and how it can be resolved.

I liked Ashleigh even though she obviously had problems that no one was willing or able to do anything about or didn’t even notice until Holly.

Samira was another character I liked and she formulates a plan to get her reputation restored with just a little help.

But does Samira get her good name back? Will Tara get her old life back? Was her life really as she thought it was? Will she get her comeuppance? Why does Ashleigh snoop around? What did Holly see that the other mothers ignored? What did Holly and Ashleigh’s father uncover?

As I read and the story unfolded I was fascinated to find out what happened.

With wonderful, if not all loveable, characters this is a story that will resonate with many for a lot of reasons and the ending was, for me, satisfying and yet still left me wanting to know more. Yes, I wanted everything tied up neatly with a little bow but life well it doesn’t usually work that way.

Thanks

Many thanks to Will of Renard Books who kindly sent me a copy of One Woman Crime Wave by Bee Rowlatt to read and share my thoughts on.

Information

Published: Renard Press (24 April 2024)

Paperback | 240pp | ISBN: 9781804470763 | £10.00

Buy: Renard Press |Indie Press Network | Your local library | Your local bookshop | Bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Author

Bee Rowlatt is the author of the award-winning travelogue In Search of Mary, co-author of the bestselling Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad and contributor to Virago’s Fifty Shades of Feminism. Bee led the campaign for the Mary Wollstonecraft memorial – the most trolled artwork of all time – and came out fighting across national and international media. She programmes events at the British Library, and has chaired writers all over the world, been a BBC producer, taught English to the Vice-President of Colombia and worked in a coleslaw factory. Bee is a regular on TV and radio, and has written for the BBC, Telegraph, Times, Grazia, Die Welt, Guardian and Daily Mail. She now lives in London, but hails from Yorkshire, and used to be a showgirl. One-Woman Crime Wave is her first foray into fiction. 

Follow Bee on social media: X/Twitter |Instagram |Facebook

Bee Rowlatt’s Website

Books

Talking About Jane Austin in Baghdad: The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship (co-author with May Witwit) | In Search of Mary: The Mother of all Journeys | Fifty Shades of Feminism (contributor) |A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (Introduction by Bee Rowlatt)

More

Bee chaired the Mary on the Green campaign to memorialise Mary Wollstonecraft and is a founding Trustee of the human rights education charity the Wollstonecraft Society.

Bee Rowlatt talking about the life and times of human rights pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft for this @HistoryExtra podcast

History Extra Podcast – Mary Wollstonecraft: life of the week