The daily I miss every day

Not a day passes in which I don’t regret firing Irena. She was my ‘daily’ from 1991 to 2004. I don’t think I could have asked for anyone better qualified. Until she came to work for me she had been a professor of geology at a Russian university, but she lost her job when the Soviet Union collapsed and became an economic migrant. In spite of this setback, she never displayed any bitterness. On the contrary, she was remarkably stoical — something to do with the Russian soul, no doubt. Her only shortcoming was that she never called me by my correct name. She’d misheard me when I first introduced myself and after I’d let it go for a few weeks I became too embarrassed to correct her. So for the duration of her 13-year employment she always referred to me as ‘Terry’.

By the time Caroline moved in with me in 2000, Irena had become a kind of surrogate mother. I think it’s fairly normal for middle-aged dailies to develop a maternal affection for their bachelor employers, but in the case of Irena it went slightly beyond that, possibly because she’d left her own grown-up son behind in Russia. I became equally fond of her, particularly after my own mother died in 1993. But the upshot was that she was a bit suspicious of Caroline. She didn’t think she was good enough for her ‘Terry’.

At first, Caroline put up with Irena’s obvious hostility. She was amused when Irena tut-tuttingly corrected her attempts to do the laundry, explaining that ‘Terry’ liked his shirts ironed just so. We used to joke about it, but I was secretly relieved that she didn’t ask me to get rid of her.