My shoes were wrong.

I knew it the second I stepped into the glass lobby at Crested Towers. Everyone else wore quiet, expensive shoes. Mine squeaked. Cheap black flats I had bought from Owino market for fifteen thousand shillings, and they squeaked with every step I took on that marble floor.

I should have turned around.

But rent was due in three days. My auntie's rent, where I was sleeping on the mattress in the living room. And my little brother's school fees. So I kept walking, even with my squeaky shoes.

"Name?" The receptionist didn't look up.

"Namuli. Aisha Namuli. For the nanny position. Mr. Kyobe's office."

She finally looked. Up and down. My second-hand skirt. My bag that had a broken zip.

"Tenth floor. Last office on the right."

The elevator was all mirror. I saw myself full length and I hated it. Twenty-three years old and I looked tired. My hair was in two small braids because I couldn't afford retouch. My lip balm was finished. But my white shirt was clean. I had washed it last night and ironed it with a charcoal iron.

Tenth floor. The doors opened and it was quiet. Too quiet. Air conditioning too cold.

The last office on the right had no name. Just a black door. I knocked.

"Come in."

That voice.

I pushed the door and I forgot how to breathe.

He was not what I expected. The job ad on Facebook had said "Businessman seeking nanny for his 4-year-old daughter, live-out, good pay." I had pictured an old man, fat, with a kind wife somewhere.

This man was not old. He was maybe thirty-one, thirty-two. He wore a black shirt with sleeves folded to the elbows. Arms with veins. He was standing by the window, looking at Kampala down there, and he turned.

His eyes were tired. And angry. Like someone who hadn't slept in days but was too proud to admit it.

"You are Aisha?"

"Yes sir."

He looked at my shoes. I saw him notice the squeak. My face burned.

"Sit."

I sat on the edge of the chair, my bag on my lap, holding it tight.

"You have experience?" He sat opposite, not behind the desk, but close. Too close. I could smell his perfume. Something expensive and clean.

"Yes sir. I worked for Madam Tina in Kyanja, two years. With twins. I can cook, clean, help with homework-"

"Do you know how to keep your mouth shut?" He interrupted me.

I stopped. "Sorry?"

"My daughter, Malaika. She is four. Her mother died last year. Since then every nanny comes here and thinks she will be the new mother. They post her photos on TikTok. They tell press stories. I don't want that."

"I don't have TikTok, sir."

A small sound. He almost laughed. But not quite.

He leaned forward. "The pay is one point five million shillings per month. Monday to Saturday, seven to six. Sunday off. You will not bring your phone into my house. You will not bring friends. You will not ask me personal questions. You understand?"

One point five million. My chest tightened. That's three times what Madam Tina paid me.

"Yes sir. I understand."

He stared at me for a long time. Like he was trying to decide something.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

"Do you have a boyfriend who will come to cause chaos at my gate?"

"No sir."

"Good. Because I don't like chaos."

He stood and went to his desk and picked up a paper. "My house manager will take you to the house now. In Kololo. You will meet Malaika. If she likes you, you start tomorrow. If she doesn't, you don't."

He was dismissing me. I stood too quickly and my bag fell. Everything poured out. My old National ID, a small plastic bottle of water, a cheap power bank, and a sanitary pad that I had kept in there because you never know.

I wanted the floor to open and swallow me.

He bent down before I could. He picked up the pad and handed it to me without looking away, without making it weird. His fingers brushed mine.

"It's okay," he said, quietly. Just two words.

But the way he said it... it was the first kind thing someone had said to me in weeks.

I shoved everything back in.

"Thank you sir."

"David," he said. "My name is David Kyobe. Not sir."

"Thank you... David."

His phone rang. Loud. He glanced at it and his whole face changed. Hard again.

"You can go. Joseph is outside in the black car."

I walked out. My shoes squeaked again in that silent office. I didn't look back.

Outside, a man in a uniform waited. Black Prado. I had never sat in a Prado before. Joseph opened the door for me like I was someone.

The house in Kololo was not a house. It was a compound with high walls and flowers and a guard. Inside, everything was white and grey. Too clean. Too sad. Like a house where nobody laughs.

And then I heard her.

A small voice singing upstairs. Off-key.

I followed the sound and there she was. Malaika. In a pink dress too big for her, barefoot, hair not combed, sitting on the floor surrounded by crayons, drawing on the wall itself.

She looked up at me. Big eyes, exactly like her father's. Tired, angry eyes on a four-year-old face.

"Are you the new mummy?" she asked.

My heart broke right there.

"No, baby," I said, kneeling down, my squeaky shoes finally silent on the carpet. "I'm Aisha. I'm here to play with you. If you want."

She looked at my braids. Then she touched one.

"Your hair is like mine," she whispered.

"Yes. Like yours."

She leaned her small head on my shoulder. She smelled like baby oil and crayons.

From the doorway, Joseph was watching and smiling a little.

"She likes you," he said. "No one has made her do that since Madam died."

I held that small girl in that too-quiet house and I thought: maybe I can do this.

I didn't know that her father was standing in the doorway behind us, watching us, with a look on his face I couldn't read.

And I didn't know that tomorrow night, at his company's end-of-year party where I was supposed to just watch Malaika in the corner, everything would go wrong.