What cleaners really get up to in your home

Trysts with blokes in your bed. Clothes pinched from your wardrobe. Your darkest secrets rooted out — and spread around the neighbourhood

with their cat and using their wifi to download films on my phone. I LIED AND SAID A GHOST BROKE A VASE ROSE, 42: I used to clean for a doctor’s wife, who was very much into the supernatural. She was always telling me how she was convinced that spirits roam the earth and that she’d often felt the presence of her dead aunt in the sitting room of her £500,000 three-bedroom home.

She and her husband had been together for years and had a teenage son. Last year, they finally married, and her groom bought a beautiful blue glass vase i n honour of the occasion. She kept it on the hearth and told me it cost a fortune, as well as having huge sentimental value — so I should always place it on a table before I started vacuuming in case it got knocked.

After a while I got lazy and would leave it in place and clean around it. one morning I was using the vacuum hose to get to a cobweb above the fireplace and somehow caught the vase with it.

I felt sick when I heard it crash and smash into two pieces on the hearth — and sicker still when I turned off the vacuum cleaner and heard my boss calling from upstairs. I hadn’t realised she was in.

terrified that I’d find myself in big trouble, I quickly moved the broken vase onto the coffee table where I should have placed it in the first place. When she appeared moments later in the doorway, looking horrified, I blurted: ‘the ghost did it’. I concocted a story about how I’d been convinced for months that the room was haunted and had felt a mysterious presence as I cleaned — the vase getting smashed when I was nowhere near it was the final proof.

‘Well, my aunt never did like my husband,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is her way of saying she doesn’t approve of the marriage.’

I couldn’t believe it — she’d s wallowed my s t ory without batting an eyelid. WE GOT FRUITY ON THE LIVING ROOM RUG KATE, 48: three years ago while cleaning for a couple who lived in a city flat with a pretty Juliet balcony, my husband and I began a flirty text exchange. By lunchtime we could barely contain ourselves. So, knowing that my clients — a teacher and a financial trader — weren’t likely to turn up at the house, I gave my husband the address.

he promptly sped over from the office where he worked and we made out on the rug in the living room during his lunch break.

not once did I feel an ounce of guilt: I found it exciting to mess around with my husband in someone else’s house when I was supposed to be dusting. But it was a one- off, mainly because I changed jobs soon after.

In the meantime, I confess that there were other occasions when I’d down cleaning tools and sit and watch tV instead. I HAD TO TURN A BLIND EYE TO HIS AFFAIR

MARIA, 29: Cleaning for a very wellto-do family was an eye opener. he was a stockbroker, she was a prim blonde who played tennis and went to charity luncheons to occupy her time.

they were both in their early 40s, their two children were away at boarding school and they had what I’d call a Mary Poppins-type house. It was white-fronted, with a huge front door between two imposing columns, and l i ving space l aid out over four storeys.

on the first floor was the husband’s study and what he called a ‘crisis’ room where he’d entertain his most important business clients. Except that it quickly became clear they weren’t the only guests. one day, while his wife was out, he briefed me that he was expecting a ‘business associate’ and they were to be left alone in the crisis room. he then added that any time there was a red convertible Audi on the drive, the first floor was off limits.

unfortunately for him, the doors weren’t sound-proofed so I could hear that his ‘client’ was a lady and they were in the very audible throes of passion.

on another occasion, his wife asked me to clear out the larder attached to the basement kitchen, throwing away anything — chocolates, pesto, pasta, fine teas — with even slightly rumpled packaging, even if it was in date.

She added that I wasn’t allowed to take it home. But I smuggled it away in black bin liners when I put the rubbish out. It would have been such a waste, especially as it was all from Fortnum & Mason. IT TOOK ME 5 MONTHS TO COPY ALL HIS CDS ELEANOR, 55: one former client, a single man who worked as a financial adviser, had a vast collection of around 500 CDs in his two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat in a gated complex.

Realising I could save myself thousands of pounds, I took my laptop with me when I cleaned for him while he was at work, and used it to copy around a dozen CDs a week.

It took me about five months to copy the 250 or so CDs that really appealed to me. It’s a good job he didn’t have secret video cameras — unlike the affluent lady whose very grand, sprawling four-bedroom bungalow I cleaned.

She owned a beauty company and also a glazing business, had expensive furniture and a private number plate on her sports car.

unbeknown to me at first, she also had cameras installed in the bungalow and they watched me as I worked.

But I soon cottoned on when she started leaving written instructions like ‘when polishing please spray the polish on the duster not the woodwork’, or ‘dust the ornaments with the paint brush that is there, not the duster’, and ‘ use two hands when brushing the floor not just one’.

I found it spooky, and could hardly believe her fussiness. that job didn’t last long.