By the time she has left her car and hit the door, Nathalie has her rubber gloves on and her bottle of water ready for refilling. Beyond a good morning and a nervous twist away from the effusive greeting of the dog, she neither kisses nor hugs me or tells me the details of her life since she last came.

Instead she looks at me somewhat warily and asks, every time: "What do you want me to do?"

I resist, every time, the urge to yell: "Clean. You’re the cleaner. Just bloody clean."

But I don’t and instead go through everything I want her to do. If I don’t list every surface individually, they won’t be cleaned. If I don’t state which rooms, they won’t be entered.

I found this with the last two cleaners also. Do the French not dust every surface when they clean a room? Do they always leave one for next week? Is it a country good luck thing?

And why do they have difficulty in putting a matching set of sheets and pillowcases on a bed?

Admittedly my linen is all white, but different textures, different discreet embroidery on corners, should be the clue. Non? Non.

I know you are thinking these are the musings of an idle, spoiled woman…and you’re right. No getting around it. My first cleaner came with my first well-paid job on a national newspaper and with my first flat, a bed-sit, away from home.

She would arrive in the morning with breakfast – a bottle of Lucozade and either a Mars Bar or a bacon roll. Many years later she would become my housekeeper when my son was born and ran my life with a precision worthy of a sergeant major, allowing me to focus on my work.

Then one day when she was in her late-60s, for the first time ever in all the years she’d been with me, she failed to show and no phone call came. After a week, now very worried, I finally tracked down a daughter who told me, the disgust evident in her voice, that her mother had run off to Inverness with a man.

Tiny, nervous, shy, modest J? Impossible.

Another week went by and a letter arrived from J with fulsome apologies and explanations. For the first time in her life she had snatched at a chance of happiness with an old friend.

I knew she was fearful of her domineering husband but now discovered that for years he’d been beating her and allowed her out only to work.

What could I do but cheer her on and pray she had found a late-life happiness.

Several years later and by now in another house, she found me again. All had soured, her family had disowned her and she desperately needed employment and bed and board.

For many reasons, including the nanny and housekeeper already ensconced, plus a failing mother, I could not help her, only give her other names who might.

To this day I feel rotten about it and flinch from wondering what happened to her. She’ll be long dead now.

A man was the reason Roslyn, the cleaner who couldn’t clean, left me, too; in a way I still find baffling.

Big, brassy, overflowing with warmth, she smashed and crashed her way around Las Moliere’s while entertaining me with local gossip and Arabic curses.

A single mother with a teenage son, she liked her salsa nights out and often hair-raising encounters with the most unsuitable men.

She tried to get me to go clubbing with her in Montauban. Ah God, yes, my inner self screamed, but a look at the old, outer self was enough to say: Get a grip, woman.

Anyway, she met a man, married, who lived all week in a caravan outside Toulouse close to his work, going home only at weekends.

In time he got her a salaried job at his work but she assured me she wouldn’t give up coming to me. "You’ll have enough to do," I told her, "and I’m delighted for you; so, if you don’t want to keep coming just give me warning."

She came twice more, then stopped. A phone call from a woman called Nathalie said Roslyn had told her I’d be looking for a cleaner, and that was it.

I have seen or heard nothing from her since, and to be honest, am rather hurt, as she was probably the highest paid cleaner in Tarn et Garonne apart from anything else.

Perhaps she couldn’t face me after telling me she’d never leave, but I don’t know why. She knew I wished her only the best.

So, when Nathalie arrived after that phone call, I was quietly relieved that she is married to a teacher, has two children, a tight schedule and no desire to sit and chat.

She smashes up my house in her own way; mainly, as I’ve said, any loose piece of wood or fragile artwork and then hides it. We’re working on that. The hiding it, not the smashing.

We have a correct working relationship based simply on supply and demand.

Pray God there’s not another man lurking in the background.