Thread by @Telegraph

"I was a housekeeper for a wealthy family... and I was shocked by what I learnt about the super-elite."

The domestic workers of the super rich often know more about their clients than even their families know

🧵👇

telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/housekeep…

🇺🇸It was a particularly humid morning in the summer of 2010 when Stephanie Land first met the woman she would later nickname the ‘Cigarette Lady’...

➡️Once an ambitious writer who dreamt of university, Land had fallen on hard times after becoming a single mother in her 20s.

She took a job as a housekeeper in Washington state to make ends meet

She barely spoke to any of her clients; some never bothered to learn her name.

🔴Still, she got to know them intimately

📸Netflix

But none fascinated her more than the Cigarette Lady, a middle-aged housewife who lived next to a golf course with her construction magnate husband

➡️But the woman also harboured a secret.

Land began to spot traces of cigarette ash around the house, and once found an ashtray behind the kitchen sink.

🧽It had been scrubbed clean with some vigour

Curiously, Land never saw any cigarettes – until one day, when she was exiting the house through the garage and noticed a freezer.

🚬She opened it. Hidden away at the back was a stack of Virginia Slims, an upmarket cigarette brand

✍️"It wasn’t about the smoking. It was the secrecy that fascinated me, the amount of energy she put into appearing perfect and clean," Land recalls in her memoir

The best-selling memoir was picked up for a Netflix series, Maid, released earlier this month

📸Netflix

Compared to her years as a cleaner, Land’s finances are now transformed – so much so that she can now afford to hire her own cleaner.

🔎Read more on her fascinating life here 👇

telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/housekeep…