I’ve been scammed – by a fake nanny

A trial day with a new childminder who is masquerading as a ‘nanny housekeeper’ makes Charlotte Cripps reassess her arrangements. Who would take on the massive dog and the kids in an emergency?

I just rewatched ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ before a trial day with a new nanny (Amara May)

You don’t watch airplane disaster movies when you’re just about to get on a flight. But I just rewatched The Hand That Rocks the Cradle before a trial day with a new nanny. Now the catchphrase “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world” is on repeat in my head before she’s even walked in through the door. I mean, this is a movie about murder and revenge – so I’m on high alert – but I somehow still manage to get scammed.

I’m looking at her psychological behaviours rather than her skills – and thank God I am – because when I caught her red-handed cleaning the toilet with the same sponge she had cleaned the kitchen table with – I sensed she was unstable.

Without a thread of common sense, how could I let this woman on the loose with my kids? She told me she was a “nanny housekeeper” which sounded grand by my standards. Therefore, by the sheer job title alone, I expected she could clean. So when she started scrubbing the top of the oven with Flash bleach and an old hard dry kitchen cloth that snapped in half because she hadn’t used any water, at first I wondered if it was a cleaning hack that had passed me by?