‘What do you think?’ Thelma’s husband looks from up his newspaper and nods. ‘Tell me, Simon, what do you really think?’ He smiles, nods once more and goes back to reading the sports page.

‘What do you think?’ Thelma asks her twenty year old son, Josh, as he gets ready for a night out with his friends. He looks up and nods. ‘Tell me, what do you really think?’ In reply, her son asks if she’s washed his designer jeans.

‘What do you think?’ Thelma asks her seventeen year old daughter. Samantha looks up from painting her toe nails. She nods and Thelma asks, ‘Do you think it suits me?’ Samantha nods again and goes back to painting her toes.

Thelma now stands in her bedroom and studies herself in a long mirror. The new dress, she’d bought that morning, now seems dowdy like an old granny’s dress. She hears her family’s voices. Samantha is arguing with Josh on the landing. Downstairs, her husband is joking on the telephone with his pal from the Golf Club.

Twenty four years of marriage, she thinks, have brought her to this day of revelation; a revelation, she must confess, that has been nudging at her mind for some time. She takes off her new dress and regards herself in the long mirror, noting that though her body is still slender, her neck needs a lot more daily and nightly moisturising.

‘Oh, dear.’ She sees four fine lines have appeared at the corners of her mouth. She peers closer. God! Is that the beginnings of a moustache above her top lip? Now she takes off her bra and pants. Does a few twirls and jiggles. I’m real, she thinks. I’ve not grown invisible, but to the rest of the world, she feels she has grown into a middle-aged ghost.

The front door slams shut. She can her children still arguing as they head down the path. Silence falls. The bedroom door opens. Simon stands in the doorway grinning at her. Thelma blushes. Grabs up her new dress and holds it, like a chaste virgin, to cover her nakedness.

Then he tells her, ‘I think you look delicious tonight, Thelma,’ and pushes the bedroom door shut.