“Reader, my heart is in my mouth”

T’S my mother’s birthday. She’s trying on a wig in my brother’s kitchen. Not because she wants to. My brother found the wig in his children’s toy box and wants us all to try it on. My siblings and I know the look in my brother’s eye from childhood; rolling over like a dog is our only option. He’s not made it to CEO for nothing.

Right now, what my mum wants is to serve up a celebratory lasagne; she wears a flustered expression and gingham oven gloves which she waves furiously at my brother in protest.

But it’s an unequal battle: my mother is 4ft 11, and my brother, a six foot Yogi Bear, bats the gloves out of the way, looming over the top of my mother’s head with the wig.

The wig is black, and styled into a chin-length chaotic bob with blunt fringe. If you were to ask a hairdresser to reproduce this look on your head you would say: “A style that’s halfway between Cleopatra and Mary Quant but pulled backwards through a hedge, please.”

“Pleeeease granny, you’ll look soooo funny,” my nephew pleads. She says, “honestly, what’s wrong with the lot of you?” but allows my brother to lower the wig. He pulls it firmly down over her ears, tucking her hair under its edges.

“Happy, everyone?” mum says, lifting her head and looking around at her six children with a belligerent expression, hands on hips. But there are high spots of colour on her cheeks and what with the oven gloves and belligerence, my nephew falls screeching to the floor, incapacitated.

Within seconds a Mexican-wave of shocked hysteria has rippled across the room.

“Dot Cotton from EastEnders,” my brother chokes out into the sink.

“God you look frightening,” my younger sister says to mum. Mum huffs and puffs impatiently. “Mum, no listen, Mum, it’s because you don’t have a forehead in that wig… god it’s so weird. ”

“What do you mean I don’t have a forehead?” My mother says testily.

“The fringe…” my sister says.

“Good job I’m not sensitive,” Mum interrupts, pushing the wig up off her head from both sides with oven gloves.

My brother says, “keep your hair on Dot”, whips the wig out of her hands and turns to his Spanish wife, “your go.”

My sister-in-law swears at him in Spanish, “Tonto del culo, I’m not going to look any deefferent. My hhhair iss black anyway.”

He looms over his wife.

She curses, pulling the wig on, “la madre que me parió…” and looks around defensively, wig on head.

My brother collapses.

“What iss so amousseing?” she demands.

“You look…” he says, “you look…”

“Like someone let out on a day pass from an asylum,” I say.

“Yes,” my sister says ruminatively “definitely a few pence short of a shilling… but there’s that Dot Cotton thing going on again.”

She turns to me. “Iss your go,” she mutters, “Que te den por culo,” which — she informs me when I inquire — roughly translates as “get f****d,” and plonks it on my head.

I pull it on, shoving all my hair up under it, and stand braced for attack.

There is silence.

“What?” I shout, “say something.”

My sister-in-law breaks the silence suddenly.

“I think you should hhhaff it cut like dees!” she shouts, “you need to hhhaff it cut like dees! Becauss it frame your face and your hhhair is no- hhhow you say? — framin your face so nice now.”

“It suits you,” my brother says in a tone of bitter disappointment.

I am pushed into the hall. My entire family assembles behind me, where I stand in front of the mirror.

“See?” they shout, “see?”

And thus it came to pass.

11.45am Tuesday: I’m in the hairdressers, about to have my hair, long for 35 years, cut.

And suddenly the line between “Cleopatra/Mary Quant but all pulled through a hedge” and “Dot Cotton, a few pence shot of sheeelin” is feeling tightrope thin.

My heart is in my mouth, reader. My heart is in my mouth.