I have accosted her in the kitchen just as she was about to go out. ‘Please, love. Look at yourself in the mirror.’

‘I’m cool,’ she whines. ‘Leave me alone.’

The difference between me and my own mother is that I have a valid point. Whereas my mother did not.

Frankly, my child looks like she’s on the game. Her top is little more than a bra and her ample bosom, not inherited from her mother I might add, is spilling out of it. Her skirt is what would have been called a pussy pelmet in the 1960s. It sits low, low, low on her hips and, at the other end, barely skims her bottom. It is hardly worth wearing. I have belts that are wider. How old does that make me sound?

‘Greg,’ I entreat. ‘Say something.’

My husband looks up at my daughter. ‘Do as your mother says,’ is his token effort. Then he returns to studying Angling Weekly, but I see him give a secret shudder.

‘You were the one dressed as a Bunny Girl last week.’ Ellen’s hands are on her hips. ‘At least I’m not doing it for money.’

But you could be, I think. You so easily could be.

‘She has a point,’ Greg chips in, looking up from his magazine.

Who asked you? I think. But instead say nothing. This is one argument that I know I have lost.

I turn to my son. My last hope. Bobby shrugs. ‘Everyone dresses like that now.’

‘Then everyone should have better taste,’ I tell him.

‘Whatever,’ Ellen mumbles.

‘Besides, what I was doing was for charity,’ I announce loftily to the back of the stalls.

‘And that makes a difference?’

‘It makes a world of difference.’

Ellen snorts.

‘I’m trying to do something with my dull little life. I’m trying to be a role model.’

More snorting.

‘I’ll be late,’ she says, which is the equivalent of ‘fat chance’.

‘I just wish . . .’

‘Everyone’s hanging on me,’ my daughter says, cutting me off in mid-flow. ‘Don’t wait up. And don’t pull the bedroom curtain back when you hear the taxi.’

I stand guilty as accused. I don’t want to worry about them both, but I do. Constantly. They’re both adults – even though they never, ever behave like it. They should live their own lives as they see fit. I just don’t want them doing it in my house.

‘Give us a lift, bro,’ Ellen cajoles.

‘No worries,’ Bobby says, and picks up his car keys.

Ellen flounces out of the room.

‘Keep an eye on her, Bobs,’ I beg.

‘As if,’ my son says with a hopeless shrug. ‘Laters.’

The back door slams and my stomach tenses as I hear Bobby’s old banger roar up the road.