The young woman eyes me, and I brace myself. “Can I help you?”

I always say, No thank you. I always say, I’m just browsing.

“No thank you,” I say. “I’m just browsing.”

“What are you browsing for?” asks the woman. Her name badge—handwritten in large, flamboyant print with a love heart instead of a dot over the i—says Jennifer.

“I kind of need...everything,” I say.

“Right,” she says. “You’ve come to the right place. I’d say you’re a...” She looks me up and down, “Ten?”

“Yes, I—”

“And I’m going to say, given your height, you’re a size seven shoe.”

I nod. She studies my breasts with great concentration. “34B?”

“Yes. How did you...?”

Jennifer shrugs. “I’m just doing my job,” she says with grave conscientiousness. “I’m going to step beyond my remit now and tell you a few things about yourself,” she says, and I am suddenly terrified that she can see right inside me. That she knows everything.

Jennifer narrows her eyes at me. “You’re a reluctant shopper.”

“Eh, well, I suppose you could say th—”

“Yes or no is fine.”

“Oh, em, right then, I...yes.”

“You usually shop in Marks & Spencer.”

“How did you kn—Sorry. Yes.”

“You have no interest in style.”

“Eh, well...”

“Yes or no?”

“I suppose not, no.”

“You like comfortable clothes.”

“Yes.” That’s an easy one. Who doesn’t like comfortable clothes?

“That you can hide inside.”

“Well, I wouldn’t—”

“Yes or no?”

“Well... I don’t... Although I suppose I—”

“Today’s your lucky day,” Jennifer tells me, pointing to the fitting room. “Get in there and take your clothes off.”

“All of them?”

But she has swept away and is already pulling various garments off hangers and—worryingly—talking to herself as she does.

My fear of being rude overrides all else and I do as I am bid. I leave my bra and knickers on. She didn’t mean me to remove them? Did she?

No. I’m sure she didn’t.

Besides, they don’t sell underwear in charity shops. Or maybe they do now?

But no, they couldn’t. It’s all secondhand stuff, isn’t it? Even I draw the line at hand-me-down knickers.

“Eh, I don’t need underwear,” I call from behind the heavy velvet curtains that separate me from the sales assistant.

She does not respond, although I know she heard me because she paused in her conversation with herself.

“Are you decent?” she is good enough to ask, and I am about to tell her that I am standing here in my bra and knickers, only so that she is prepared for it, when she flings back the curtains and surveys me. While the bra and knickers are Marks & Spencer, they are fairly old. Even Marks & Spencer’s underwear gives out eventually.

Mine haven’t given out exactly. They’re just...a bit tired looking.

“Let’s start with this skirt and top,” Jennifer says, looking at me in the mirror. I look too and see what she sees. My tired old knickers and bra, my sagging breasts and stretch-marked belly and pasty skin and hairy legs. I see it all. The full glare of me—long and skinny with mousy hair and washed-out blue eyes—in the full-length mirror cruelly lit by bright, Hollywood-style bulbs.