Suzanne Portnoy

‘What’s with the dress?’ said my youngest son as I walked in through the door yesterday.

I was wearing my latest Ebay purchase - a denim, knee length Alexander McQueen number from his ‘Western’ collection with a zip that ran from the collar to the hem. A bit of a McQueen fan but too broke to afford anything current, I have been slowly collecting all the pieces from this range as and when they come up on Ebay, which is not very often. The dress was a real steal, bought during the last 3 seconds of the auction, knocked down from £250 to £30.

‘What’s wrong with the dress?’ I said. ‘I love it.’

‘Isn’t that the kind of dress that prostitutes usually wear?’ he said.

‘Yeh,’ said the older son, who suddenly appeared at the kitchen door as soon as he heard the word prostitute. ‘It’s a bit of a hooker dress.’

‘What are you talking about?!’ I said. ‘It’s an Alexander McQueen dress. How can it make me look like a prostitute. Are you mad?’ (Of course, I could have had a very adult conversation with them about the nature of sex work. I could have told them that these days it’s politically incorrect to use the term prostitute or hooker but this was a dress we were talking about, not the latest government proposal).

‘It’s the zip thing,’ they said. ‘You could undo the entire dress just by pulling on the zip.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s true. You could. So what?’

‘Nothing,’ said the youngest in that knowing voice before he wandered back to Pro Evo on the PlayStation.

This morning I put on the dress again, this time with a pair of ankle length red flowered bobby socks and grey peep toe shoes. The youngest ate his pancakes in silence, not even noticing me. A half hour later the eldest woke up and came down the stairs.

‘You look nice,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

We got in the car and drove off. There really is no accounting for male behaviour sometimes, is there?