My hair looks incredible at the moment. I know because people keep telling me – in bakeries, cafes and when I was getting my tattooed eyebrows touched up yesterday.

What to say? “Thanks!” feels conceited. “My hairdresser’s a genius,” is (part of) the truth. I often narcissistically worry what would happen if he were to slip away before me; how wrong would it be to bring him five or six wigs to cut on his deathbed? In a similar vein, I was thrilled yesterday, when S, who has done my brows for decades, told me her daughter may be going into the family business – succession secured!

The honest – if awkward – answer, of course, is: “It’s not mine.” I have alopecia; I have no idea whose hair I’m wearing. For someone who frets about where my avocados come from, I’m shamefully incurious about how my hair is sourced (“the general public of the world”, my wig supplier’s site says, vaguely).

It’s definitely lusher and more lustrous than the hair I saw in a recent New York magazine article. That was barely........

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