Wig by Patrick Gale

Wanda would never have thought of buying such a thing, never have planned to do so. In this case, however, her thoughts and plans were immaterial. She was put upon, the object, quite literally, thrust upon her. The salesman pounced as she was waiting for a friend and as soon as she had felt the thing's slippery heaviness between her fingers, her fate was sealed.

Wanda had never mastered the art of evading the attentions of department store demonstrators and had gone through life being squirted with unwanted scents. Where other women could stride purposefully by, freezing all overtures with a glare or a scornful laugh, she would feel coerced into buying small gadgets for slicing eggs into perfect sections or recycling old bits of soaps into garishly striped blocks. On the rare occasions when she heard him speak of her to his friends, she gathered that her husband's image of her was coloured by this weakness.

'She loves gadgets,' he would say. 'If she thinks it saves her time, she'll buy it. When they invent a gadget to live your life for you, she'll be first in the queue and let herself be talked into buying six.'

In her youth she had become a not terribly fervent Christian in the same way - sold the idea by a catchy sermon involving some crafty use of props - until her faith went the way of the spring-loaded cucumber dicer and the Bye-Bye Blemish foundation cream, gathering to it a kind of dusty griminess that dulled her guilt at its under-use.

'Excuse me, Madam.' It was a less vigorous approach than usual, tired and mechanical. He was evidently too drained by a long day of false charm to be mindful of his commission. 'Would you like to try a wig?'

A chip slicer she might have resisted. She had one of those already. And a hoover attachment for grooming the cat (not a great success) but the very strangeness of that little monosyllable seemed to pluck at her elbow. She paused and half-turned.