I spent Halloween as I usually do, in hiding

Trudy Tyler tries to navigate Halloween knowing very well she doesn’t want to go to a party. By Christine Manby

It’s easier to retreat to the back of the house when the doorbell rings (Tom Ford)

So I’ve spent most of this Halloween weekend as I normally do, which is to say “in hiding”. I don’t know which is scarier: the teens in their Scream masks who are happy to take cash (or credit cards, these days, now that you can do that on your phone) or the Instagram-ready Nappy Valley tots, driven from street to street by their equally Insta-perfect parents, who will sweep your treat stash for dietary no-nos such as, er, sugar, before letting their precious offspring menace you for sweets. It’s altogether easier to retreat to the back of the house, turn the lights down and pretend I’m not in if anyone rings the doorbell.

My strategy did not keep me from experiencing a particular kind of Halloween horror this year, though. It’s now just a matter of days until I turn 50. My school classmates, who are of the same vintage, have been hitting their big birthdays, too. On the morning of the 31st, before I even got out of bed, I opened Instagram to find a photograph of one of my old school friends – let’s call her Mary – at the top of my feed. It was a picture of Mary, with her back to the camera, wearing a bikini, a pair of silver platforms and a witch’s hat. The caption said: “This is fifty.” The hashtags were myriad, but they included #realwomen and #empowered.

While I was still reading the hashtags, my best mate Liz sent a WhatsApp message revealing that she too had seen the “outtake” from our old friend’s celebratory birthday lingerie shoot, which was a gift from her adoring husband. A flurry of WhatsApp messages followed. While there was no doubt that our old mucker looked magnificent – clearly she was one of the rare few who took up exercise during lockdown rather than binge drinking – the implications of her post were awful.