IT IS Saturday morning and I am going through Secondborn’s rucksack, harvesting sheets, pillow cases, tops, jeans and assorted garments for the washing machine.

In the bottom of the bag I find her black clubbing dress,’ an important piece of attire for a first-year student with a new social life.

We acquired the ‘dress’ together back in September and at the time I thought we were buying a long T-shirt. It wasn’t until The Girl had been at uni for a couple of weeks that the T-shirt revealed itself to be a dress. Her friends were kind enough to spot its potential.

As most of Secondborn’s washing appears to have been pulled from a drawer and looks as if it has been barely worn, I ask if it is strictly necessary to put the dress through the ordeal of a full wash, rinse and spin cycle. She sighs and says it is.

The washing label confirms that it is OK to put it in with other dark clothes on a 40 deg wash, so I do. Thirty minutes later the dress looks even more like a T-shirt than it once did and not at all like a dress

“Oh dear,” I say, “I think I’ve shrunk it.”

We stare in dismay at the former dress and I check the label again. ‘Wash on wool cycle’ is written in smallish print underneath a row of symbols. Well, that explains it.

The Girl is not impressed. After all, she brings her washing home because she wants it to be done by someone who knows what they’re doing. She could have shrunk it all by herself in the college launderette.

I feel both guilty and somewhat alarmed because I know it will be impossible to get her to choose another. Secondborn has never been a shopping enthusiast. The fact that she has a clubbing dress at all is something of a miracle. It is probably one of only four dresses she has owned since the age of four and was the product of a shopping trip that tested The Girl’s endurance for such things to the limit.

I promise to do what is necessary to find a replacement. This is no hardship as I am blessed with the shopping gene and have long been my daughter’s personal shopper and stylist.