Wicked stepmothers, they have a hell of a time.

They are generally seen as ruthlessly, artfully beautiful. They put make-up on in spades to hide those tell-tale signs of age that, Canute-like, they try to hold back with invisible but growing dismay.

They have harsh, loud strident voices, if you believe Walt. They are supposed to be unhappy, and they are supposed to be alone.

Join me, if you will, in the room of one such unfortunate, as she stares at a huge and beautiful mirror. It is a limpid pool on the wall of her sumptuous chamber, not a real mirror, so much as an enchanted reflector.

She strides into the room, slams the door, and the moment no-one is looking her face, so carefully held in regal beauty, in arch intelligence, approximating youth: it falls. She is tired, and cross, her feet are aching and she needs a bath.

When no-one is watching the beautiful and powerful they can become themselves, and so she does: two large hands lean on her dressing table, and she hunches over the potions to peer in the mirror which has served her so faithfully all these years. She examines her crow’s feet.

Today, she’s a little antsy. A tad uneasy.

Because that stepdaughter of hers, that infernal princess, is blooming more perfectly every day. She’s not her own daughter, not an extension of her own ambition, not blood at all.

She is snow, snow white.

Everything about her grates. Where the admiring courtiers are accustomed to flock to her wit, maturity and breathtaking beauty, they are becoming drawn to that vacant artlessness and unguarded charm even more.

In among the politics of the castle, where life and death walk closely together, the wicked stepmother has never learnt to do anything other than put herself first. And now it’s someone else’s turn.

Mirror, mirror. That old chestnut. But don’t dare change your answer, you vacant glass…

The mirror gives our antiheroine a reality check. Look in me, it says, you are growing older. It is the turn of youth now.

Let us back hastily out before the tantrum begins.

This week, I have been playing wicked, wicked mother.

One vital difference: I love Snow White.

My darling’s cheeks are red as roses and her skin as white as snow. Her tresses are thick, brown, vibrant chestnut. And she is choosing a school to bring her from childhood, through the hazy years of adolescence, to young adulthood.

Oh, what a to-do.

Three schools, we are looking at. A good number for a fairy tale.

One is a very, very posh school indeed: one is a lovely, lively middle class school, and one we have no idea yet, because we have not been to the open evening. Which is on Saturday morning.

Maddie loves the posh school. I love the other one. To get to the posh school, one has to be two things: posh, and clever.

The headmaster of the posh school does not know Snow White. And he has provided rings of flame through which she must jump.

And who has to prepare her for her fiery ordeal? Her mother.

Before the middle of November my fresh faced daughter must produce a portfolio to promote herself. Really.

This week we have been working industriously away, compiling ideas, raising expectations, brainstorming, mind mapping, writing.

This evening, Snow White ran out of gas.

She looked at me, tearfully. “Mummy, it. Is. Fri. Day. Night. I have been working all week. Can I have a night off?”

My mind riffled through scenarios for that question: Bombay sweat shops, two year old children creating dresses to order; Beethoven, woken up at a tender age by his drunken father and friends to play the piano to entertain them; Judy Garland, child star…

Oh, help.

I was sorely tempted to let it go. Just tonight.

But then my mind canonballed forward to the day before the interview. My job was to spread this ridiculous burden out so that there were no last minute panics for my small, ever more beautiful maiden. A little often, not all at once and at the last minute.

And so I said, Darling, just one paragraph. Write about the time you got your whole school to Save The Swifts.

At which large tears began to well up and run down the outside of her perfectly formed nose.

We cuddled, we repaired things. But there comes a time when if one ever had beauty and charm, it ceases to work with quite such ease as once it did.

Maybe there’s the odd Helen Mirren-a-like out there who can keep up the good fight; but as we grow more mature and more experienced, we become a force to be reckoned with.

We carry the world on our shoulders and it makes us tense and occasionally snappy. We know more than our superiors, and spend a lifetime pressing the mute button so they do not know it. We are wise, and we are tetchy, and we need the mirror to read us a few home truths.

My mirrors come for walks with me, and come out to lunch with me, as they have been doing this very day.

9:45am, and the dog was the closest to barmy he has been for some time. He was actually trying to talk. His tail was a blur. He was desperate to share every tiny visitor, every succulent forest smell.

Because a member of his harem had arrived. Lydia has been walking him in the forest for years now, with and without me. But she moved further away, and her distance, to him, is an object, although his ardour remains untamed.

Lydz and I walked the forest and, as usual, she told me her life and I told her mine. We refelected on our lives as we always do, and came to lots of conclusions as is our wont.

We parted just before lunch and I hotfooted it to another friend. I have worked with her for two years, and found myself pouring my wicked mother story out to her over scampi and chips.

We discussed the two schools I had seen with Maddie. And then she said: “Are you aware your face is different when you talk about the different schools?

She explained: “You are full of smiles when you talk about one. And when you speak of the other, you face goes serious and concerned.”

Thanks, Mirror.

For your jobbing wicked stepmother, reflection can happen in many ways. The therapist; the mirror: the couch: the journal.

But none can come close to reflection with one’s friends.