You beauty! Benefit Fakeup

April really is a cruel month, laying bare as it does the ravaged wasteland of post-arctic skin, elongating the daylight hours and yet not providing a sunshine loving enough to honey us up or cast us in a better light.

Dark circles are a giveaway of ennui and exhaustion. They are unattractive because they make one look weary of spirit, resigned, long-suffering. And that’s not fresh and sexy and ‘summer is a-coming in’ now, is it?

But while the pigment in most under-eye concealers hides the purplish shadows, the product so often snuggles into fine lines and makes one look older. Quite a lot older. So I have always hoped that the black rings made me look tragic (in a good way) and just skipped that step in the make-up routine.

But Benefit’s Fakeup bills itself as hydrating and crease-controlling and, as one often finds with this happy brand, it delivers. It looks like a snazzy lipstick but it’s actually a core of creamy concealer surrounded by a ring of solid, vitamin E-packed serum. Stroke it on under the eye, straight from the tube, and it evens things out without signposting tiny wrinkles.

Use it with a full face of slap or on its own on a Sunday morning to look like an ingénue when you go to get the papers. It doesn’t last all day so reapply, which only rehydrates, which is a good thing. Up yours, April.

Benefit Fakeup, £18.50 (benefitcosmetics.co.uk)