You Beauty! Clinique Moisture Surge Overnight Mask

At this moment, I am not enamoured of myself. Haggard. Self-tan just sort of sits on top of my skin. Foundation won’t sink in properly. Moisturiser gets sucked up but, one wonders, is it being absorbed and digested? The evidence suggests otherwise.

And so I navigate my way through the muffin-topped, blotchy-cheeked legacy of a Christmas well-celebrated and I don’t really want to be seen.

In fact, I don’t really want to see myself. I avoid my gaze in the mirror when brushing my teeth. I dry my hair away from any reflective surfaces and I do my make-up one feature at a time using a small compact.

And so, last night, I unearthed my preview bottle (it launched only last week but I received an advance tube in November) of Clinique’s Moisture Surge Overnight Mask and dolloped a lovely, cool, creamy squelch of unguent across my croney visage.

Sodium hyaluronate pumps a load of moisture into the skin, while shea and mango butter balance the science with botanical emollient. Algae and seaweed calm redness and antioxidants do battle with the Arctic/tropical January/central heating confusion that causes so much antagonism.

It soaks in within minutes and next morning one’s face is, well, once more one’s face. It has been reclaimed. Wrestled from the jaws of toxic, dried-out denial and staring back at itself, while its owner sticks to mirrors that reflect only from the neck upwards. For now.

Clinique Moisture Surge Overnight Mask, £28, at boots.com