At my grandson's christening, I smiled with my mouth closed in every photo.

The photos came through on a Sunday evening. My daughter had put together an album for the family: the church, the cake, my grandson in the christening gown three generations of us have worn.

I scrolled through it twice before I noticed. In every single picture, I was smiling with my mouth closed. Tight, polite, careful. The kind of smile you give a stranger in a lift.

My daughter had noticed too. “Mum, you look lovely,” she said, “but why aren’t you smiling properly?”

I didn’t have a good answer. The honest one was a little embarrassing.

It wasn’t a decision. It just crept up on me. The creamy lipsticks slid into the little lines around my mouth by lunchtime and left a faint pink shadow above my lip. The long-lasting ones dried my lips until they felt tight. And the bright shades that looked so lovely in the shop looked painted on once I got home.

Without lipstick, my lips looked pale, and next to everyone else I felt a bit washed out. So, without really choosing to, I’d started keeping my mouth closed in photos.

A few weeks later, an advert stopped me: a lipstick that was completely clear, with little flecks of gold inside, and a woman about my age saying it had turned into her own pink.

I’ll be honest, I rolled my eyes. A clear lipstick that turns pink sounded like a party trick. But two things made me read on.

The first was that there was no shade to choose. The colour develops on your own lips, so it can’t be too bright or the wrong tone for your skin. After a drawer full of mistakes, that sounded like a relief.

The second was that it was made to feel like a balm, with squalane, hyaluronic acid and vitamin E, and designed to stay on the lip line instead of creeping into the little lines around it. That was exactly my problem.

Two were $34.99 with free shipping, so I thought: one for me, and one for my daughter if it’s any good.

It arrived in a little gold box, and I’ll admit it felt like a treat just opening it. The lipstick really is clear, with gold flakes inside, and it smells faintly sweet.

I put it on in the bathroom mirror the way I’d put on lip balm. Nothing happened. Clear lips. I was ready to be disappointed.

Then, over the next minute or so, colour started to come through. Not a bright pink. A soft, rosy pink that looked like my own lips on a really good day. I just stood there looking at it.

What surprised me most was how it felt. No tightness, no stickiness, just the feeling of a good balm. When I checked at lunchtime, the line was still clean. No pink shadow creeping above my lip.

The shade is a little different on everyone, because it depends on your own lips. Mine came out a soft rose. When I gave my daughter the second one, hers came out a touch deeper and warmer. Hers suits her. Mine suits me.

A month after the christening, we all went out for my daughter’s birthday dinner. Somewhere between the main course and the cake, my sister told a story about our mother that had the whole table crying with laughter.

My daughter took a photo right then. I’m laughing so hard my eyes are nearly closed, mouth wide open, and my lips look soft and pink and completely like mine.

She framed it. It sits on her bookshelf, next to the christening album.

I won’t pretend a lipstick changed my life. But it gave me back something small I’d lost without noticing: smiling without thinking about my mouth first.