Free Once in a Lifetime by Cathy Kelly Page B

couldn’t open the bag and start applying drag-queen levels of cosmetics.
    She’d done it herself and had the photos to prove it. Marilyn Manson meets Picasso with a side order of vampire chic thrown in. It wasn’t a good look, given that she could pass for Gothic heroine easily enough anyway. Depending on what she wore, Natalie’s look could go either way: young and interesting or consumptively strange. She was pale-skinned, prone to purple shadows under her heliotrope eyes and with long ebony hair that never looked entirely brushed. In jeans and a T-shirt, her lean legginess and youthful skin gave her the look of a student, even though she was twenty-three and out of college. In tonight’s party outfit of sapphire-blue slip dress, she was working the girl-next-door-with-a-hint-of-edginess look.
    ‘Hot and sexy,’ Molly had decreed earlier when Natalie was getting ready. ‘But in control; not “I’m available, big boy”
    sexy, more “You can look, but don’t touch” sexy.’
     
    Part of their routine was outfit-grading before they left the flat. Despite her own charity-shop look, Molly was brilliant at gauging outfits and their suitability for events. Natalie could do it with jewellery, but when it came to clothes, it was so easy to get it wrong.
    ‘That’s good. Don’t want to be too hot and sexy,’ Natalie said, pulling the slip dress down, wishing it was longer so it covered more leg. ‘It’ll be mad enough tonight as it is.’
    ‘More juice!’ she heard Anna yell to the Club Laguna barman, who winked at her as he wielded his shaker. Anna wasn’t much of a drinker. ‘I can’t stand feeling woozy,’ she said.
    That statement was like a red rag to most men. In the many years the three girls had been friends - a bonding of five-year olds in the school yard - Natalie had lost count of the number of guys who’d tried to get Anna to lose control, hoping that a few more sips of Chardonnay would make her unfurl her sweetly prim manner like a secretary in a cheesy movie letting down her hair. Lizzie, who was permanently unfurled and smiled at men like an eager puppy, was ignored in the rush to Anna.
    ‘It’s not fair,’ Lizzie used to say without bitterness. She adored Anna, even if her friend was a man magnet while she appeared to repel them.
    ‘It’s the hair,’ Anna said apologetically. ‘There’s some evolutionary thing about natural redheads; men love the hair.
    They’re programmed to want to mate with it. It’s nothing to do with me.’
    ‘It’s more than the hair,’ Lizzie would sigh. Anna was so perfect: tiny, perfectly proportioned and with those dancing pale blue eyes. Men loved how big she made them feel. She wore size three shoes and her wrists were as delicate as a porcelain doll’s.
    And then Steve had come along. Without giving Anna a second look, he’d been instantly besotted with Lizzie.
    Natalie wondered how Steve’s stag night was going. There
    had been talk of the men going to a lap-dancing club with Steve’s old college friend over from San Diego, but Lizzie had been outraged.
    ‘It’s supposed to be your last night out before marrying the girl you love, not an excuse to drool over naked women with figures like Barbie!’
    It wasn’t the latent sexuality she had a problem with, Natalie knew: more that Lizzie wished she was a Barbie lookalike herself. The pre-wedding diet hadn’t been as successful as had been hoped. She was still eight pounds off her target weight and complained of appearing heifer-like.
    ‘I’ll look huge in the photos standing between you two,’
    Lizzie had grumbled earlier as they changed into their party gear. She was wearing a silky slip dress with long trailing skirts and a tiny camisole bodice which was doing a mediocre job of holding her breasts in. She was not wearing a bra. Neither was Natalie, but then she was a 32A and Lizzie was a healthy 36D.
    ‘Oh, Lizzie, get down off the cross,’ muttered Natalie.
    ‘Somebody else needs the