Once in a Lifetime. Cathy Kelly

and Natalie exchanged a look. It was indeed going to be a long night.

      It was nearly two when Anna and Natalie realised that Lizzie was missing. The group had been dancing non-stop, so each time Natalie came back to their booth and didn’t see Lizzie, she assumed her friend was dancing with the other girls.

      ‘I thought the same,’ said Anna, shouting so they could hear each other over the music.

      Nobody else had seen her for an hour.

      Natalie found Lizzie first. At the very back of the club, in a dimly lit spot beside the fire exit, she was perched on a man’s lap with her arms wrapped around his body and her mouth clamped to his as if they were giving each other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. One of his hands was tangled up in Lizzie’s dark hair, the other was burrowing up under her flirty dress, so her thigh was totally bared.

      Natalie’s first thought was that her friend must be comatose to be behaving like this, but then she looked again. Lizzie was as ardent as the guy: she was writhing around on his lap, plunging her tongue into his mouth. It was the same guy who’d made a move on Lizzie earlier, the one with the denim shirt and the skull-and-crossbones earring. Lizzie had wanted this, Natalie realised: she was a willing partner.

      ‘Lizzie!’ shouted Natalie, trying to be heard over the throbbing bass notes of the music. ‘Lizzie!’

      She shook her friend’s arm and Lizzie turned round, the crimson lipstick almost gone from her lips, leaving nothing but a giant red Munch-like scream smeared around her mouth from kissing. She smiled lazily at her friend, snuggled close to the man’s chest. Her eyes glittered with raw excitement.

      It was the smile that hurt Natalie the most: a knowing, satisfied, mocking smile.

      ‘Lizzie, we’ve got to go,’ Natalie said, trying to stay calm in the face of this unrecognisable Lizzie.

      ‘Not yet,’ said Lizzie, still with that smile plastered across her face. She nuzzled into the man’s neck. ‘We’re having fun.’

      Natalie decided that she’d have to try another approach.

      ‘This is her hen night,’ Natalie explained to the guy. ‘She’s getting married in a week. Her fiancé’s a cop. He’s on the drugs squad.’ This was, of course, entirely untrue, but she guessed it might be a deal-breaker.

      Sure enough, alarm flickered in the guy’s face and he got up at speed, letting Lizzie fall unceremoniously to the floor.

      ‘Ouch!’ she roared.

      Natalie and the guy ignored her.

      ‘For real?’ he asked. He meant about the drugs squad.

      Natalie nodded grimly. ‘For real.’

      Without a backward glance, the guy shoved the bar of the emergency exit and opened it. Cold wind and a gush of rain blasted in as he vanished out into the dark. Natalie shivered.

      She glanced at Lizzie on the floor. Lizzie looked sulky now. She had a big tear on one side of the bodice of her dress where her admirer had been trying over-enthusiastically to access her boobs.

      ‘Home,’ Natalie said.

      ‘You ruined it all, Natalie!’ shrieked Lizzie.

      ‘Yes,’ Natalie agreed, ‘I ruined it all. Come on, let’s go. Where’s your stuff?’

      When Natalie hauled her back to their booth, there was no sign of her bag or coat there.

      ‘Is she OK?’ asked Anna.

      ‘Oh, fine,’ Natalie said brightly. No point in telling Anna what Lizzie had really been doing. ‘She’s tired and emotional.’

      ‘Me too,’ sighed Anna. ‘And I’m exhausted. Can we go home now?’

      ‘Sure. I need to find Lizzie’s things.’

      Lizzie’s coat was found in a heap on the floor under the table, but her bag was nowhere to be seen.

      Lizzie was too out of it to be the slightest bit worried about this.

      ‘Cheap bag!’ she kept saying loudly. ‘Cheap bag.’

      ‘What’s inside it is what counts,’ Natalie said: ‘your wallet, keys and phone.’

      ‘Cheap, cheap–’

      Finally, Natalie gave up looking. The club was heaving by now and she was tired. ‘Home,’ she said to Lizzie, then realised she couldn’t send Lizzie back to the flat she shared with Steve in that condition. ‘You’d better come with me.’

      

      The next morning, Lizzie woke first and ran to the bathroom. Natalie could hear retching, and the bedroom reeked of stale alcohol. Even the bed smelled of boozy sweat. Natalie got up and began stripping off the sheets. She couldn’t wait to wash them, to get rid of the memory of last night. There had been something disturbing about seeing her friend in such a terrible state. Lizzie had been more than drunk, she was out of control. The pillowcase from her side of the bed was striped with make-up. Skin-cleansing hadn’t been high on the agenda when Natalie had finally got her back to the flat. She’d had enough trouble getting Lizzie into bed in the first place. It had taken a lot of cajoling. And then, in bed, Lizzie had shouted that nobody understood her and how horrible Natalie was being, when all she wanted was to have some fun. Then, suddenly, she’d lain down on the bed and fallen asleep in an instant.

      ‘Don’t do the bed,’ moaned Lizzie, staggering back into the bedroom looking like a representative of the undead. ‘I need to lie down, pleeese.’

      ‘You can lie down on the couch,’ Natalie said shortly. ‘This place stinks and I need to wash the sheets.’

      ‘Oh nooo.’ Lizzie lay down on the pile of dirty sheets and curled up into a ball. ‘I can lie here. I’ll wash them later.’

      ‘Later, if you remember,’ Natalie reminded her tartly, ‘you’re meeting Steve’s friend from San Diego. The one who went with them on the stag night–the wild one, remember? The one you were scared was going to take Steve to all manner of unsuitable clubs to meet unsuitable women.’

      Lizzie was chalk white as it was, but at the mention of her fiancé, her face began to look even more ghostly. ‘Shit.’

      ‘You can say that again,’ Natalie said.

      ‘Don’t, please don’t,’ begged Lizzie.

      ‘Don’t what? Remind you about last night?’ Natalie thought of how she’d hauled Lizzie out of the club after giving up on the handbag, and of the people Lizzie had drunkenly bumped into on the way, threatening to start a fight over it, even though she was the one who’d bumped into them. Lizzie! Funny, normally gentle Lizzie.

      It had been a nightmare. And then the guy, the guy Lizzie had been with, poor Steve totally forgotten. That was the worst.

      ‘What do you remember?’ Natalie demanded.

      Lizzie covered her eyes with her hands. ‘Lots of it. Too much. I had far too much to drink–’

      ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

      ‘The guy at the bar, I kissed him–’

      ‘Kissed him! I thought you were going to devour him, Lizzie. You were glued to him and I had to practically drag you off. If anyone else had seen you and told Steve, can you imagine that?’ Natalie shook her head in disgust. ‘There’s drunk, Lizzie, and there’s crazy–and you were crazy.’

      ‘I know,’ Lizzie said brokenly. ‘It’s awful, I’m awful. And I promised I’d never, not after the last time–’ she stopped abruptly.

      Startled, Natalie stared at her. ‘What last time?’

      Lizzie hesitated before whispering: ‘The Christmas party at work. It was work people only, no partners, and there was this big joint being passed