High Heels and Pink Glitter (18+) COMPLETE, FREE TO READ CHICK LIT

The Magic of Make-Up

"Hiya – it's me. Erin."

To Ryan's surprise – astonishment, perhaps – Erin phoned him a week later. They had exchanged numbers (outside her father's hearing) but he assumed he wouldn't hear from her again.

"You okay?" His mind had flitted its way through various replies. 'You okay' was the best he could come up with.

"Sort of." He heard her sniff. She sounded tearful. Apart from Laura who cried a lot because she was only five, Ryan didn't have experience of tearful females. He thought hugging was probably best, but as they were speaking on the phone and not in person he could hardly do that.

"They think I'll be scarred for life. I'm so ugly!" The last came out as a wail. There was another loud sniff.

Anxious to stop the tears, Ryan burst out: "You're no' ugly. You're gorgeous! Look at all those people who like your stuff on Instagram."

"Oh. You've seen those pictures, then." Her voice sounded flat. Did he sound like a perv if he admitted he had seen them? He'd noticed she hadn't posted up any pictures since the accident.

"Yeah, I didn't perv at them though." Well, only a little bit.

"I've stopped doing them. Nobody'll want to see my face now it's so ugly."

"Honest, I don't think you're ugly," he repeated, this time emphasising the words more firmly. "I told my mate Liam about you," he named a mutual acquaintance from the Parkour group, "and he was well jel."

She sniffed. It sounded like the tears had stopped. Emboldened by her call, he decided to ask her out.

"Do you want to...meet up or something?"

She pounced on the invite. "Yes. Can I come and seen you now?"

Too late, Ryan remembered he'd promised to drop in to Kelly's. She wanted to do another video – about making yourself look better when you were ill or unhappy, she'd said – and he didn't want to let her down. The BBC work experience was yet to take place. If he didn't show up, maybe he'd ruin his chances.

"Only if you want to." Erin sounded worried. He'd taken too long to answer her.

"Aye, I do want to see you. I promised this woman I'd help her with some filming for her blog this afternoon. Hey, you could come too and then we could go see a film."

Erin agreed readily and he met her half an hour later at Glasgow Central. She smiled shyly at him as she approached. Her hair, long once more, was styled carefully, one long hank hanging down and hiding the left side of her face. Close up, Ryan could see the scars. The skin was still red and shiny looking, and her eyebrow was missing.

He kissed her, planting his lips firmly on hers.

"C'mon then," he took her hand and together they walked to Kelly's flat, Erin talking about what she'd been doing and what people had said at school about her injury. For the most part, they'd been kind. Her school must be better than his, Ryan reflected. At his school, people would not have been nice.

"Hi Kelly. I brought my friend Erin with me if that's okay" he asked as Kelly opened her door.

Kelly nodded her head and invited them in.

Kelly looked different – much paler, less make-up and a bit thinner, he thought. She smiled at Erin and didn't stare at her injuries, wincing sympathetically when Erin told her what had happened.

They'd been in the flat five minutes when the doorbell went.

"That's Izzy," Kelly explained. "She's a make-up artist. She's going to do my make-up for me."

The woman who came in minutes later was young, closer to their age Ryan thought.

"Hey guys! You did the last video for Kelly, didn't you?" She addressed Ryan and he nodded in response. "It was awesome."

She stopped, staring at Ryan. "You know, you look familiar. Have we met before?"

"Don't think so."

Izzy had turned her attention to Erin. "What did you do to your face?" Ryan thought the question sounded blunt, but Erin shrugged and explained what had happened.

Izzy lifted Erin's hair. "I'm a make-up artist. I can show you how to cover that up if you want."

"Yes please!" Erin beamed back at her.

Kelly had returned to the room, armed with four mugs of tea balancing on a tray.

"How about we do that for the video instead? Izzy could do your make-up and we could call the clip, How to Use Make-up to Disguise Burns or something? Would that be okay with you Erin? Would you mind being on a film? How old are you anyway?"

"Seventeen," Erin answered, standing discreetly on Ryan's toe as she did so. He took it she didn't want him to tell Kelly how old Erin really was. He thought there was might be some rule about filming teenagers if they weren't yet 16.

Izzy had put down the vanity beauty case she was carrying and was rummaging through it. "Yes, that's a much better idea. And I like a challenge. I did the make-up for the zombies when they filmed World War Z in Glasgow. All the make-up artists wanted to do the zombies, not the actors who were playing the 'normals'."

Kelly thought they'd be better off filming in her kitchen so Izzy and Erin could sit at her table. They moved through there.

Izzy was good at what she did, Ryan decided, watching her skilfully apply thin layers of a thick foundation, talking to the camera and telling them what she was doing. By the time she had finished, you couldn't see Erin's burns at all.

Erin's beam had got wider. She kept looking at her reflection in the hand-held mirror.

"Thanks so much."

Izzy smiled back at her. "Hey, no problem! That foundation I put on you is quite expensive. I don't use it often, though so you can keep the rest of the tube."

Kelly didn't have the fancy editing software any more, but Ryan told her he'd downloaded a pirate copy on his step-dad's laptop.

"Er... should you have done that? Couldn't your step-dad get in trouble," she asked, frowning.

"Nah, it's fine," he said, crossing his fingers that a) Scott didn't realise it was pirated software and b) he didn't get caught. He promised Kelly he'd work on the clip and send it to her in a day or so.

"Let's go," he said. Erin put the mirror down and leapt to her feet. Maybe she was happier to be seen in public now that her face looked normal again. She hugged Izzy and Kelly, telling them they'd, like, literally made her life 200 times better.

With that, the two of them left the flat, the promised cinema trip forgotten. Erin had just told him her mum was out. Would he like to go back to her house...?