The Wedding Party Girl A story for New Year I would see her four or five times a year, usually in summer, as I sat writing in the bar on the corner of my street in Centochiese. Once, I saw her in the hairdresser's, on a Saturday like all the other times, and once in the run-up to Christmas – always with the same group of friends and even in winter, when it gets cold and windy in Sicily, seated outside the bar where those who wished to could smoke. She had the kind of easy elegance that every woman secretly covets and I noticed her first not for the beauty she undoubtedly had, but for this. When she moved she glided, her long dark hair seemed effortlessly in place and her clothes, simpler in style than those of her friends, seemed smarter because of the way she wore them; few, but perfect, accessories, make-up applied by a painstaking beautician to look as if it wasn't there and, most importantly, she wore them with confidence. Beauticians do rather well in Centoc