All's Fair in Love

On a manicured seaside links, Natalie Marshall—sunlight glancing off her patent-leather shoes—meets Bobby Cameron, a man whose easy laugh seems to promise perpetual summer. Their courtship is a whirl of moonlit bandstands, confetti-strewn trolley rides, and breathless vows exchanged under a trellis of white roses. Yet, as steamer trunks are packed for a blissful honeymoon, Vera—a predatory sylph in jet-beaded silk—glides into view, pressing upon the bride a silver bracelet engraved with a date that predates the engagement. The bauble carries a venomous insinuation; jealousy detonates like a clay pigeon, and Natalie hurls her ring into the surf. What follows is a fever-dream of self-reinvention: she studies Vera’s feline artifices, trades her lace collars for backless lamé, and re-enters Bobby’s orbit as a smouldering nocturne of mascara and whispered innuendo. Seduction accomplished, the triumph collapses when Bobby, revolted by the masquerade, demands the return of the earnest girl who once missed a two-foot putt for laughing too hard.