CHAPTER ONE

      ELLIE’S eyes were stinging and she could feel tears welling up, accompanied by an unexpected lump in her throat as the coffin slid soundlessly on the stainless-steel rollers and disappeared through the curtain. Behind the curtain, screened from the mourners in the chapel, her grandmother’s body would be taken away and all that would remain would be able to be contained in a small urn. That urn would end up behind a small brass plaque, next to the ashes of Ellie’s grandfather and parents.

      ‘You okay?’

      Jess was sitting to Ellie’s left. She was holding out a pack of tissues.

      Ellie took one and smiled. ‘Yes, I’m okay.’ Her grandmother had been eighty-eight years old and her death hadn’t been unexpected but it did mean that Ellie was now truly alone, the sole remaining member of her family. She was an only child and her parents had been killed when she was eleven. Her maternal grandparents had been her guardians and now they were both gone too. Her tears were selfish ones.

      Surrounding her, flanking her, protecting her, were her closest friends. Jessica and Ruby sat on her left, Tilly on her right. She and Jess had been friends for several years now since meeting at university where they’d studied nursing together. They’d gone through the highs and lows of good and bad results, good and bad relationships and good and bad times generally. Ruby and Tilly had become her friends more recently, since they’d all started sharing a house and working at Eastern Beaches Hospital. These three were like family to her but they weren’t family.

      As she waited for the funeral music to stop playing Ellie thought back over the past two months. In the space of nine weeks she’d lost her boyfriend—well, not so much lost as found out he was actually someone else’s cheating husband—and now she’d lost her grandmother. True, she had her friends but they weren’t what she longed for. Her friends were fabulous but they weren’t enough. Ellie wanted to belong and she longed for a family to call her own. Stop being pathetic, she told herself. It was one thing to cry over the death of a loved one, that was allowed, expected even, but to sit here, at her grandmother’s funeral, feeling sorry for herself was being a little too self-indulgent. She was twenty-three years old, she had friends, she would be fine.

      But the empty spot in her heart refused to listen. Ever since her parents had died she’d been conscious of this space waiting to be filled. She knew it could only be filled by love but it was a spot for family and family alone. No matter how much she loved her friends that spot was still there, empty, waiting. What if she never found her soul mate, her one true love. What if she never had the family she dreamed of? What if that empty spot was never filled?

      Ellie shook her head. She couldn’t think like that. She had to be strong. She had to be positive. Somewhere her perfect partner waited for her, she had to believe that. Rob had been a mistake, it didn’t mean her quest for love was over. At least she hoped not.

      The curtain was closed, the music had stopped, the coffin was gone, and her grandmother too. There was nothing left to do here.

      She stood and her friends stood with her. They moved en masse to the lounge for the afternoon tea and shadowed her as she spoke to the funeral director and some of her grandmother’s friends, keeping a silent and protective eye on her until Ellie decided that she was able to leave without seeming rude.

      ‘Stat Bar, anyone?’ Tilly suggested as they made their way out of the funeral home. The Stat Bar was their favourite after-work haunt; a few hundred metres down the hill from the hospital where they all worked and only a few steps from the house they all called home, it was convenient and trendy.

      ‘Would you rather go somewhere else?’ Ruby asked Ellie. ‘Somewhere you can be anonymous?’

      Ellie knew the Stat Bar would be crowded with hospital staff and she knew her friends would understand if she wanted to avoid it today but she shook her head. ‘No, that sounds good. I’m fine, really.’ A few familiar faces weren’t going to bother her.

      The sun was still shining when they got back to Coogee Beach on Sydney’s south-eastern shore. It was a glorious afternoon, something Ellie couldn’t reconcile with a funeral. But, she decided as she sipped her drink, the sun did boost her spirits.

      They’d managed to grab a coveted outside table overlooking the beach and the tangy smell of salt in the air, the crisp white sand framing the ocean and the sound of the waves breaking on the shore all conspired to make her feel better. Maybe the fact she was on her second vodka, lime and soda was also helping to improve her mood.

      The Stat Bar was beginning to fill up with the after-work crowd. The allied health practitioners from the hospital were the first to file through the doors, followed by the junior doctors. As more people gathered in the bar Ellie decided it was time to freshen her make-up, she could only imagine the state of her foundation and mascara. She stood up, hauling her bag from under her chair.

      Her high heels clicked on the tiled floor as she entered the ladies’ room. She always wore heels when she wasn’t at work as a way of compensating for only being five feet two inches tall. She dumped her bag on the counter and examined her face. Her eyes were a bit bloodshot but not too swollen, although the tip of her nose was still red from crying. She pulled a hairbrush and her make-up out from the depths of her handbag. Tipping her head back, she squeezed a couple of eye drops into the corner of each eye before sliding the Alice band from her shoulder-length blonde hair and running the brush through it. She repositioned the Alice band, using it to hold her hair off her face as she blended a little foundation over her nose. She leant forward, overbalancing slightly on her