CHAPTER ONE

      HAPPY hour at The Cave was drawing to a close, but Jodie didn’t mind at all.

      She had used up every second of employment her working visa had allowed so now her final weeks in Melbourne were hers to do with as she pleased. And it pleased her to sit on a bar stool twirling a daisy-shaped earring she had made from scratch earlier that day, sharing a bottle of red wine that someone else had paid for, and enjoying every last second that she wasn’t in London.

      ‘Where’s Mandy?’ her housemate Lisa asked. ‘I have to start work in eight minutes and those customers who haven’t booked a table won’t turn themselves away.’

      ‘Beach Street is back on in less than three minutes,’ Louise added, her clipped London accent so obvious amongst the neighbouring Aussie strine. ‘No matter how exiting Mandy’s big surprise, after the break Angelo is about to find out that Cait was once married to his brother, so her announcement will be nothing but white noise to me.’

      ‘She’ll be here,’ Jodie said chirpily. The fact that Louise, the half-sister she had never even known existed until two weeks before, had turned up on her doorstep amidst her own family drama wasn’t lost on Jodie. But she began throwing pretzel chunks at Louise, who was glancing at the overhead television every few seconds, all the same.

      ‘If you do that one more time, Jodie,’ Louise warned, ‘when the next ad break comes along I will retaliate.’

      Jodie grinned, but she stopped throwing pretzels at Louise and threw one into her mouth instead, amazed anew that this tall, cool, sophisticated, blonde product of the infamous restaurant family, the Valentines of London, was related to her—mousy little Jodie Simpson.

      It was obvious Louise got the glamour goods from their shared mother, whereas Jodie wasn’t sure what she had acquired from Patricia except a lifelong pain in the neck. But thankfully all that was back in London, far far away from friends and fun on this fine Melbourne evening.

      ‘I’ve got it!’ Mandy cried out, rushing in as fast as her pencil-thin power skirt and two-inch heels would allow. She waved a piece of paper high above her head.

      ‘If that’s a doctor’s certificate telling you rotten Jake has finally given you something only penicillin will cure, I don’t want to know about it,’ Lisa called back.

      ‘Funny,’ Mandy said. ‘Now leave my love life out of this; this magical piece of paper is all about Jodie’s.’

      ‘My love life?’