CHAPTER ONE

      TILLY loved Fridays. A leisurely walk down the hill from the hospital after her last shift before days off, that first salty sniff of the ocean at the end of Hill Street, and the bonus of Mrs Bennett, immaculately made up on her front porch as she waited for her girlfriends to arrive for Friday afternoon tea.

      Tilly adored Mrs Bennett and her friends. Once famous sopranos in chic dresses, designer shoes and such lovely smiles, these ladies made Tilly believe in life getting better and better.

      And they never mentioned men. She really liked that.

      She couldn’t wait to lift her window at the back of the house and hear the soaring notes of Verdi and Puccini from the porch at the back of Mrs Bennett’s house—it always made her smile.

      Tilly wondered if Mrs Bennett pulled her window shut when Tilly and her friends had their more rowdy parties.

      Maybe she was strange to prefer the company of older ladies to boys her own age but risking your heart to a fickle man in the scramble to find ‘the one’ seemed much more insane to Tilly. Of course, she’d been a slow learner with two bad experiences in twelve months until Ruby had pointed out her ‘pattern of disaster’.

      Older men. She’d always been attracted by the big boys in senior school while she’d been a junior, then those in university while she’d been a senior, and now those who were out of their twenties when she’d just reached them. Searching for approval from the father she’d never known perhaps? That’s what Ruby said.

      Tilly sighed. Boys her age just seemed a little … insubstantial. She would just stay away from them completely.

      The waft of real scones and Mrs B.’s Sydney Royal Easter Show winning marble cake dissipated the tendrils of regret and Tilly shook herself. It was Friday. Yay!

      ‘Afternoon, Mrs B.,’ Tilly called as she approached.

      ‘Matilda. Lovely to see you.’

      ‘Is that window sticking again?’ Tilly drew level and Mrs Bennett smiled. ‘No. I think you’ve cured it this time, dear. There’s another one just starting to squeak and I’ll let you know when it gets bad.’

      More practice. Excellent. Tilly’s last infatuation had been with a mature carpenter who’d turned out to be a secretly engaged control freak who liked to keep several women dancing off the end of his workman’s belt. She was determined to never need his skills again. Just like the interior decorator who’d had so many rules and preferences on her behaviour and had then turned out to be married.

      ‘No problem.’ Tilly glanced up at the two bay windows, one each side of the veranda, and noted the one only a quarter pushed up. ‘Girls coming soon?’

      Mrs Bennett glanced at her watch. ‘Any time now. I’ll save you a scone.’

      ‘Say hello for me.’ Tilly swung open her gate and mounted the tiled steps. Home. And not a man in sight. Good.

      Seventy-One Hill Street stood tall and thin with a decrepit Gothic air in need of even more TLC than Mrs Bennett’s house.

      Those tall eaves, all four bedrooms at the back upstairs and the main bedroom downstairs that belonged to the absent owner, could do with a good strip and paint. Tilly decided she might have a go in her holidays.

      It was a real party house. The three other girls were the sisters Tilly had never had. She couldn’t imagine life without their chaos and warmth and the fun they brought to out-of-work hours.

      Tilly smiled to herself as she thought more about the girls. There was Ruby, a mental health nurse who didn’t appear nearly as chaotic now she’d found Cort, a senior emergency registrar from the hospital they all worked at.

      Tilly’s need to provide a willing ear, and the occasional emergency alcohol, had decreased exponentially the longer Ruby and Cort had been together.

      Ellie, an orphan, spent most of the week in sterile operating theatres, but still managed to regularly fall in and out of love, searching for Mr Right to be the father of her longed-for family.

      While Jess, children’s nurse at Eastern Beaches, broke her heart every time Ruby’s gorgeous brother, and incidentally their landlord, flew in from Operation New Faces with a willowy brunette or blonde on his arm.