CHAPTER ONE

      ON SANDY ADAMS’S thirtieth birthday—which was also the day the man she’d lived with for two years was getting married to another woman—she decided to run away.

      No. Not run away. Find a new perspective.

      Yes, that sounded good. Positive. Affirming. Challenging.

      No way would she give even a second’s thought to any more heartbreak.

      She’d taken the first step by driving the heck out of Sydney and heading south—her ultimate destination: Melbourne, a thousand kilometres away. On a whim, she’d chosen to take the slower, scenic route to Melbourne on the old Princes Highway. There was time, and it went through areas she thought were among the most beautiful in the state of New South Wales.

      Alone and loving it, she repeated to herself as she drove.

      Say it enough times and she might even start to believe it.

      Somewhere between the seaside town of Kiama and the quaint village of Berry, with home two hours behind her, she pulled her lime-green Beetle off onto a safe lay-by. But she only allowed herself a moment to stretch out her cramped muscles and admire the rolling green hills and breathtaking blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean before she got back in the car. The February heat made it too hot to stay outside for too long.

      From her handbag she pulled out her new notebook, a birthday present from her five-year-old niece. There was a pink fairy on the cover and the glitter from its wings had already shed all through Sandy’s bag. It came with a shocking-pink pen. She nibbled on the pen for a long moment.

      Then, with a flourish, she headed up the page ‘Thirtieth Birthday Resolutions’ and started to scribble in pink ink.

      1. Get as far away from Sydney as possible while remaining in realms of civilisation and within reach of a good latte.

      2. Find new job where can be own boss.

      She underscored the words ‘own boss’ three times, so hard she nearly tore the paper.

      3. Find kind, interesting man with no hang-ups who loves me the way I am and who wants to get married and have lots of kids.

      She crossed out ‘lots of kids’ and wrote instead ‘three kids’—then added, ‘two girls and a boy’. When it came to writing down goals there was no harm in being specific. So she also added, ‘Man who in no way resembles That-Jerk-Jason’.

      She went over the word ‘jerk’ twice and finished with the date and an extravagant flourish. Done.

      She liked making lists. She felt they gave her some degree of control over a life that had gone unexpectedly pear-shaped. But three goals were probably all she could cope with right now. The resolutions could be revisited once she’d got to her destination.

      She put the notebook back into her bag and slid the car back onto the highway.

      An hour or so later farmland had made way for bushland and the sides of the road were lined with eucalypt forest. Her shoulders ached from driving and thoughts of a break for something to eat were at the front of her mind. When she saw the signpost to Dolphin Bay it took only a second for her to decide to throw the car into a left turn.

      It was a purely reflex action. She’d planned to stop at one of the beachside towns along the way for lunch and a swim. But she hadn’t given sleepy Dolphin Bay a thought for years. She’d adored the south coast when she was a kid—had spent two idyllic summer holidays at different resort towns with her family, revelling in the freedom of being let off the leash of the rigorous