PROLOGUE

      ‘HE’LL be OK at the crèche, won’t he?’ Louise stared into the carry seat at her sleeping son, watching as a gummy smile flickered over Declan’s face, his eyelids flickering as he dreamed milky dreams, utterly oblivious to the hellish guilt that was racking his overwrought mother.

      ‘He’ll be fine,’ Maggie groaned, snuggling into her dressing-gown and nursing a large mug of tea as she stood in the hallway of the tiny third-floor flat they were sharing. ‘It’s his mother I’m more worried about. You’ll end up in my ward with me taking care of you if you don’t lose some of the guilt!’

      Which was surely a joke, but given that Maggie was a psychiatric nurse, it wasn’t in the best of taste!

      ‘It’s normal to be anxious on the first day in a new job,’ Louise said defensively. ‘And it’s my first day back at work since I had him—I’m still breast-feeding, remember.’

      ‘As if I could forget! I heard that blessed breast pump going all night—you’ve got enough milk in that cool bag to feed the whole crèche.’ Maggie’s joking façade faded as she saw the anguish on her friend’s face.

      ‘He’ll be fine,’ she said gently, putting down her mug on the hall table and pulling Louise into a hug. ‘He’s going to be ten minutes down the corridor from you, being loved and fussed over in the hospital crèche while his mummy’s earning lots of lovely money.’

      ‘I know.’ Louise sniffed. ‘To tell the truth, it’s not just Declan I’m worried about—I feel as if I’ve forgotten everything I know.’

      ‘It’ll all come back the second you set foot on the ward.’

      ‘Do you really think so?’ Louise asked dubiously.

      ‘I promise,’ Maggie said assuredly. ‘And at the end of the day you’re a casual nurse—they’re hardly going to be expecting you to run the show and you can just ease yourself in gently. Remember, a little more than a year ago you were a senior RN on a high-dependency unit in one of London’s busiest hospitals. Childbirth can’t have scrambled your brains that much!’

      ‘Were you nervous?’ Louise asked. ‘I mean, when you came here to Melbourne and had to start all over again?’

      ‘No,’ Maggie answered, then laughed. ‘But I’m a psychiatric nurse, remember! People are the same whatever side of the globe you’re on. Go!’ she said, picking up the car seat and handing it over to Louise. ‘Do you want a hand to get down the stairs?’

      ‘No, thanks.’ Louise shook her head but after bypassing the out-of-order lift and struggling down the stairwell with car seat, nappy bag, handbag and baby, she wished she hadn’t been quite so proud! Strapping Declan into the back of the car, Louise climbed into the driver’s seat, flicked on her lights and glanced at the clock on the dashboard, guilt layered on guilt as she saw that it was only six-thirty in the morning and that she’d dragged her sleeping babe up. She was so grateful to Maggie for being there.

      Mad Maggie! They’d met a couple of years back on the other side of the world. Louise had been starting out on the adventure of a lifetime—a working holiday in the UK. She had been working a night shift in a busy London teaching hospital and Maggie had been on the surgical ward, specialling a psychiatric patient who had attempted suicide. Chatting, as night nurses invariably did, they’d hit it off immediately.

      Both adored shoes but hated pedicures.

      Both had credit limits on their cards that would make most mortals faint with shock.

      And both were holding out for Mr Perfect.

      ‘Mr Really Perfect,’ Louise had elaborated, peeling open a box of chicken snacks at some ungodly hour and hoping that the carbohydrate rush would see her through to the morning. ‘Someone who will still make my knees knock when I’m fifty.’

      ‘Someone rich,’ Maggie had sighed, ‘someone who can afford my liposuction and Botox when I’m fifty!’

      It had turned out that Maggie had been looking for a new flatmate and Louise had fitted the bill.