CHAPTER ONE

      NICOLA craned to take in as much of the view as she could from the Cessna’s window as they landed on an airstrip that was nothing more than red dirt, bordered here and there with spiky grass and mulga scrub. When the pilot cut the engine the sudden silence engulfed her.

      He turned to her. ‘Here we are then.’

      ‘Right.’ She swallowed and gave a curt nod. Here was the Waminda Downs cattle station in the far west of Queensland—the Outback, the Never-Never, beyond the Black Stump—and about as far from civilisation as a body could get. She glanced out of the window again and something in her chest started to lift. This place was the polar opposite to her native Melbourne. The total polar opposite.

      ‘May I get out now?’

      ‘Well, as this is your destination, love, I believe that’s the plan.’

      He let the steps down, she stuck her head outside and the first thing to hit her was the heat—hard, enveloping and intense. The second, when her feet found firm ground again, was the scent—hot, dry earth and sun-baked grasses. The lonely desolation thrust itself upon her consciousness with an insistence that refused to be ignored, greater than the heat that beat down on her uncovered head and greater than the alien sights and scents. A person could get lost out here and never be found.

      She surveyed the endless expanse of pale brown grass, interspersed here and there with mulga scrub and saltbush, and at all the red dirt beneath it, and for the first time in three months she felt like her heart started to beat at the right pace again. Out here she wouldn’t encounter acquaintances who would glance at her and then just as quickly glance away again to whisper behind their hands. Or friends who would rush up to grip her hands and ask her how she was doing. Or those people who just plain enjoyed others’ misfortunes and would smirk at her.

      She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky. ‘This is perfect.’

      ‘Perfect for what?’

      That voice didn’t belong to Jerry the pilot.

      Her eyes sprang open. She spun around to find a man hauling her suitcase from the plane’s cargo hold. He