CHAPTER ONE

      MOLLY MURPHY WAS sad and irritated in equal amounts and she was barely awake. Clanging sounds followed by thuds in the street outside had woken her from a deep and much-needed sleep. Soft frown lines formed on her forehead as she rolled over and pulled the pillow around her ears but the harsh sounds continued. She gave up trying to block them out. The pillow was far too thin and no match for the noise.

      It was officially the first day of winter in Australia and unrelenting rain had been teeming down for five days straight. Molly could hear that hadn’t abated overnight. The tin roof was still being hammered by the downpour but the other sounds were even louder. She rubbed her eyes, then closed them again as she contemplated whether she should get up. Her alarm hadn’t sounded so she decided to stay put.

      Pleasant dreams were hard to come by for Molly and she wasn’t happy that one had been cut short as it had been far better than her reality of late. As she lay in the cosiness of her bed, her immediate recollection was a little scattered but it had included a sun-drenched, sandy beach, a cocktail with a tiny paper umbrella...and no overdue bills on the kitchen counter.

      Suddenly her musing stopped as she peeked through her heavy eyelids in the direction of the window. Winter sunlight was streaming in through kinks in the ageing venetian blinds. The intensity of the light saw irritation turn to panic. Even half-asleep Molly knew her room should not have been that brightly lit at six-thirty. It was the first of June. It was officially winter and it should have been dark outside. Feeling her heart begin to pick up speed, she anxiously reached over for her mobile phone on the nightstand. The screen was black. The phone was flat. The alarm was never going to sound. She tried to focus on the clock hanging in the hallway opposite her door. It was almost eight o’clock. She had overslept by an hour and a half.

      ‘Oh, God...no, no, no, not today...’

      Her reality was now even further from dreams of a cocktail on a beach.

      Molly sat bolt upright in her bed. Only to collapse back down again in pain. Her head had collided with the ridiculously placed wooden bookcase that jutted out from the vinyl-covered bedhead. Hideous decorating from the sixties had sent her crashing back onto her pillow. Her knees instinctively lifted up to her chin and she rocked as her fingers gently rubbed the smarting skin underneath her mop of messy curls. Through tired and now-watering eyes, she looked upwards at the heavy wooden structure inconveniently protruding only twelve inches over the top of her bed.

      ‘Damn you,’ she spat as a few tears began spilling from her eyes and trickling down her cheeks. Molly surmised her crying was partly from the shock of hitting something so hard, partly from the pain that followed and maybe more than a little from what had led her to be sleeping in a bed with such a goddamn ugly bedhead.

      Love. Naive, stupid love.

      Molly had lost almost everything because of it.

      And she still blamed herself.

      But the new, resilient, heart-of-stone Molly Murphy would never fall in love again. Not ever. It hurt too much.

      Taking a deep breath and wiping away the tears with the back of her hand, she attempted to calm herself. She didn’t have time for self-pity, not even a few minutes of it. She had to put on her big-girl panties and get going because she was running late. Very late. And since she had been sleeping in the same bed for close to a year with the horrific bookcase bedhead hovering over her, she had no choice but to assume at least part of the responsibility. Each time she had knocked her head on the oak eyesore, and there had been numerous times, she had vowed not to do it again. But then, half-asleep, she would go and do it again. If the house were hers, she would have ripped the monstrosity of a bedhead from the wall. But as a tenant she had no choice but to be the victim of it. And that unfortunately happened with annoying and painful regularity.

      Insomnia had been her only bedtime companion since her fiancé had disappeared into the night without warning. He had just scribbled a five-line note that, after stripping away the narcissistic wordsmithing, had explained nothing. It had also provided Molly with no inkling of the mess that she would be left to face alone, including the last-minute cancellation of their winter wedding.

      Since that dreadful day she had been tossing and turning alone in her bed, so the evening before the anniversary of the day on which she should have been walking down the aisle, she had gone to her room early. Trying desperately not to throw herself a full-blown pity party, she had listened to her female empowerment playlist on her mobile phone. Hours of the edgy, no-holds-barred lyrics had finally allowed her to fall asleep under the security of the heavy woollen blankets. And had also allowed her phone battery to go flat. If it hadn’t been for the relentless clanging of each bin being emptied into the truck then dropped back to the kerb in her narrow rain-soaked street, she might well have slept until midday. The sound of the trains shuttling past so close to her tiny home that her windows rattled had become white noise over the months and something she could easily sleep through. And she now knew the rain pelting down had joined the same category.

      The sharp pain on the crown of her head quickly replaced the threat of melancholy thoughts as she climbed hurriedly but still a little gun-shy from underneath the weight of her warm covers. Still mumbling to herself, Molly switched to fight-or-flight mode as her feet touched the chilly floorboards of her bedroom. The tiny home was close to ninety years old and there were little gaps between the aged planks that allowed a draft into her room anywhere in the house where there wasn’t time-weary linoleum. But that morning Molly barely noticed the icy landing. She was in too much of a rush.

      There was no time to wash her hair. In fact, there was barely enough time to run a brush through the short curly brunette bob as she ran into her tiny bathroom, jumped under a two-minute shower and then dressed in the semi-darkness of her room. Molly knew there was a hard rubbish collection as well as the bins so the council workers would be collecting the bins on both sides of the street and she didn’t want to be their early morning floor show, so she hurriedly pulled the curtains closed over the broken blinds.

      Reaching for the light switch, she found the single light globe hovering over her head had blown. Mentally taking stock of the morning up to that point, she decided it was disastrous and apparently getting worse by the second. The clock was ticking. The next bus would be pulling up at the nearest bus stop in eight minutes and she couldn’t even resort to the flashlight on her phone.

      She pulled a skirt and shirt from the wardrobe, hoping they matched or at least came close, and her fingers felt around manically under her bed for her shoes. She didn’t have time to open the curtains and begin her search. Her heart was beating a little faster than usual as her anxiety levels had peaked. She needed this job as she had few savings left and she had health insurance due the following week, along with the rent and utilities. Molly was well aware that her landlord was not the understanding type. His eldest son and right-hand man, Joel, on the other hand, would offer leniency, accepting part-payment at a price Molly would never pay. He knew she was single, struggling financially and he made his terms very clear. The very thought made her skin crawl and her stomach heave. She would rather live in a tent than give in to him.

      Still shuddering with the revolting image of Joel when he delivered his disgusting proposition, Molly raced into the kitchen, on the way calling out to her younger brother, Tommy. Quickly she realised with the lack of a response that he had already left for work. She was grateful that at least one of them had headed off on time. After grabbing a muesli