by Paige Toon
Huge thanks to Dan Joel of danjoelsurf.com, who not only taught our ten-year-old son to surf, but who was so generous with his time when I later contacted him to ask for help with my research. The way he described some of the wave action made me wonder why he wasn’t a writer himself!
Thank you to Ruth Glover for sharing her knowledge of Cornish beaches with me, the lovely gardener at Trelissick who gave me a behind-the-scenes tour, and Dr Lewis Barnes for helping me with my medical research.
Thanks to Kate White for sharing her memories of working at Uluru, and thanks also to my parents, Vern and Jen Schuppan, and my brother Kerrin and his family, for the holiday to the rock that inspired parts of this story. Special thanks to my dad, who spoke those ‘five years from now’ words to me as a teenager – the advice has proved apt over the years.
Huge thanks to the lovely friends who read early drafts of this book and gave me valuable feedback: Jane Hampton, Katherine Reid, Dani Atkins and Kimberly Atkins.
Thanks also to the bloggers and my fellow authors for the brilliant online community that you provide – especially Giovanna Fletcher and Lindsey Kelk, who have been fantastically supportive this last year.
Finally, thank you to my awesome husband, Greg Toon and our children, Indy and Idha, who not only make me laugh every day, but who inspire me in so many ways. I’m glad that I messed up my A levels, took a year out and ended up going to a different university, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met your dad – and you wouldn’t exist. I love you all very much.
Fall in love with more heart-warming and uplifting novels from Paige Toon
When life feels like a puzzle, sometimes it’s the small pieces that make up the bigger picture…
A successful travel journalist, Bridget has ambitions to turn her quirky relationship blog about the missing pieces of her heart into a book. But after a spate of rejections from publishers, a different proposition catches her eye.
Nicole Dupré died leaving behind a bestselling novel and an incomplete sequel. Tasked with finishing the book, Bridget is thankful to have her foot in the publishing door, even if it means relocating to Cornwall for the summer and answering to Nicole’s grieving husband, Charlie. But as she gets to know the family Nicole left behind, and the woman behind the words, Bridget’s priorities begin to change…
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Prologue
The problem with giving your heart away to someone is that you never fully get it back. Long after you’ve fallen out of love with them, they still own a little piece of you. That’s why first love is always the strongest: it’s the only time you ever love wholeheartedly. And I do mean that literally.
I came up with this theory a few years ago when I was belatedly reflecting on why on earth I had ever broken up with David, my boyfriend at university. He was great, but something was missing, so I called it off and started a new search for the complete package. Over a decade later, I’m still looking.
It’s not that I haven’t been around the houses. I have. And the caravans, apartment blocks and skyscrapers, to boot. At the end of the day, it all comes down to Elliot Green. He’s entirely to blame. He was my first love and he took a piece of my heart – and my virginity, while he was at it – and then emigrated to Australia with his parents at the age of sixteen, never to be seen or heard from again, once his initial frenzy of letter writing had died out. I figured he’d found a fit Aussie bird and had forgotten all about me, so I tried to forget about him, too. Many moons later, I’m still trying.
It doesn’t help that I’m currently in Sydney, where he moved all those years ago. I’ve been daydreaming about bumping into him here and melodramatically declaring, ‘You’ve got something that belongs to me,’ before demanding that he give me the piece of my heart back.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I actually would see him again, yet there he is, completely oblivious to me gawping as he has a beer with some mates at a harbourside bar.
Despite his changed appearance, I recognised him instantly. His long, lean body has broadened out and his arms are tanned and muscular. His brown hair is the same unruly length, but he now has sexy stubble that’s bordering on beardy. From where I’m standing, Elliot Green is hotter than ever. And now he’s looking at me.
He’s looking at me!
And now he’s not looking at me.
Before I can register disappointment, he does a comedy double take and his blue eyes widen. His face breaks into a grin and then he’s on his feet and my heart is threatening to beat out through my eardrums.
‘Bridget?’ he asks with disbelief, opening up his arms.
‘Hello, Elliot,’ I reply warmly, as he crushes me to his hard chest. Oh, my God, he smells amazing. What was it that I was supposed to say to him again?
‘You’ve hardly changed at all!’ he exclaims, withdrawing and holding me at arm’s length as he takes me in.
My figure hasn’t altered a lot since he last saw me. I’m tall and fairly slim and my eyes are, obviously, still blue – more of a navy, compared to his lighter swimming-pool shade.
He fingers a lock of my dark hair. ‘Even your hair’s the same,’ he comments.
It comes to the midway point between my chin and shoulders, which is more or less how I wore it as a teenager.
‘I’ve been growing it out, actually,’ I say with a shrug. Turns out blunt-cut bobs are high-maintenance. ‘Was that an Aussie accent I heard?’
‘Maybe,’ he replies with a grin.
‘It is! That’s so weird.’
He laughs and shakes his head at me. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m on my way home.’ I nod towards the ferries chugging in and out of Circular Quay.
‘You live in Sydney?’ he asks with amazement.
‘Sort of. I’m here for a year.’
‘Seriously?’ His eyes dart searchingly between mine. ‘Do you have to rush off? Can I buy you a drink?’
‘No, I don’t have to rush off, and, yes, I’d love a drink.’
He smiles at me and the words pop into my mind from out of nowhere: You’ve got something that belongs to me.
Of course, it’s immediately apparent that I’ll sound like a right idiot if I say them out loud, so I follow him mutely to his table instead.
Over the next couple of hours, I sit with Elliot and his mates, drinking and laughing and establishing that he is excellently single. When his friends call it a night, Elliot and I stay, and, as the white sails of the nearby Sydney Opera House glint gold in the setting sun, and bats swarm out of the nearby Botanic Gardens, I’m ready.
‘So,’ I say, swirling the ice around in my glass of vodka tonic, ‘I have a theory.’
Elliot cocks one eyebrow and listens with amusement as I enlighten him.
‘And that’s why I haven’t found The One,’ I conclude.
He looks confused. ‘But you’ve been in love since we went out, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I scoff. ‘Loads of times.’
‘Well, if that’s true, you’d better hunt down all of those guys and demand that they give you their pieces back, too.’ He takes a gulp of his beer and plonks the glass down on the table, looking a little too pleased with himself.
Is he right? Have I whittled my heart down to such a small chunk that I’m never going to be able to fall hook, line and sinker for anyone? Damn.
‘Your theory is flawed,’ he adds annoyingly.
‘No, no, no.’ I shake my head with renewed determination. ‘You were my first love. You’ve got the biggest piece. The most important piece. And I want it back.’
‘What if I don’t want to give it back?’ he asks.
I force my brow into a frown, while secretly thinking it’s adorable that he’s indulging this silliness. ‘Why would you want to keep it?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs. ‘Maybe I like having it around. And anyway, if you want your piece back, then it’s only fair that you give me mine back, too.’
‘I have a pi
ece of your heart?’ I ask with surprise, hoping no one is eavesdropping on our bonkers conversation.
‘Of course you do,’ he replies, barely refraining from adding, ‘Duh!’
I think about this, the alcohol muddling my brain. ‘I suppose we could do a straight swap,’ I mutter eventually.
His lips tilt up at the corners as he stares across the table at me with those very blue eyes of his. Momentarily I’m back in the past with him and butterflies are going berserk inside me.
‘Shall we continue this discussion over dinner?’ He slides his hand towards mine and touches the tips of my fingers with his. A shiver runs down my spine and I can almost feel fresh perforation marks being punched into my body’s most vital organ.
‘All right, then, if you insist,’ I reply with a smile.
If he wants to tear off another piece, I don’t think I’ll stop him.
Chapter 1
‘Hello again!’ my literary agent, Sara, exclaims as we air kiss each other’s cheeks. Her smile is a hundred watts brighter than the last time I saw her back in February. ‘Thank you for coming in.’ She directs me to a seat. ‘How’s it all going? I see you’ve topped ten thousand followers on Twitter!’
‘Yes, last week,’ I reply. ‘And the comments on the last post were off the scale.’
‘That was the Gabriel reunion?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh, I loved that one!’
‘Good!’ I grin. ‘It cost me enough to get to Brazil.’
She laughs. ‘You sounded like you had a lucky escape with him. What a chauvinistic pig! How many children did he have again?’
‘Nine.’ I grimace. ‘I felt so sorry for his poor wife.’
‘Whoa, did she have her work cut out for her! Were those kids really as badly behaved as they sounded?’
‘I’m sure they have their good days,’ I say benignly, wondering why I’m here.
It’s been three months since our last meeting when I pitched Sara an idea for a book, but it wasn’t as well received as I had hoped it would be.
‘Forgive me, Bridget,’ I remember her saying, as she eyed me shrewdly. ‘But, when you asked for a meeting about a book, I assumed you’d be pitching an idea about your experiences of navigating the globe, not your experiences of navigating men.’
It was a fair assumption. I was – am – a well-established travel writer.
‘I do plan to take the reader on a journey,’ I said with what I’d hoped was a winning smile, ‘and we will travel all around the world together, but our voyage will take us, yes, via all of the men I’ve ever been in love with. Travel writing will feature prominently, but, ultimately, this book will be about love.’
She smirked. ‘Are we really talking about love, here? You’re thirty-four, and you say you’ve been head over heels in love with twelve different men? Some weren’t simply holiday romances or one-night stands?’
I waved her away dismissively. ‘Oh, there were loads of those, too. But I could probably spin a couple out if I’m stuck for material,’ I added with a grin, as she blanched at me.
It was Elliot who gave me the idea, when I bumped into him in Sydney, a year ago last December. That night was the start of something new and beautiful between us, and I’m delighted to announce that we’re still together.
At least, we’re together as a couple. We’re not together literally, because I’m now back in the UK sans visa and he’s on the other side of the world in Australia. I could move over there if I married him. But that would mean one of us asking.
I’m slightly scared of him asking.
I love Elliot so much, but, when we were sixteen, my feelings for him were all-encompassing. He meant everything to me.
The love I feel for him now is not as powerful, and I’m worried that it’s because I’ve become jaded over the years. Have I had too many relationships to believe in happy ever after?
Maybe I’ve just grown up. Maybe love as an adult can never compare to that of a teenager.
Or maybe something is missing. And maybe there’s a chance that I can get this something back…
That night we met up again, Elliot put forward the tongue-in-cheek notion that perhaps I needed to hunt down all of the men I’ve ever loved to ask for their pieces of my heart back. Before I left Australia, he brought up the idea again, but this time he was serious. He knows that I’m struggling to commit to him wholeheartedly, but he believes that, if I use this time apart from him to revisit the past, I might be able to make more sense of the here and now. He suggested that I write about all of my encounters, and then he came up with another genius idea: if I could get a book deal, my time and travels would be funded in the form of an advance.
I should point out here that my boyfriend is not the jealous type. This was one of the first questions Sara asked when I put the idea to her back in February.
She also said that I needed to blog about my reunions and raise my profile before she’d consider approaching publishers, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three months.
My readers have joined me on voyages to South Africa (David), Iceland (Olli), Spain (Jorge) and Brazil (Gabriel), and, of course, I’ve also written about how Elliot and I rekindled our relationship in Australia. I’m yet to meet up with Dillon in Ireland, Freddie in Norway, Seth in Canada and Beau, Felix, Liam and Vince here in the UK.
My contacts in journalism have helped to spread the word about my blog, and, if you just ignore the trolls, I’d say it’s all going swimmingly.
Elliot, meanwhile, has been hanging onto his piece of my heart. It’s still the biggest piece – the first and last piece – and, once I get the other bits back, my path will lead me back to him. A walk down the aisle really would be the happiest of happy endings.
Late yesterday afternoon, Sara’s assistant called and asked me to come in for a meeting as soon as possible. Apparently, my agent had some news and she’d explain in person.
I got a little bit excited.
I know that Sara has started talking up my blog to publishers, but while the feedback so far has been good – they like my style, they like my wit – no one has wanted to commit to a relationship-blog-turned-book in the current market. Sara claims that publishers won’t be able to argue with the numbers if I keep growing my readership, so I intend to crack on. But has something changed in the last twenty-four hours?
‘You must be wondering why you’re here,’ Sara says to me now, reading my mind.
‘I’m pretty curious,’ I admit.
‘Yesterday, I had lunch with Fay Sanderson.’
The name isn’t familiar to me, but Sara explains that she’s an editorial director at a top publishing house.
‘She’s been avidly reading your blog and was raving to me about how well you strike the balance between warm and likable, and feisty, funny and fresh. She loves your voice. She absolutely loves it,’ Sara stresses, and there’s something about her tone that has me sitting up straighter in my seat. Am I about to be offered a book deal?
‘She has a proposal,’ she continues. Yes! ‘Have you heard of Nicole Dupré?’
‘Er, that name sounds familiar,’ I reply.
Sara swivels on her chair and takes a book down from the shelves behind her. ‘Nicole had a runaway bestseller with The Secret Life of Us, which was published last autumn. It took us all a little by surprise, to be honest.’
‘I remember hearing about it.’ I pick up the novel she’s placed in front of me. The cover has a photograph of a lone girl standing on a beach in Thailand. I turn over the book and scan the blurb. It’s about a travel writer who falls in love with two different men on two different continents.
Where is Sara going with this?
‘Nicole passed away shortly after that was published,’ Sara explains, her tone growing sombre.
I breathe in sharply and glance up at her. ‘Oh, God, that’s right, it was in the news. Was she one of your authors?’ I ask with surprise.
She nods.
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br /> ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea you represented her.’
‘It’s okay. It was very sudden,’ she tells me. ‘She had a brain aneurysm. She was only thirty-one.’
I shake my head, horrified. That’s three years younger than I am now. ‘That’s so tragic,’ I murmur sympathetically.
‘Nicole was writing a sequel,’ Sara continues, drawing my attention back to her. ‘Secret ended on a cliffhanger. The readers are crying out for more. And, Bridget…?’
I haven’t been sure up until this point what any of this has to do with me, but, from her more upbeat tone, I sense I’m about to find out.
‘Fay thinks your voice is perfect!’ she concludes, triumphantly.
There’s a long moment where neither of us says anything.
‘To write the sequel.’
She thinks she’s clarifying it, but I’m even more confused.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Fay loves my blog?’
‘Loves it!’ Sara repeats. ‘She thinks your voice is spot on!’
‘I thought you were about to tell me that she wants to sign me up.’
Sara clears her throat. ‘She does. For the sequel to The Secret Life of Us.’ She points at the book I’m holding.
What?
‘Nicole was about a quarter of the way in,’ she explains. ‘She left behind a stack of notes. Fay’s been trying to find the right person to complete it.’
‘She wants me to be a ghostwriter?’ I splutter. ‘But what about my book?’
‘You’ll still write it,’ Sara says evenly. ‘Think of this as a stopgap, your way in. This is your chance to get your foot through the door of a major publisher. You can write your own book alongside this one while you continue to build your profile, and the advance you’ll get will pay for your travels. It’s the perfect solution.’
‘But…’ I’m still reeling. ‘What makes anyone think I’m up to the job? Surely there are a million other more qualified authors who could do this?’
‘Oh, I’m sure there are, too,’ she says smoothly. ‘But Fay wants you. She’s even read the novel you wrote a few years ago. The plot wasn’t quite there,’ she says hurriedly, quashing any hope of resurrecting my old romantic-fiction dream, ‘but the point is, Fay knows you have it in you to pull off fiction. She thinks your style is fabulous.’