Chapters (70)
- COVER PAGE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- DEDICATION
- PROLOGUE
- PART I BIRTH
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART II LIFE
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- PART III DEATH
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘Mate!’ I protest, as he downs what was left of my instant cappuccino. ‘I was drinking that!’
‘You snooze you lose, Doctor,’ he says as I follow him out of the house. ‘That’s why you never have a boyfriend.’
We walk up the hill to the hospital together, bickering.
‘What happened to the guy you met in Switzerland, anyway?’ Max asks as we pass the homeless man who I see every morning asleep at the bus stop.
I sigh. ‘You know we don’t talk about Fabien, Max.’
Max looks sympathetic. ‘You like him, though.’
It’s true, I think to myself sadly. I do like Fabien. Or I did.
‘Well, he’s on a ski field having fun and I’m standing here with you not having fun,’ I point out rather snappily.
‘Just skype him,’ Max says. ‘It’s not like you’ve got anything else going on.’
He’s right: I don’t. The last I heard Fabien was planning to head from Switzerland to South America to work as a scuba dive instructor. He’ll be exploring physical shipwrecks while I’m turning into an emotional wreck.
Fabien Pho inspires feelings in me that I don’t understand so I pretend they don’t exist, which is a lot easier. We’re so different that we might as well speak different languages. While I struggled through years of university, he was working as a roadie for famous bands and travelling the world. He decided to move to Zermatt, the coolest ski resort in Switzerland, just because he thought it would be fun, and the thought of skiing down Toblerone Mountain (the Matterhorn, which features on the Toblerone chocolate box) appealed to him. (Doing something … just for fun?! I could hardly imagine the idea.) Winnie and I had met him at a pub during après-ski drinks on a holiday to Zermatt we couldn’t really afford. We had got merrily drunk—our inhibitions thrown to the wind—and I woke up the following morning next to the cutest man I’d ever seen in my life, even though I couldn’t remember his name. Winnie woke up next to an eighteen-year-old, a moment that still holds a special place in her heart.
‘Will you be my Toblerone Mountain boyfriend?’ I asked the cute man in my bed.
‘Okay,’ he said.
‘What about when I go home?’ I demanded, despite the fact I’d just met him and couldn’t remember his name.
‘We can Facebook every day,’ he said, smiling. ‘And we can get a house overlooking Bronte Beach and get married and have two kids.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, sitting up in bed. ‘How are we going to afford a house in Bronte?’
‘You’re going to be a doctor,’ he said.
‘Are you joking?’ I asked indignantly. ‘So I’ll be slaving my arse off in emergency at some stinking hospital and you’re going to be, what, a surf instructor?’