She stepped back and pulled her tee shirt down. Her skin was already cooling where Suzy’s hands had been only moments before.

“Well, I guess I’ll say goodnight, then,” she said as she reached for the lock.

“Hey, wait.” Suzy’s voice registered surprise. “Don’t you want to swap numbers, maybe arrange a time to see each other?”

Mandy breathed out an elongated sigh.

She turned back to meet Suzy’s gaze. “Sorry, love,” she said quietly. “Not my style. Have a nice night.”

She unlocked the cubicle and left before Suzy could get a word out.

On her way back through the club, she immersed herself in the music once more. She was filled with a strange mix of denied arousal and exhaustion and didn’t have the energy to make another conquest. She danced her way towards the front of the room, angling herself away from the angry looks Suzy and her group of friends were shooting her way. Lovely. Maybe it was time to call it a night—she really didn’t need the hassle. Get over it, girls, she mentally threw their way. Nobody died.

She made her way to the exit. The night was balmy—February in Melbourne carried the warmth of late summer long into the evening, and she loved it. She strolled away from the railway arches that housed the club and wandered up Flinders Street towards the station. She had just enough time to get the tram home rather than a cab.

She shared the tram ride with a group of very drunk, very young girls who gave the conductor quite a hard time all the way back to St. Kilda. He took it well and caught Mandy’s eye as she hopped off at the Esplanade, raising his eyebrows in a resigned manner that suggested this was nothing short of a usual Saturday night for him. She pitied him.

She walked the short couple of blocks to her apartment and rode the lift up to the fifteenth floor. Once inside she opened up the balcony doors and stepped out to gaze at the surf that crashed gently on the beach across the Esplanade. She couldn’t really see the waves in the dark, but she could hear them, even above the traffic that rose up to her in fits and starts along the road below. That was enough. She stepped back into the apartment and pulled an ice-cold Carlton from the fridge. As she took a couple of quick gulps, she noticed the light flashing on her answer machine. Her mum’s broken, aching voice came over the machine to deliver a message that crashed into her brain.

“Mandy, sweetheart, it’s your mum. I think you’d better come home, darling, if you can.” A pause, followed by a sob. “It…it’s your dad. H-he hasn’t got long. Please, come home?”

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

Manchester, present day