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had moved in together. Lazy and possessive, with a nasty temper she hadn’t previously seen, he quickly isolated Ginny from her friends and increasingly wore her down with the arguments that characterised their relationship. By the time her dad got sick, Ginny knew there wasn’t much good in what they had, but she couldn’t see her way out of it.
    Miles had proposed after a couple of years and, believing his offer to be as good as she could expect, Ginny had accepted. Leopards, however, rarely change their spots. Soon after her dad died, suspicious of his sudden increase in texting and phoning behind closed doors, she found an incriminating message on his phone to another woman. Incensed, but not entirely surprised that he was playing the game he’d played with her, she finally saw their relationship for what it was: destructive, ridiculous and a massive waste of time. Ginny called him out on the affair and Miles flipped out. Shocked and scared by the way he reacted, Ginny was left in no doubt that she had to get the hell away.
    More sure of herself than she could ever remember being, she quit her job, hocked the engagement ring and bought a one-way ticket to London. Her brother and his family were there, and some time with them was exactly what she needed to get her life back on track.
    Julian had planted the seed of Shine Consulting. Listening to her ramble on about all that was wrong with the Auckland recruitment market, he asked why she didn’t put up or shut up. The idea had germinated and taken root as she travelled around Europe before coming back to London. Not ready to go home, she’d stayed a few more months. But she hadn’t stopped thinking about the business, her business. Eventually, her energy for it grew too big so she packed up and came home — and hadn’t looked back.
    Ginny had bumped into Miles a few times since she started Shine. Auckland was a small place and although he was established at the senior end of the market, she was chipping away at the space between. She hadn’t yet won an account from under his nose but it was coming, she promised herself, as she made her way up the steep steps through Alten Reserve.
    At the top, Ginny took a breather. The streets were quiet; this late in the university semester there weren’t many students on the sprawling campus. Passing the entrance to the Law School, Ginny wondered, as she often did, how he was. Where he was.
     
    It was two years before she’d seen Mac again. At first, she was too tied up with her own life to think much about his. And after their last night out together she’d been left uncertain whether the parameters of their friendship had been altered and, if so, by how much.
    Eventually, the silence got too much and, missing him, Ginny tried to get in touch. He didn’t reply to her phone messages, then an email was similarly ignored. Believing he had simply ditched her after failing to get her into bed, she tried to put him out of her mind.
    And then her dad had died, and it felt as if everything was spinning slowly yet inevitably out of control. Julian had flown in from London, but could only stay a few days; he had a young family and a career to get back to. Miles was still on the scene, but only just. The flaws in the relationship were ridiculously obvious, and even something as monumental as her father’s illness hadn’t made him step up. Stressed and on edge, she’d felt alone and horribly unsure.
    Her father was buried on an unseasonably cold day in late March. As they lowered his coffin, Ginny looked up and saw a figure approach through the headstones. Keeping a respectful distance, he stopped just behind the small group gathered at her father’s grave.
    She looked again. Surely not. But she knew. As the service finished she snatched her hand from Miles’ and broke into a run. Reaching him, she flung herself at Mac. The relief had been overpowering; as strong and as real as the sadness she felt at losing her dad. He was