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Nightingale

Nightingale

by Fiona McIntosh
Publication Date: 22/10/2014

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From the bestselling author, Fiona McIntosh of Lavender keeper and Tailor's Girl once again delivers compelling historical fiction. The Nightingale will have you enthralled as you travel through different countries with strong characters and a an enticing romance. The perfect read to escape with.


'Love comes out of nowhere for most of us, when we least expect it.' Amidst the carnage of Gallipoli, British nurse Claire Nightingale meets Australian Light Horseman Jamie Wren. Despite all odds, they fall deeply in love. Their flame burns bright and carries them through their darkest hours, even when war tears them apart. When Jamie encounters Turkish soldier Acar Shahin on the bloodstained battlefield, the men forge an unforgettable bond. Their chance meeting also leaves a precious clue to Jamie's whereabouts for Claire to follow. Come peacetime, Claire's desperate search to find Jamie takes her all the way to Istanbul, and deep into the heart of Acar's family, where she attracts the unexpected attention of a charismatic and brooding scholar. In the name of forgiveness, cultures come together, enemies embrace and forbidden passions ignite - but by the nai;-biting conclusion, who will be left standing to capture Nurse Nightingale's heart? A breathtaking novel of heartbreak and heroism, love and longing by a powerhouse Australian storyteller.

"Fiona McIntosh is a superior writer in the genre, and if you enjoy popular romantic fiction, you'd be mad not to try her."  The Age

"Sure to appeal to lovers of period romantic dramas like Downton Abbey." Woman's Day

ISBN:
9781921901966
9781921901966
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Publication Date:
22-10-2014
Publisher:
PENGUIN BOOKS AUSTRALIA
Country of origin:
Australia
Pages:
400
Dimensions (mm):
241x157x33mm
Weight:
0.53kg
Chapter Sample
1
May 1915
Claire watched the morphine work its magic beneath the flickering lights she'd now become used to. The soldier's body began to relax immediately and, although he had not cried out once, his features slackened as relief arrived through the sting of a needle. She let
out a breath on his behalf, glad that he could drift away for a while, and reached for the pencil to record the dosage. It was only in this moment, as she considered the date, that Claire became fully aware she had been on the hospital ship for nearly a month, plying the waters in the triangle of Turkey, Greece and Egypt.
She had finished her nurses' training in Britain and had already been working full-time for two years in one of the top teaching hospitals there. Claire had left Australia, where she'd lived from ten to seventeen, only to sail back to the England of her birth, believing if she could move among the familiar places of her childhood, she might be able to recapture that
wonderful, naive happiness she recalled. Claire's yearning, however, had turned out to be more about the people who had populated her childhood than the places. And all of those people she belonged to and remembered with love were now dead. No one waited anxiously for her return in Australia or Britain, nor for a telegram or letter – not even for news on the grapevine of her wellbeing. So she'd gladly volunteered to leave England to nurse soldiers embroiled in this terrible war.
Assuming she'd be sent to France, she had instead found herself on a Greek island with a daring team of medicos who defied the woeful conditions, climate and food supply to set up the tented hospital known formally as Australian General Hospital 3, or 'Mudros'.
That had all changed in April when the Allies' push for the Dardanelles had become a reality and she once again cast aside fear to join a legion of
tanned, joshing young men who had volunteered from Australia and New Zealand for an adventure on the other side of the world. They were doing their bit for King and country, planning to return to their farms and simple lives with heroic tales of war, but theirs was an empty daydream.
In the galley, waiting to be taken for surgery, a young man's laboured breathing turned to a familiar death rattle that Claire's nursing ear was finely attuned to. She quickly hooked the medical notes onto the end of the bed of her sleeping soldier and hurried to the struggling youngster's side. There'd been no time to even learn his name. One of the other nurses looked over in enquiry but Claire shook her head. He would be gone in moments. She took his hand because his gaze seemed to be staring far away. 'Say sorry for me . . .' he whispered. She was mostly lip-reading. 'Tell Mum —'
Mum was the last word he uttered from cracked lips before he sighed and the Cornish light she fancied she'd spied in his pale blue eyes was smothered like a candle flame. His plea to apologise to his mother sliced through her thin resolve to toughen up. Claire wondered sadly about that
mother at home, waiting for her young son's letter, which would be replaced by a bland telegram from the army bringing the devastating news. Who might the army contact if something happened to me? She wondered fleetingly.
Claire reached for the slim oval identification disc the soldier wore around his neck on a leather cord. Her finger reverently touched the initials and surname that had been pressed out from the aluminium above his infantry number, unit and religious persuasion. It was the only way she could honour him in this solemn moment. E.W. Cornish, her fingers traced as she shook her head. How appropriate. Claire closed the young soldier's eyes and momentarily shut her own in a soft communion of farewell, and her thoughts were drawn to the first morning of their arrival in Gallipoli.
The Turks called it Gaba Tepe. The maps called it No. 2 Beach. But for those on board the converted passenger ship Gascon, the region was already nicknamed Anzac Cove. on the night of April 24, Gascon had been part of a fleet including battleships, minesweepers, tugs and troopships that eased out of Mudros Harbour to glide stealthily several hours later, just prior to 4 a.m., and station several hundred yards off the beach. British ships had then disgorged two divisions of Australians. Beneath the moon's phosphorescence that gilded the dark waters, young braves of the colony
had descended rope ladders and clambered into small craft that were towed closer by tugs, before British naval crewmen rowed them to shore.
A grey dawn had lifted the veil on the so-called surprise landing that had called for lights out and no anchors. But the silence had been shattered as alert Turkish troops, nestled near-invisibly on the hilltop, had opened fire with machine guns. Sunrise had given way to a morning of spectacular courage by the ANZACs, who were being peppered with equally determined firepower by the small defending force.
Claire could remember how she'd lifted heavy, borrowed field glasses to a view of dauntingly high cliffs. Her world narrowed to the flash of gunfire exploding from the arid, grey-green bushes of scrub that clung to the incline while the ANZACs swarmed the hill face. Smaller shells rained on the surrounding waters like hail, bouncing dangerously close to the ship as the Turks tried to prevent the British artillery booming from nearby, the sound of those guns reverberating through her chest. Cordite spiced the air with its burnt smell and from what she could see by squinting at the
foreshore, the men were being ordered to leave the wounded where they fell.
Claire tried not to focus on any individual. It was too painful to see men trapped, cowering mid-ascent beneath small overhangs and in tiny crags. Even so it was carnage beyond any nightmare. Well-armed Turks with the high ground and perfect views could aim accurately and strafe their gamely ascending attackers with what must surely be German-supplied machine guns, cutting down a generation of young men, weighted heavily by their gear, trying to hold ground they'd occupied earlier. 'The Turks have little more than antiquated muskets, so we're anticipating only lightly wounded,' they'd been told by the head doctor.
Lightly wounded? Claire thought, watching in silent horror as men, some of whose boots had barely left their print on damp Turkish sand, fell, fatally injured.
The mules were crazed with terror and the screams of injured animals joined the cacophony of explosions, gunfire . . . and the groaning, dying men who began arriving on the ship by the late afternoon.
That was day one. By the time they returned there was better organisation on the ground but the casualties were so many it had been heartbreaking. On the next return voyage into Gallipoli the full horror of war had wormed beneath her best defences and Claire was convinced there was no glory in it for either side. By the end of the first fortnight of her new routine she had tuned out to the firepower sounding its rage around her; instead she closed in on the daily battles in the wards beneath Gascon's deck and the relentless fight to save organs, limbs and lives.
Rosie parsons, a fellow nurse Claire shared accommodations with, now arrived alongside her, tucking a few wayward reddish curls back behind her nursing veil. She reached for some bandages from the nearby cabinet but squeezed her friend's arm. 'I'm sorry about your baby-faced soldier,' she said, staring down at young Cornish. 'He doesn't look old enough to join up.'
'I'm sure he wasn't. He can barely be seventeen.'
'You all right?'
Claire nodded and took a sighing breath. 'Good,' Rosie continued, 'because Matron's looking for you, by the by, but right now we're both needed in
surgery.'
Claire signalled to an orderly that her patient had succumbed to his injuries before hurrying down the corridor to where theatre was likely in full emergency.
'Maybe the Turks don't know what a white ship with red crosses on it means,' Rosie bellowed over her shoulder as another mortar rocked the waters around them. She sounded disgusted. 'Now I'll never get to the Heliopolis Club in Cairo for that Pisco Sour that Victor promised he'd make me.'
Claire gave her a look of admonishment when Rosie glanced back at her with a wry smile. Rosie plotted her life in blocks of weeks that revolved around her entertainment schedule and social calendar in Alexandria or Cairo whenever they got leave. There were times when Claire wished she could make her life that straightforward and simply enjoy the good times. 'Maybe they've taken offence to us firing on them, in their own country.' She bit back on anything else that threatened to spill; it made her sound like one of those objectors.
Men were dying in concentrated numbers while as many were destined to barely survive their horrific wounds or to wake up more miserable than
they'd felt before surgery, like this soldier, whose head she reached to stroke in the hope he might feel her soothing touch somewhere in his dreams.
'How is this man, in the prime of his life, going to recover mentally when he wakes and realises his legs have been amputated?' Claire asked.
'I can't answer that,' Rosie replied with a grimace as she prepared her tray of equipment, 'and I can't let myself think about it.' Despite the hardness of her words, Claire had seen the sorrow in her friend's eyes.
The Gascon had four hundred cots but Claire suspected twice that number of beds wouldn't be sufficient for the casualties and demand for transport away from Turkey. But those decisions were not hers and, rather than struggle with logistics she could not control, Claire lost herself in her work, moving from patient to patient, never knowing their names or where they hailed from – only the nature of their wounds. She was
assisting a new doctor, and a freshly qualified nurse was helping her hold a man still who was not fully sedated while the surgeon dug shrapnel out of the corner of his patient's eye.
'Be still, there's a good fellow,' the English surgeon said in a mild tone.
'Will he lose his eye?' Betty wondered aloud and Claire gave her a look of admonishment.
'He can hear you,' she mouthed and on cue the blond-headed boy, surely not even out of his teens, cried out; he was another one begging for his mother and Claire blinked away how sad that made her feel.
'I can't say if he'll lose the eye,' the doctor continued softly, matter-of-factly, 'but looking at the mess of his shoulder, I suspect he will lose his arm. We'd better prep for an amputation.'
Claire wished she could shoosh the doctor too but dared not. She deliberately kept her face blank and recorded everything she could. He belonged to Bed 200 and his name, he had told them, was Billy Martin. He was just eighteen. Billy began to cry, tears leaking to sting his wounded eye further and drip across his spotty cheeks.
'Don't take my arm off,' he pleaded. 'I have to help run our farm. I've only got sisters.'
Claire glanced at the doctor.
'Give him the chloroform,' he instructed.
She stopped herself from remarking yet again on the absence of the more sophisticated equipment that they'd been promised, but the surgeon seemed to read her thoughts and gestured towards the bottle. 'You'll have to learn to be quick and deft with the chemical, Nurse . . .?'
'Nightingale, sir. Claire Nightingale.'
He smiled. 'Nurse Nightingale, eh? Most appropriate.' She'd heard it dozens of times since her training began at the Eugenie Nightingale School in London. 'Pretty. It suits you,' he said, less predictably. 'I'll need you to administer the anaesthetic daily from now on when I'm on duty, Nightingale.
I'd feel more comfortable if one person I trust takes on the job and does it how I want it. All right?' She nodded.
'Have you had much experience with anaesthetic in the colonies?'
'I actually did my training in London, sir.'
'Ah, very good. At St Thomas's, I presume?'
'That's right.' She paused, hoping he wouldn't refer to her surname again – an odd coincidence but nonetheless identical to the London hospital across from Westminster. 'And later at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital,' she added, watching him place a dressing across Billy's eye.
'I thought we had only Australian nurses on board.' He frowned, indicating for her to take over the bandaging.
'It's a long story,' she murmured, glancing at Rosie with a slight shake of her head, who, though working alongside a different patient, was nearly touching shoulders with her and could easily join in this conversation. Claire didn't want her life story explained to the surgeon.
He shot her a puzzled glance but couldn't pursue it. Time was short and he began readying himself for the bigger, uglier task of his patient's arm. 'Now we'll fix up the rest,' he said kindly. 'I suspect we're going to be seeing a lot more head wounds today.'
'Why, sir?' Betty queried, keen to catch the surgeon's attention.
'These poor wretches don't seem to have tin helmets. The Australian army had better hurry up and supply their boys with some or there'll be plenty more eyes, ears, noses, jaws lost.'
Claire looked up anxiously from where she had helped Betty cut off Billy's shirt and isolate his arm. Her companion was drenching the left side of his body with iodine. 'But we're not equipped for anything reconstructive,' Claire warned.
He shook his head as though helpless. 'All we can do is patch them up and move them on, Nightingale. This boy will be sent to Cairo and then, I hope, to England where they'll be able to do a better job. If I thought that shoulder could wait, I would, but he's already had hours of filth and flies in that wound. See this?' he pointed and pressed where Claire saw a brownish-red swollen area. 'Press it,' he said to her, ignoring Betty.
Claire hesitated, not enjoying being singled out by him but intrigued by the chance to improve her skills.
'You've got to learn to recognise this. It's going to come in repeatedly and if my nurses can be my eyes around the ship, it will be an enormous help.'
She reached over with awkwardly gloved hands – the new advance – that made it impossible at times to make use of that all-important sensation of touch that she relied on. She pushed on Billy's blistered skin and felt a slight crackly sensation.
'Can you feel it . . . the gas?' the doctor continued. 'In these conditions it thrives. I'm guessing the triage team didn't consider him an emergency.
Sadly, they've left him too long and the infection has got too much of a hold.'
Gangrene, Claire thought. No need to say it in front of Billy.
'He's becoming feverish, doctor,' Betty said.
He sighed. 'Another sign. And this infected area will enlarge rapidly. We really do need to get his arm off immediately.'
Claire turned away again, this time to drag over a small rolling table with surgical scalpels and knives. Behind her Billy groaned and began to beg in a soft slur that the doctor just 'fix up' his shoulder as best he could. Claire took a slow breath and reached for the brown bottle and mask.
'Your war will be over soon, Billy,' she murmured to reassure herself more than private Martin, who was no longer listening.
Back on the ward, Claire drew her wrist across her forehead before vigilantly washing her hands once again. She moved towards a new patient, flicking away droplets of water and recalling how her long-fingered hands, with neat, oblong nails, had been the envy of the other girls in her year at St Catherine's in Sydney, which she'd attended briefly. She smiled wryly to herself now; today her hands were raw from the constant disinfectant and carbolic soap, whose sulphurous smell clung to the makeshift ward like an invisible overseer.
'Get some air,' she heard a voice say behind her.
She didn't have to look around to know who it was. 'I'll be fine, Matron.'
'That wasn't a suggestion, Nurse Nightingale,' the older woman said, eyeing her over tiny horn-rimmed glasses. 'Nurse Parsons has already been sent up for a break. It's time you took one too.'
Claire had come to respect their head nurse. on that first night, when they'd begun excitedly mobilising from their tented hospital onto the Gascon,
she'd given her nurses a welcome with her most stern face on.
'. . . and there's to be no fraternising with the ship's officers. The captain has requested that colonial nurses eat separately!'
Matron, Claire had learned, only sounded like a stickler; she bent the rules constantly to make sure they helped as many wounded as they possibly could. Claire obeyed her senior and headed up the stairs. The sound of mortar shells and artillery got louder the higher she ascended. The smell of carbolic switched to cordite, and black smoke, like drifts of gloom from various explosions, hung above the tiny bay. She wondered when the captain of the Gascon ever imagined the officers and nurses might fraternise. There was barely time for anyone to scribble letters home. Developing romantic relationships was the last notion on anyone's minds right now, she was sure.
The scene above was worse than below. Walking wounded helped their fellow diggers stagger down the short beach that was now a chaotic
casualty clearing station, swarming with soldiers and alarmed animals that intermittently escaped handlers or pens and were capable of hurting themselves and further injuring already hurting men. Wounded diggers took their chances under fire and in a raggle-taggle line made their way towards the shore, ignoring regimental medical officers, who were also undoubtedly finding proper assessment near impossible. Their ticketing system had clearly been abandoned. To Claire's knowledge none of the nursing team had viewed a priority red ticket recently; besides, near enough every soldier seemed to qualify for that category.
She massaged the muscles above her shoulderblade and arched her back to stretch out the soreness that nagged from shifting around prone men daily. Day, night, afternoon, evening . . . it was a seemingly interminable round of blood-soaked dressings and despair. Each time the Gascon sailed away with its hundreds of casualties Claire knew there were dozens of desperately hurt men left behind at the clearing station on the beach. Too many of them would die before the three-day turnaround gave them access again to full surgical help.
Even so, some evenings they'd sailed with seven hundred injured or sick, dropping off the least grave at Mudros before going on to Egypt – to Alexandria, where ambulances, quality facilities and specialist staff attended to the most seriously hurt men, who may then be transported to Cairo for even more sophisticated help.
Cairo! What a city. It was only weeks but it felt like a lifetime ago that she'd witnessed the enormous orb of sun sinking behind the Great pyramid of Cheops. Claire recalled in vivid clarity how, in the diffused half-light of that golden-pink evening, she had allowed one of the turban-headed donkey boys to assist her onto the saddle of his patient beast before guiding her to the opulent Shepheard's Hotel. Sunset cocktails had been
flowing and she could remember the frisson in the air of imminent departure for most of the men present. Even now Claire could stretch her thoughts and almost taste the cooling hum of infused fresh mint tea that she'd sipped on the terrace behind the wrought-iron balustrade overlooking the frenetic activity of Ibrahim Pasha Street. And if she reached for the happy memory far enough, she knew she could reconstruct the feel of the famous hotel's wicker armchairs pressing against her grey nursing uniform and hear the echoes of laughter bouncing off the stucco façade as she and Rosie were entertained by some officers from the 3rd Light Horse Regiment.
So handsome in their dress khakis, they were surely the smartest of all the Australian divisions with those tall boots and spiral strap leggings and spurs. One of the men had allowed her to try on his slouch hat, making sure it sat on her head in true, rakish light horsemen style. Three finger spaces above the left ear, two finger spaces above the left eye and a finger space above the right eye. 'There,' he'd said, having adjusted it perfectly, his tanned face stretching into an appreciative grin. 'Now despite the fact that you're a gorgeous blonde who is surely going to give men in the trenches unhelpful daydreams, you're now an honorary member.' Its ostentatious but nonetheless striking white emu plumage at the back had
danced in the soft Cairo breeze of a mild night that teetered, in late April, with the promise of summer around the corner.
Though the hotel was built in Opera Square and on the pulse of the city's heartland, Claire had decided it was spiritually a world away from the ramshackle cluster of brothels, restaurants, cafés and cinemas that cluttered around it, luring soldiers with coin to spend and an itch to scratch. Despite all the warnings from their troop leaders about the dangers of fraternising with the local women of the Wazzir district – or 'Wozza', as the Aussies called it – she had noticed that the streets were thick with Australians, New Zealanders and British keen to escape into someone's arms – or fists – for a happy distraction.
She could picture the donkeys queued up kerbside, vying for space with fruit sellers or men who'd trained their monkeys to hop onto willing shoulders for an unusual photograph, which of course Rosie had to have to send home. Jugglers, card sharps, nut sellers, trick cyclists and gambling touts – even women selling themselves from balconies desperately tried to catch the attention of fit young men on leave with mainly one thing on their minds. That all felt like a century ago – a different world . . . another lifetime almost.
Matron arrived by her side and the aromatic memory of mint tea faded.
'Is there any triage occurring down there?' Claire asked, nodding at the beach. 'Think you could do better in that hell?'
'It wasn't a criticism, Matron. I'm sorry, I —'
'And mine wasn't a serious question. I feel as helpless as you do.'
Claire gave a sad smile. 'I would like to try, though.'
Matron blinked slowly. 'We don't put women ashore.'
'Think of me as another soldier. Better, think of me as an extension of you, Matron. I know you could make a difference down there and I also suspect you'd love to get a better idea of what's happening too.'
Matron's eyes smiled, although her mouth forbade the warmth to touch its tightly pinched line.
'Let me try,' Claire pleaded. 'We can actually ticket some of these men and organise their care better. Right now they're all taking matters into their own hands.'
'I am aware of that, Nightingale.'
'They're dying, Matron.'
Her supervisor sighed. 'They'll die here too.'
'Yes, but at least they'll die hearing a woman's voice speaking kindly to them. Most of those boys need a mother as much as the morphine. A tender touch can do a world of good to their state of mind.'
'You're as soft as you are daring, Nurse Nightingale. I hope you don't have to face the Western Front lines because that romantic soul of yours is going to be badly scarred.' Matron paused. 'What is it about you, Claire? I can tell you about each of my staff: why they became nurses, why they volunteered for a war zone, why they do what they do. Most of them had the calling or felt the need to be doing something meaningful with their lives. But you remain an enigma to me. I like you very much, you're a brilliant young nurse, but sometimes you strike me as a ghost.'
Claire laughed, puzzled. 'A ghost?'
'Indeed. You move among us sometimes as if invisible, not wanting to leave a mark.' 'Sometimes I do feel like that,' she admitted, further impressed by her elder's insight.
Matron smiled and her expression was filled with kind concern. 'Why would you ask to go ashore when you know it's so dangerous?' She stared at Matron, slightly flustered. 'It's my job. Surely we —'
'No need to patronise me, Nurse Nightingale. I've got three decades on you and deserve honesty.'
Claire's shoulders slumped. 'I lost another patient this morning. He didn't even have stubble on his chin he was so young.'
'They're mostly heartbreakingly young. Why did this one make such an impression on you?'
She folded her arms in a protective gesture. 'His eyes reminded me of childhood summers in Cornwall with my father – happy times.' Claire sighed in memory. 'And then I saw his tag and it told me his surname was Cornish.' She shrugged apologetically. 'It was as though it was a message to me. I started to think about his mother.'
'Most unwise. Didn't we teach you that?'
'Easy to learn, hard to put into practice. And even more unwisely, his death got me thinking about my own family.' 'And?' Matron pressed.
'That the few people I love are no longer alive. And it occurred to me that should I die in some foreign land like young Cornish, it really wouldn't matter to anyone.' She watched Matron's expression turn fractionally exasperated as she opened her mouth to respond but Claire hurried on. 'No, it's true, Matron. There is no one hoping to hear from me. I move from place to place, belonging nowhere and to no one. The person I'm closest to is Rosie Parsons and I met Rosie six weeks ago. I'm twenty-five, Matron; don't you think it's odd that in a quarter of a century I have no one who
might be touched in any way should I die?'
'Claire, how very bleak of you.'
She gave a sad smile. 'Sorry. But you did insist.'
Matron squeezed Claire's wrist with concern. 'And being adventurous soothes this mood?'
'No, but I am a logical choice for a dangerous task. The most I have to lose is my life, and as no one cares about it, I'll endanger it willingly if it saves another person who matters to someone.'
'And is this why you took up nursing, Claire? Did you go into this vocation simply so that you would have people to care for?'
'I . . . I don't know.' She hesitated, caught by the insightful suggestion that she suspected was true. 'More likely it's because of my father, whom I adored. We were a team; he used to say I was his favourite girl and that no woman would come between us.' She hesitated and then gave a rueful smile. 'Of course one did, but that's by the by. My father fought and survived the Boer War, then came to Australia, where I'd been sent to live with cousins because my mother had passed away when I was a child, and he died far too soon after his return from disease . . . but I believe more especially from a lack of good nursing. If we can get to these men faster —' Claire gestured across Anzac Cove, 'and perform triage with more expedience, maybe we can save them losing limbs or dying from injuries out there on foreign land.' She shrugged. 'It's about more professional
nursing.'
'I see. You're a crusader,' Matron said, adding levity to her tone and a smile.
Claire shared it, glad to leave the dark years of her early teens behind. 'I'm happy to take that role,' she replied.
'Well, Claire, I want no heroics today. You are simply to help where you can in the brief period you'll have but essentially you are to observe and report.'
Claire's eyes widened. 'You're letting me go onto the beach?'
'I have a message to get to the medical officers from the surgeons here. You can go with the messenger. Whatever you can achieve in the time
there is up to you. But I do agree it will help if we get a nurse on the ground. Focus – I want valuable information coming back with you.' Claire's smile shone as brightly as her gaze. 'Thank you, Matron.' She turned to fetch some supplies.
'Nurse Nightingale.' Claire spun back as a roar from the nearby HMS Londonsignalled the unleashing of some firepower. 'This is a very dangerous business, you know. I'm breaking orders but only because you've broken my heart a little with your romantic notion of nursing. What you need is some real romance.'
Claire grinned. 'Well, I doubt I'm going to find it here, Matron.'
Fiona McIntosh

Fiona McIntosh is an internationally bestselling author of novels for adults and children.

She co-founded an award-winning travel magazine with her husband, which they ran for fifteen years while raising their twin sons before she became a full-time author.

Fiona roams the world researching and drawing inspiration for her novels, and runs a series of highly respected fiction masterclasses. She calls South Australia home.

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