Brisbane, 2000. Fleur and Greg
Sherman have been married for ten years. They are a successful,
attractive couple with an enviable lifestyle, for Greg has just been
promoted to Senior Paediatric Surgeon at the Mater Children’s
Hospital, and Fleur is a successful architect. Their life together
appears to be idyllic, but Fleur is thirty-four and longs to make
their life complete by having a baby. But Greg is adamant there
will be no babies – ever.
Fleur is faced with a terrible dilemma. She loves Greg
passionately, but can their marriage survive – will he ever change
his mind? If she stays and he remains adamant, then it could be
too late for her to start again – but if she goes, then she will
lose him for ever. And
why is he so against having children? What is it that haunts
him? She suspects something does, but he refuses to talk about it.
Part of the solution seems to come from a distant relative she never
knew she had. Her father’s sister, Annie Somerville has left her a
fortune. All she has to do now is convince Greg that this windfall
will make it very easy to have children and still keep their
lifestyle.
Greg’s boyhood, spent with a violent, mentally unstable father, has
left him deeply troubled. He’s terrified he might have inherited
his
father’s illness, and through his work in the children’s hospital,
he’s seen too many battered and abused children to want to risk
having any of his own. He realises that if he truly loves Fleur,
he must sacrifice his marriage so she can find fulfilment elsewhere.
But the inheritance brings other troubles. Her father, the
much-married, womanising, Don Franklin, is contesting his estranged
sister’s
will. The basis of Annie’s wealth came from their father on her
first marriage and Don, whose small hotel chain is in trouble, is
still
bitter about it.
Fleur is heart-broken. She leaves Brisbane for the idyllic
‘Birdsong’ on the northern shores of Queensland which was Annie’s
much loved
second home, and it is here that Fleur meets the enigmatic ‘Blue.’
Although ‘Blue’ is far too young to have known Annie, he tells her
story with great feeling – and it is only when Fleur travels to the
cattle station, Savannah Winds in the Gulf country, and finds the
hidden Spitfire that once rode the Morning Glory cloud that sweeps
over that northern gulf, that she learns his true identity, and the
reason why Annie made her the sole beneficiary of her will.