The Last Piece of My Heart

  Praise for Paige Toon

  Lucy in the Sky, 2007

  ‘I loved it – I couldn’t put it down!’ Marian Keyes

  ‘A fab debut and a great summer read’ Elle

  Johnny Be Good, 2008

  ‘Pacy, highly enjoyable insight into life in La-La Land!’ Closer

  ‘All the warmth and fun that I’ve grown to expect from the talented Ms Toon’ Freya North

  Chasing Daisy, 2009

  ‘A fast-paced and funny read. . . Superior chick-lit with great jokes and a thoughtful heart’ Daily Express

  ‘Laugh-out-loud funny and touchingly honest. This summer’s poolside reading sorted!’ Company

  Pictures of Lily, 2010

  ‘An absorbing and emotional narrative – brilliant!’ Heat

  ‘Another perfect summer page-turner from Paige Toon’ Mirror

  Baby Be Mine, 2011

  ‘Fun, summery, chick-lit with bite; if you want escapism, this is perfect’ Cosmopolitan

  ‘Heart-warming and gut-wrenching (yet funny and addictive), will warm the cockles of your heart’ Giovanna Fletcher

  One Perfect Summer, 2012

  ‘Drama, heartache and tears aplenty – a refreshing take on the happy-ever-after tale’ Marie Claire

  ‘Sweet, charming and true to life. . . had us reminiscing about summer loves. . . amazing’ Cosmopolitan

  The Longest Holiday, 2013

  ‘Unashamedly girly, will bring a smile to the face of anyone who has been unlucky in love. . . Chick-lit at its very best’ Daily Express

  ‘Pure, sun-drenched escapism. . . the perfect summer holiday read’ Heat

  Thirteen Weddings, 2014

  ‘Witty, fun and impossible to put down!’ Closer

  ‘A brilliant piece of chick-lit’ Fabulous Magazine

  The Sun in Her Eyes, 2015

  ‘Paige really ratchets up the tension. You’ll be in a reading frenzy by the end’ Lisa Jewell

  ‘Paige Toon’s epic bestseller shows how life can change in a heartbeat’ Glamour

  The One We Fell in Love With, 2016

  ‘You’ll love it, cry buckets and be uplifted’ Marian Keyes

  ‘I blubbed, I laughed and I fell in love. . . utterly heart-wrenching’ Giovanna Fletcher

  For I and I.

  This one had to be yours.

  A Letter To My Readers

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you very much for buying this book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  The Last Piece of My Heart is Bridget’s story. This is a brand new, standalone book, but Bridget herself is not a new character. You may already be familiar with the Prologue because I wrote it as a short story for my club, The Hidden Paige. And I didn’t want to stop there, as you can see. . .

  I can honestly say that I’ve never enjoyed being inside a character’s head quite as much as I did Bridget’s. In fact, I still don’t want to let her go, so stay tuned to The Hidden Paige for a spin-off story later in the year. You can sign up at www.paigetoon.com if you haven’t already – it’s completely free.

  I love hearing from my readers, so if you’d like to drop me a line, please get in touch via the social media details below.

  I hope Bridget captures a little piece of your heart, too.

  Lots of love,

  www.paigetoon.com

  #TheHiddenPaige

  Twitter @PaigeToonAuthor

  Facebook.com/PaigeToonAuthor

  Instagram.com/PaigeToonAuthor

  Prologue

  The problem with giving your heart away to someone is that you never fully get it back. Long after you’ve fallen out of love with them, they still own a little piece of you. That’s why first love is always the strongest: it’s the only time you ever love wholeheartedly. And I do mean that literally.

  I came up with this theory a few years ago when I was belatedly reflecting on why on earth I had ever broken up with David, my boyfriend at university. He was great, but something was missing, so I called it off and started a new search for the complete package. Over a decade later, I’m still looking.

  It’s not that I haven’t been around the houses. I have. And the caravans, apartment blocks and skyscrapers, to boot. At the end of the day, it all comes down to Elliot Green. He’s entirely to blame. He was my first love and he took a piece of my heart – and my virginity, while he was at it – and then emigrated to Australia with his parents at the age of sixteen, never to be seen or heard from again, once his initial frenzy of letter writing had died out. I figured he’d found a fit Aussie bird and had forgotten all about me, so I tried to forget about him, too. Many moons later, I’m still trying.

  It doesn’t help that I’m currently in Sydney, where he moved all those years ago. I’ve been daydreaming about bumping into him here and melodramatically declaring, ‘You’ve got something that belongs to me,’ before demanding that he give me the piece of my heart back.

  Never in my wildest dreams did I think I actually would see him again, yet there he is, completely oblivious to me gawping as he has a beer with some mates at a harbourside bar.

  Despite his changed appearance, I recognised him instantly. His long, lean body has broadened out and his arms are tanned and muscular. His brown hair is the same unruly length, but he now has sexy stubble that’s bordering on beardy. From where I’m standing, Elliot Green is hotter than ever. And now he’s looking at me.

  He’s looking at me!

  And now he’s not looking at me.

  Before I can register disappointment, he does a comedy double take and his blue eyes widen. His face breaks into a grin and then he’s on his feet and my heart is threatening to beat out through my eardrums.

  ‘Bridget?’ he asks with disbelief, opening up his arms.

  ‘Hello, Elliot,’ I reply warmly, as he crushes me to his hard chest. Oh, my God, he smells amazing. What was it that I was supposed to say to him again?

  ‘You’ve hardly changed at all!’ he exclaims, withdrawing and holding me at arm’s length as he takes me in.

  My figure hasn’t altered a lot since he last saw me. I’m tall and fairly slim and my eyes are, obviously, still blue – more of a navy, compared to his lighter swimming-pool shade.

  He fingers a lock of my dark hair. ‘Even your hair’s the same,’ he comments.

  It comes to the midway point between my chin and shoulders, which is more or less how I wore it as a teenager.

  ‘I’ve been growing it out, actually,’ I say with a shrug. Turns out blunt-cut bobs are high-maintenance. ‘Was that an Aussie accent I heard?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he replies with a grin.

  ‘It is! That’s so weird.’

  He laughs and shakes his head at me. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m on my way home.’ I nod towards the ferries chugging in and out of Circular Quay.

  ‘You live in Sydney?’ he asks with amazement.

  ‘Sort of. I’m here for a year.’

  ‘Seriously?’ His eyes dart searchingly between mine. ‘Do you have to rush off? Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘No, I don’t have to rush off, and, yes, I’d love a drink.’

  He smiles at me and the words pop into my mind from out of nowhere: You’ve got something that belongs to me.

  Of course, it’s immediately apparent that I’ll sound like a right idiot if I say them out loud, so I follow him mutely to his table instead.

  Over the next couple of hours, I sit with Elliot and his mates, drinking and laughing and establishing that he is excellently single. When his friends call it a night, Elliot and I stay, and, as the white sails of the nearby Sydney Opera House glint gold in the setting sun, and bats swarm out of the nearby Botan
ic Gardens, I’m ready.

  ‘So,’ I say, swirling the ice around in my glass of vodka tonic, ‘I have a theory.’

  Elliot cocks one eyebrow and listens with amusement as I enlighten him.

  ‘And that’s why I haven’t found The One,’ I conclude.

  He looks confused. ‘But you’ve been in love since we went out, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I scoff. ‘Loads of times.’

  ‘Well, if that’s true, you’d better hunt down all of those guys and demand that they give you their pieces back, too.’ He takes a gulp of his beer and plonks the glass down on the table, looking a little too pleased with himself.

  Is he right? Have I whittled my heart down to such a small chunk that I’m never going to be able to fall hook, line and sinker for anyone? Damn.

  ‘Your theory is flawed,’ he adds annoyingly.

  ‘No, no, no.’ I shake my head with renewed determination. ‘You were my first love. You’ve got the biggest piece. The most important piece. And I want it back.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to give it back?’ he asks.

  I force my brow into a frown, while secretly thinking it’s adorable that he’s indulging this silliness. ‘Why would you want to keep it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs. ‘Maybe I like having it around. And anyway, if you want your piece back, then it’s only fair that you give me mine back, too.’

  ‘I have a piece of your heart?’ I ask with surprise, hoping no one is eavesdropping on our bonkers conversation.

  ‘Of course you do,’ he replies, barely refraining from adding, ‘Duh!’

  I think about this, the alcohol muddling my brain. ‘I suppose we could do a straight swap,’ I mutter eventually.

  His lips tilt up at the corners as he stares across the table at me with those very blue eyes of his. Momentarily I’m back in the past with him and butterflies are going berserk inside me.

  ‘Shall we continue this discussion over dinner?’ He slides his hand towards mine and touches the tips of my fingers with his. A shiver runs down my spine and I can almost feel fresh perforation marks being punched into my body’s most vital organ.

  ‘All right, then, if you insist,’ I reply with a smile.

  If he wants to tear off another piece, I don’t think I’ll stop him.

  Chapter 1

  ‘Hello again!’ my literary agent, Sara, exclaims as we air kiss each other’s cheeks. Her smile is a hundred watts brighter than the last time I saw her back in February. ‘Thank you for coming in.’ She directs me to a seat. ‘How’s it all going? I see you’ve topped ten thousand followers on Twitter!’

  ‘Yes, last week,’ I reply. ‘And the comments on the last post were off the scale.’

  ‘That was the Gabriel reunion?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Oh, I loved that one!’

  ‘Good!’ I grin. ‘It cost me enough to get to Brazil.’

  She laughs. ‘You sounded like you had a lucky escape with him. What a chauvinistic pig! How many children did he have again?’

  ‘Nine.’ I grimace. ‘I felt so sorry for his poor wife.’

  ‘Whoa, did she have her work cut out for her! Were those kids really as badly behaved as they sounded?’

  ‘I’m sure they have their good days,’ I say benignly, wondering why I’m here.

  It’s been three months since our last meeting when I pitched Sara an idea for a book, but it wasn’t as well received as I had hoped it would be.

  ‘Forgive me, Bridget,’ I remember her saying, as she eyed me shrewdly. ‘But, when you asked for a meeting about a book, I assumed you’d be pitching an idea about your experiences of navigating the globe, not your experiences of navigating men.’

  It was a fair assumption. I was – am – a well-established travel writer.

  ‘I do plan to take the reader on a journey,’ I said with what I’d hoped was a winning smile, ‘and we will travel all around the world together, but our voyage will take us, yes, via all of the men I’ve ever been in love with. Travel writing will feature prominently, but, ultimately, this book will be about love.’

  She smirked. ‘Are we really talking about love, here? You’re thirty-four, and you say you’ve been head over heels in love with twelve different men? Some weren’t simply holiday romances or one-night stands?’

  I waved her away dismissively. ‘Oh, there were loads of those, too. But I could probably spin a couple out if I’m stuck for material,’ I added with a grin, as she blanched at me.

  It was Elliot who gave me the idea, when I bumped into him in Sydney, a year ago last December. That night was the start of something new and beautiful between us, and I’m delighted to announce that we’re still together.

  At least, we’re together as a couple. We’re not together literally, because I’m now back in the UK sans visa and he’s on the other side of the world in Australia. I could move over there if I married him. But that would mean one of us asking.

  I’m slightly scared of him asking.

  I love Elliot so much, but, when we were sixteen, my feelings for him were all-encompassing. He meant everything to me.

  The love I feel for him now is not as powerful, and I’m worried that it’s because I’ve become jaded over the years. Have I had too many relationships to believe in happy ever after?

  Maybe I’ve just grown up. Maybe love as an adult can never compare to that of a teenager.

  Or maybe something is missing. And maybe there’s a chance that I can get this something back. . .

  That night we met up again, Elliot put forward the tongue-in-cheek notion that perhaps I needed to hunt down all of the men I’ve ever loved to ask for their pieces of my heart back. Before I left Australia, he brought up the idea again, but this time he was serious. He knows that I’m struggling to commit to him wholeheartedly, but he believes that, if I use this time apart from him to revisit the past, I might be able to make more sense of the here and now. He suggested that I write about all of my encounters, and then he came up with another genius idea: if I could get a book deal, my time and travels would be funded in the form of an advance.

  I should point out here that my boyfriend is not the jealous type. This was one of the first questions Sara asked when I put the idea to her back in February.

  She also said that I needed to blog about my reunions and raise my profile before she’d consider approaching publishers, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three months.

  My readers have joined me on voyages to South Africa (David), Iceland (Olli), Spain (Jorge) and Brazil (Gabriel), and, of course, I’ve also written about how Elliot and I rekindled our relationship in Australia. I’m yet to meet up with Dillon in Ireland, Freddie in Norway, Seth in Canada and Beau, Felix, Liam and Vince here in the UK.

  My contacts in journalism have helped to spread the word about my blog, and, if you just ignore the trolls, I’d say it’s all going swimmingly.

  Elliot, meanwhile, has been hanging onto his piece of my heart. It’s still the biggest piece – the first and last piece – and, once I get the other bits back, my path will lead me back to him. A walk down the aisle really would be the happiest of happy endings.

  Late yesterday afternoon, Sara’s assistant called and asked me to come in for a meeting as soon as possible. Apparently, my agent had some news and she’d explain in person.

  I got a little bit excited.

  I know that Sara has started talking up my blog to publishers, but while the feedback so far has been good – they like my style, they like my wit – no one has wanted to commit to a relationship-blog-turned-book in the current market. Sara claims that publishers won’t be able to argue with the numbers if I keep growing my readership, so I intend to crack on. But has something changed in the last twenty-four hours?

  ‘You must be wondering why you’re here,’ Sara says to me now, reading my mind.

  ‘I’m pretty curious,’ I admit.

  ‘Yesterday, I had lunch with Fay Sande
rson.’

  The name isn’t familiar to me, but Sara explains that she’s an editorial director at a top publishing house.

  ‘She’s been avidly reading your blog and was raving to me about how well you strike the balance between warm and likable, and feisty, funny and fresh. She loves your voice. She absolutely loves it,’ Sara stresses, and there’s something about her tone that has me sitting up straighter in my seat. Am I about to be offered a book deal?

  ‘She has a proposal,’ she continues. Yes! ‘Have you heard of Nicole Dupré?’

  ‘Er, that name sounds familiar,’ I reply.

  Sara swivels on her chair and takes a book down from the shelves behind her. ‘Nicole had a runaway bestseller with The Secret Life of Us, which was published last autumn. It took us all a little by surprise, to be honest.’

  ‘I remember hearing about it.’ I pick up the novel she’s placed in front of me. The cover has a photograph of a lone girl standing on a beach in Thailand. I turn over the book and scan the blurb. It’s about a travel writer who falls in love with two different men on two different continents.

  Where is Sara going with this?

  ‘Nicole passed away shortly after that was published,’ Sara explains, her tone growing sombre.

  I breathe in sharply and glance up at her. ‘Oh, God, that’s right, it was in the news. Was she one of your authors?’ I ask with surprise.

  She nods.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea you represented her.’

  ‘It’s okay. It was very sudden,’ she tells me. ‘She had a brain aneurysm. She was only thirty-one.’

  I shake my head, horrified. That’s three years younger than I am now. ‘That’s so tragic,’ I murmur sympathetically.

  ‘Nicole was writing a sequel,’ Sara continues, drawing my attention back to her. ‘Secret ended on a cliffhanger. The readers are crying out for more. And, Bridget. . .?’

  I haven’t been sure up until this point what any of this has to do with me, but, from her more upbeat tone, I sense I’m about to find out.

  ‘Fay thinks your voice is perfect!’ she concludes, triumphantly.

  There’s a long moment where neither of us says anything.