Summary of the full story

While working for a global telecoms company in Australia during her GAP year, AMELIE is introduced to OSKAR, the new head of IT ensuring the company is ready for Y2K. Amelie is immediately derailed by her attraction to the steely eyed Norwegian which quickly develops into more. Oskar provides Amelie first class plane tickets to meet him in Copenhagen as soon as she’s returned home to the UK.

Though Oskar must work, the new couple get to know one another on their romantic Danish getaway and Amelie returns to her friends and family completely smitten, fuelled with stories of adventure and incredible seduction. SARAH, CAROLINE and VICKY are intrigued, while MUM and DAD desperately hope this mysterious man won’t whisk her away for good. Oskar and Amelie talk every night and arrange another rendezvous in Italy, following a week Amelie spends volunteering for a youth leadership organisation. 

In Lake Garda, Oskar realises what a charmed - one could say magical - existence Amelie leads. He is drawn to her light and easy way through the world. She is taken with his intellect, his numerous talents, his commanding presence and animal magnetism. Oskar invites Amelie to return to Sydney with him for the turn of millennium for four days.

Amelie spends New Year's Eve with her friends while Oskar works. He doesn’t take her call at midnight. But at dawn, when she returns to the hotel room, he is waiting for her… 

The lovers can no longer be apart. Oskar's company create a CTO position for him in the London branch. Amelie and her mother find an apartment for the couple. Amelie can’t wait to live with Oskar. Oskar takes her to a dinner party with his new boss on a Saturday night, then flies back to Norway on Sunday with the intention of moving in with Amelie on Wednesday. Only, he doesn’t turn up.

Amelies continues to show up to work that week despite her heartbreak. Amelie receives a call from his boss, swearing at her and demanding to know where Oskar is. Amelie doesn’t know - his phone is disconnected. Then a week later, a despondent Amelie receives a life changing call from an unknown number. The person robotically informs her that Oskar died of a brain aneurysm. Amelie is lost. She can’t accept it’s true, but she can’t reach Oskar. Her friends try to help and eventually, after several of the 'dead years' pass, Amelie finds herself turning 30 and happily immersed in a new relationship with GREG, a man completely of her world, who wants the family, the wife, the dog and the picket fence. 

Three years later, Caroline, Vicky and Sarah press Amelie on whether she will ever ‘settle down’ with Greg, but she still isn’t ready to commit. That night, she answers a call to an unknown number. 

It’s Oskar. 

He convinces Amelie to meet him in London and hear the story of his life as a spy.  He explains that he had to leave Amelie as he had used her as an alibi whilst investigating a case of corporate espionage, leading him to his mark at the dinner party in London and she had got too close to the danger.  He had never stopped loving her, going against all his training.

Amelie can't believe what she is hearing.  Can she resurface a love for somebody she has already buried? Though she is dubious, she agrees and after overcoming her initial misgivings, she breaks up with Greg and is head over heels for Oskar - like the seven years without him never happened.  

Only they did - and it turns out, it changed them both. 

In Norway, Amelie finally sees Oskar in his natural element and learns all about who he is, what he’s done and the price he's paid for being him. Oskar explains that he is, among other things, a Commander in the Secret Service and one of the world's best operatives. He speaks six languages, has worked in over forty countries under various identities, is a close combat trained killer and has one of the highest IQ's in the world. He can hack into anything including world banks and has a lot of blood on his hands which keeps him awake at night. Acutely aware she is now in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a potentially dangerous man and knowing many of his deadly secrets, Amelie and Oskar's erotic game play takes on a whole new level of intensity.

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Amelie spends the next few years learning what life is like being in a relationship with somebody who has to keep most of his life a secret and who struggles to participate in normal life. She thinks she can find a way to him, but after coping with Oskar’s frequent absence on missions, a call to say a final goodbye when he thought his life was over and symptoms of his PTSD, Amelie is brought to the breaking point when she discovers he is not only spying on others, but on her.

Amelie realises she wants a different kind of adventure - birthday parties, friendships, marriage, a family - but this is something Oskar simply can’t ever give her.  She dances in the light whilst he hides in the shadows. Their desires in life for everything but each other are too far apart.

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In a brief epilogue three more years down the line, Amelie marries Greg and has a son with him. She still keeps around her neck the bullet Oskar had made into a necklace for her as a symbol of strength and resiliency because she will always have him in her heart.

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The story ends with a message to all of those who has served and suffered PTSD and the families who love them.

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