They say we fall in love. But really we fall in sickness. I lost appetite for food in those two nights with Tilda. My stomach was sunken in its wishbone cavity. Me, I was never sick, but I was sick now, the strangest sickness that made my eyes gleam green with excellent health. They had shiny white edges. My cheeks were glossed in a fresh oil of pink.

Colin dreams of escaping his parents' New Zealand farm for a grand stage career. He makes it to London and a disastrous audition before meeting Tilda-beautiful Tilda, older, an artist-who brings his future with her. 

A heady romance leads to a new home in a decaying former bank in a small town hours from Melbourne. They are building a life together-but there are cracks in the foundation.

This is a love story, told from passionate beginning to spectacular end. It is intimate and honest, blackly funny and emotionally devastating.