Tree of Dreams

By Lois Edmonds

AS soon as Roz saw the huge oak tree, she knew the cottage was perfect for her and the kids - perfect for the tree house her late husband had promised their son. Problem was, she had no idea how to build it. When her gorgeous new neighbour offers his skills, she thinks her problems are over. But they are just beginning...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lois Edmonds
• Release date: Feb 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301942367

Lois Edmonds

The author has two loves:writing and painting pet portraits. After many years in the UK as a professional charity fundraiser and marketer, Lois now lives in Brisbane Australia, where she divides her time between writing, painting, and charity work.

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Tree of Dreams

Lois Edmonds

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Lois Edmonds

Cover image by Gogoebel

Discover other titles by Lois Edmonds at Smashwords.com.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

It was that time of day when an unnatural quiet descends and you think you've gone deaf.

The time of day when the kids have finally gone off to sleep.

Roz used to love the end of the day, when she could cuddle up with Michael on the couch and watch the news. It was the only time when she could get her dynamo of a husband to sit still for more than a few seconds.

Now she dreaded the peace and quiet; it only served to remind her that Michael was gone. She sank into the big armchair with a sigh. Michael's chair. He had been gone ten months but she could still feel his presence everywhere. His energy, his enthusiasm, his love of life. He had been the rollercoaster and she had been along for the ride.

She was lost without him.

He had swept her off her feet the moment they met – quite literally. She had been taking her first tentative slides on the nursery ski slopes, when this towering hulk cannoned into her and carried her down the hill. With great gales of laughter and abject apologies, he had gathered her in his arms and gently felt her all over for broken bones. One look into those twinkling deep blue eyes, and she had fallen totally, irrevocably, in love.

Hers had been the briefest introduction to skiing. A sprained ankle had kept her indoors for the rest of her week-long stay in the resort and she had never tried it again. It had been her one attempt to leave her beloved paints and easel at home and try a holiday doing something completely different, something daring.

Michael, however, was an adventurer - an expert skier with a great love of the natural world and dangerous activities. Being active and outdoors was as natural to him as breathing and it was his life's work.

It was strange, therefore, that he had chosen to stay indoors with her for all of that wonderful week. Or was it?

Roz still flushed whenever she remembered how they had filled the short days and very long nights! By the time Roz's week-long holiday was over, her ankle was almost as good as new, and they were engaged. Michael did everything at breakneck speed - including falling in love. He met, courted and married her in three whirlwind months.

Two weeks after their wedding, Michael had come home buzzing with excitement. I've found it! The perfect cottage. He'd picked her up and spun her around. You'll love it! It needs work – lots of work - but that'll be fun!

Roz had looked around the tiny rooms and noted the crumbling plaster, the leaky window frames, the missing floorboards, and her heart had sunk. Needs work – no kidding! Michael, this is too much -

Nonsense! It's close enough to the city for my work, and we can only afford it because it is in such a state. Come on… we'll have a great time doing it up. He had looked at her with such puppy-like eagerness, she relented. She could never resist him.

She had to admit he'd been right. They did have fun. Small and dilapidated and totally unsuited to raising a family, the decrepit cottage soon succumbed to Michael's strong will and his mark was stamped enthusiastically in every room. Michael didn't know how to do anything without a huge amount of laughter and silliness. Every brushstroke and every nail hammered was accompanied with gales of laughter and love as they had turned this tiny run-down cottage into their castle.

It certainly wasn't practical. Michael's big frame scraped along the walls of the narrow passage and he was always banging his head on the low doorframes. The back yard was steep – even the clothesline was up ten precipitous steps – and the main bedroom was so small, they had to squeeze into a double bed. But they didn't care. It wasn't cramped. It was 'cosy'. They were so young, so in love, and with so much to look forward to.

The arrival of Jonah and Anna had been milestones full of joy and Michael had been besotted by the tiny bundles as soon as he held them in his big hands. The first sounds they heard were his booming laughter and streams of silly nonsensical words. He was the centre of their world.

Time and time again, Roz would shake her head in helpless exasperation as she tried to get two over-excited children to sleep after one of his boisterous romps before bedtime.

Yet – oh, what she wouldn't give to have those times again.

His larger than life character had carried them all forward on a heady wave of excitement, from one adventure to another. He would come home after one of his hair-raising wilderness escapades and hold them all spellbound with his tales of scary encounters with jungle creatures and crawling along flimsy rope bridges over heart-stopping ravines.

It was easy to see why his feature series of 'Wild, Wild Earth' was so popular with audiences all over the world. He carried the watcher along on his unquenchable tide of enthusiasm for the untamed world and everything in it, with always a twinkle of humour in those deep blue eyes.

As the children grew, Roz had been content to let his forceful nature dictate their family outings and holidays, which had been always as action packed as one of his safaris and full of fun and laughter. His energy and humour was infectious and Jonah and Anna loved the silly games he organised for them all.

Since his death Roz had tried to play with them as he had, but she lacked his knack for fun and silliness. It just wasn't the same without Michael, for any of them.

How cruel that it had been his love of skiing that had taken him out of her life just as quickly as he had entered it.

He had been filming one of his 'Wild, Wild, Earth' series which featured him skiing the virginal snow slopes high in the Peruvian mountains, when a devastating avalanche had swept him into a deep ravine hundreds of metres below. It had been five heart-breaking months before his body could be recovered; five long months of interminable waiting to lay him to rest.

There had been a huge outpouring of public grief that had made her own sense of loss so much harder to bear. The burden of sharing his passing with his avid followers had been difficult, yet she couldn't deny them the opportunity to say goodbye. She'd endured the agony of being in the limelight, when all she wanted to do was crawl under a rock.

There had been one interminably long and harrowing memorial service when Roz and her children had fronted the huge crowd of grieving fans, then at last there was blessed peace and quiet as they retreated into their tiny cottage.

Michael had given this place its magic and now that he was gone their special place was dull and lifeless.

It's once cosy rooms now seemed cramped and inconvenient and its sloping postage stamp yard was not safe for the children to play in. Waking up in the bed she had shared with Michael for nine wonderful years became more and more unbearable. Jonah had lost interest in his beloved bike without his father to follow along the country lanes. Anna would sit for hours in front of the TV, watching re-runs of her daddy's programmes.

A light had gone from her children's lives, and she didn't know how to make it bright again.

So much of Michael lived on in his son – not only did he have the same shock of unruly blond hair and piercing blue eyes, but they also shared a deep love of adventure and the outdoors.

Her boisterous seven-year-old always tackled everything head-on. He had that same endearing zest for life that had attracted her to his father, but it was a bittersweet inheritance. It never failed to lift her spirits, but it also reminded her constantly of what she had lost.

Five-year-old Anna, on the other hand, was quiet and sensitive. Her placid brown eyes would follow the rowdy form of her brother from behind bangs of curly corn-silk hair. She had worshipped her Daddy. He had always been able to get beyond her reserve and persuade her to join in the silly games with him and Jonah.

Anna had never been one to make a fuss or noise, but she had been even more withdrawn since Michael's death. She trailed along in her brother's tumultuous wake, watching his antics from the side-lines. Roslyn worried about her. She had tried so many times to bring her out of her shell, but always Anna would retreat to the edges of activity, her eyes watchful but uncommunicative.

Roslyn knew how much her undemonstrative daughter was missing her father and her heart ached for her. She could see so much of herself in her angel of a daughter. Same pale fall of fine silky hair, same deep brown eyes. Same quiet, watchful nature. Always happy to follow, to let others take the limelight; never quite brave enough to take the lead.

Without Michael's magic touch, Roz feared her youngest child would retreat even further into her own world.

She sighed deeply. She was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that their lives needed a change; a drastic change.

They couldn't go on living in the cottage, where Michael's personality was still so dominant and his forceful spirit still filled every room. Whereas she had hoped it would be a comfort to them all to keep him close, it was becoming clear that it was just serving to remind them of what they had lost.

All of their memories of Michael had been formed here. His booming laughter still echoed down the narrow passage, his silly stories still filled the bedrooms and his dodgy paint choices were every which way they turned.

They needed to make new memories. To try and do that here was somehow disloyal to him. This was his space; nothing would change that. They needed a new home, where they had a chance of getting on with their lives.

Not that Roz wanted to forget him – and she certainly wanted her children to remember their wonderful father. He would remain forever in their hearts and they would find special ways to keep his memory alive, she would make sure of that. They just needed a place where they could breathe…

As soon as she turned into the leafy lane, Roz had a good feeling.

She had spent weeks pouring over descriptions of houses for sale on real estate websites, never finding anything that even came close to what she wanted. The fact that there were no constraints on location simply made the task even more difficult. Her work as a book illustrator could be done anywhere; she just needed peace and quiet, and a light and airy room to work in.

What they all needed was space. Space to spread their wings, to build a new life. A room to paint in for herself, a big back yard for Jonah to run round in, and a room with a balcony for Anna.

The little girl had wanted one of those ever since Michael told her one of his fanciful stories about a princess watching over the antics of her subjects from her balcony far up in a tower in the royal castle. He would recount tales of urchins sneaking into the farmer's orchard to pick apples but being chased by a mad bull, and a snooty girl in her best dress tripping face first into a muddy puddle on her way to market.

Anna would giggle as each story got sillier than the last, until eventually her eyes would droop and she would fall asleep with a smile still playing on her lips.

Roz sat back from the computer, temporarily distracted by the memory. A wave of sadness swept over her and tears welled. She had talked to Michael so many times about capturing his stories in a children's book and bring them to life with her illustrations. How wonderful that would have been, not only for the thousands of children who would have loved his stories, but for their own two who would have had a beautiful keepsake of their father.

One of those things you talk about then let slide as there seems to be no rush. Until the moment is lost forever…

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she had flicked through an endless stream of photos, until at last, one caught her attention. She had never even heard of Edensvale. That was a plus, for a start.

She scanned the description; Large cottage on the edge of the hamlet of Edensvale in the depths of the Hampshire countryside. Three bedrooms, two living areas, farmhouse kitchen, sunroom and converted attic space. Quarter acre plot with mature gardens. Needs TLC and green fingers to bring this country gem to life.'

It sounded perfect. Slight qualms about just how much TLC was needed, but then the price was right and she welcomed the challenge!

So, here she was.

She had dropped the kids at school and headed for the motorway, conscious that it was a five hour round trip and she had to be back for 3.30. She had picked the key up from the agent (very trusting in the country!) and with a rising sense of anticipation, she pulled to the side of the narrow lane in front of the cottage.

As she pushed open the rusty iron gate and paused to take in the scene before her, her excitement grew. Yes, it looked tired, with faded blue paint flaking off the window sills and dirty white shutters resting at an unnatural angle. The front garden was a tangle of untrimmed rose bushes and encroaching blackberry. The path was barely discernible under layers of dried grasses and wildflowers.

But the cottage walls were of a mellow honey coloured stone and the roof of grey slate looked in good condition. It was handsome, rather than pretty, but she loved it instantly.

It was not alone. Next door there was an identical cottage, a mirror image of this one, in similar state and also with a 'FOR SALE' sign attached to its rickety fence. Yet, this other cottage did not hold her attention for more than a passing moment.

There was something about the scene before her that eclipsed all else in her mind – and heart. Even from her