Page 36 of The Wisteria Tree Cottage

‘I love you working here too. And your contribution is equally important if not more important than me and River throwing up a few wooden houses. All of it would be worthless if we didn’t have people to fill them. You’re responsible for that. You’re responsible for us being fully booked for the rest of the year with your ads and marketing. So don’t dismiss what you do here. I just wondered if it was enough for you, whether you ever needed more?’

Bear looked at him in confusion. ‘Where has all this come from?’

Heath sat back against the wall. ‘I was helping Meadow set up her dating profile the other day, I was on your computer and I saw the story you were working on. I didn’t read it, well just the first few lines to realise what it was. I figured if you wanted me to read it, you’d have given it to me so I respect your privacy on that. But you were always writing stories when you were little and, if you’re still doing that now, I wondered if that was something you wanted to pursue rather than being our resident sparky?’

Bear leaned back against the wall too, watching a bright orange butterfly flutter across the ceiling, thudding gently against the reflections of light from the open windows.

‘When I was little I wrote stories about normal little boys who found out they had extraordinary powers. They were always tasked with some great quest. They were important. I was not. Those stories were a way for me to escape from my own world where I felt… insignificant.’

‘Christ Bear, why would you think you were insignificant?’

‘Having both parents walk out on us when we were little doesn’t do great things for our self-worth. You and River found solace in the bottom of the bottle, I found my peace in stories where I could control the outcome, where little boys had families that loved them.’

‘Bear… shit… I had no idea. We should have done more for you, we should have been there—’

‘I don’t blame you two, not at all,’ Bear said. ‘We all had our own demons to slay. And you two were always there for me, even if our parents weren’t.’

Heath cleared his throat. ‘You are loved. I know I don’t say it enough, but you are.’

Bear grinned. ‘I know. But that’s why this place is enough for me, because we’re a team. You, me, River, Meadow and now Indigo, we’re a family and it didn’t feel like we had that growing up. Now we have this… gang and I love it.’

‘But you still write the stories?’

‘When I was older, I thought that if my stories were a good way for me to escape from my world maybe one day they might help other children to escape when they read them. So I kept writing them. And when Star was around five or six and I was reading her stories, the characters who had the biggest adventures were always boys. Most of the books she reads now, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Alex Rider, they are always boys saving the world and I wanted her to see that girls can have adventures too. That she can have big dreams as well. So the main character of the series I’m writing now is a girl called Starlight.’

‘You wrote a story for Star?’ Heath’s voice was rough when he spoke.

Bear shrugged. ‘Yeah. Not that she’s seen it. No one has. Well, until I sent the first book in the series to Meadow last night. We were chatting and I told her that I write stories. She wanted to see them.’

‘That was the story she was excited about this morning at breakfast?’

‘Yes. It seems she likes it.’

‘I’d like to read it too.’

Bear swallowed a lump in his throat. ‘OK.’

‘And I’d really like Star to read it. She will get such a big kick out of this story that was written for her.’

‘I’d like that too.’

‘Are you going to do anything with these books, send them to a publisher or an agent?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you said you wrote them for children who needed to escape, you wrote them for girls who needed to see girls as the heroes of their stories. Why wouldn’t you want to share your stories?’

Bear stood up, caught the butterfly gently in his hands and released it out the window. He turned back to face Heath. ‘I don’t have many memories of Mum and Dad, we hardly saw Dad at all after they left, Mum was there for a few days two or three times a year. But the one memory I have of Mum that is more vivid than anything else is showing her the story I had won a prize for at school and telling her I wanted to be an author when I grew up. She read the story, it was only a page long, and she laughed and told me I’d never be an author if I wrote like that. She told me I had to aim higher because being an author was never going to pay the bills. Then she screwed it up and threw it in the bin. I haven’t shown anyone my work since, well, until last night.’

Heath stared at him in horror. ‘Bloody hell. I knew they were bad parents, I just didn’t realise quite how bad they were.’ He paused. ‘Did you know she was an author too?’

Bear sat down on the windowsill. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘She was never published. She sent her stories out to publishers and agents and got rejection after rejection. Her sister, Annie, used to look after us fairly often and she had no problems telling me what our mum was doing with her life. She was always writing, always sending it out in the hope of getting some validation, but she never did. Apparently she was quite bitter and angry about it all. I imagine she took that bitterness out on you when you told her your dream. But you should never ever let anyone stamp on your dreams like that. Or let her experience hold you back. We make our own path in life. You wrote those stories to encourage Star to go after her dreams, to have big adventures. You need to go after your own.’

Bear thought about what Meadow had said to him the night before, it gave him such confidence to hear what she thought about him. He nodded. ‘I think you’re probably right.’

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

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