Chapter One

Renee

Charlie and I had been dating for a short time and I thought I was madly in love with him. We decided to get married much to his parents disgust and one month before the wedding some friends and I decided that for my hen night we would go to a pop concert, it was a three day event but what the hell, if I couldn't enjoy myself now I never would. It would be fun to get out of Forks for a while and back to the sun, Gemma got the tickets through her boyfriend and Carol borrowed her dads tent so all I had to do was drive to Portland and meet up with them. Charlie wasn't happy and neither was his mother but then she didn't hold me in very high regard anyway. I was too flighty and modern for her precious son. He could have come with us if he'd wanted and I almost wished he'd arranged to but it was his weekend on duty, rounding up drunks and petty thieves while the Chief of Police sat on his fat ass smoking and drinking. The morning I left I found a dead bird on the hood of my car, it looked so pathetic and sad and I'll admit I was late leaving because I dug a small grave in the backyard of the house Charlie and I had bought and were doing up, I actually lived there while Charlie sneaked over whenever Helen wasn't looking. I suppose I should have seen the pathetic corpse as a warning but I was so full of excitement at the thought of seeing my friends again and by the time I reached Portland I had forgotten all about it.

The concert started out good fun, we pitched our tent near a group of young guys who were there like us for a good time and we soon got chatting. It was my finally fling at freedom so I wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth too closely. Stu and I got along great until the second night when I smoked some pot and drank too much alcohol which ended in me falling over a guy rope and spraining my wrist. Luckily he was with it enough to take me to the medical tent before wandering off without another word. I guess the wrist must have hurt but all I could think about was the hunk in the white coat who examined it. Now one like him didn't come along too often and as the place was quiet, it was a little early for the real drunks and drug overdoses, we took full advantage. When I got back to our tent at daybreak I found the others all in the guys tent and no one had missed me which avoided any awkward questions and I never said anything about my night of passion.

The wedding was OK a white wedding with lots of guests, something I had sworn to avoid but that was before I met the unstoppable force of nature that was Helen Swan. She had never liked me and even at the wedding reception made it perfectly clear to my mother that she thought her son could have done much better for himself. I guess she couldn't get to grips with a girl who wanted more than a nice little home and family with a man who could provide for her with a steady reliable job in a small town where everyone knew everyone else and you couldn't do anything without being seen. I had traveled, lived on my wits, and made a life of my own. I craved adventure, to see the world and experience new things all the time and I should have known that I would never be happy in Forks. The fact I wouldn't join her on the clinic fund raising committee or the humane society branch in Port Angeles only made matters worse and within weeks we were at loggerheads with Charlie struggling to maintain peace from the middle. I was furious he didn't back me and his mother of course expected him to stand behind her.

"It's about time that flighty wife of yours settled down and found her place in Forks society."

Well, that was a laugh for starters!

"If you think I'm going to sit on some mind numbing committee to keep your mother happy you can think again Charlie. I'm sick of her and I'm sick of Forks. Does it ever stop raining here?"

As usual he would just mumble and then escape the bitching by heading off to work. Our house wasn't even a peaceful refuge because Helen would invite herself over whenever she felt like it so in the end I use to hide in the attic, the only place she wouldn't find me. The idea of climbing a ladder was beneath her! It was stupid, I was a grown woman, married, why did I have to hide from my mother in law.

When I found out I was pregnant a month after the wedding I thought things might get better, at last we could be a family, just the three of us but even this news didn't help matters, in fact if anything they got worse. Helen took it upon herself to instruct me in how to act, what to eat, how to dress, and what I needed for the nursery. She even appeared one day at the house with Charlies old crib repainted. I took one look at it and consigned it to the attic where I filled it with crap that I found there. Old papers, rusting tins of photographs, and a moth-eaten teddy. If either of them suggested giving it to our baby I swore I'd burn the damn thing in front of them! Charlie was very excited about the baby and eager to know if it was a boy or a girl but they couldn't tell at the hospital, it was never in the right position so Helen took it upon herself to announce to anyone who would listen that it was sure to be a boy. The Swan men always produced a boy first. She even had the audacity to suggest we should call it Charles Geoffrey Swan Jnr after Charlie and his father. Charlie could see that was one step too far and suggested something a little less grand like Billy or Harry! I swear he was getting as bad as his mother.

The baby arrived about three weeks early according to our dates but it was strong enough if a little small and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen with dark hair and such pale skin it reminded me of alabaster. Helen was most put out when she discovered our baby was a girl and hit the roof when she heard I had named our daughter Isabella.

"Why on earth would you give Charlies daughter an Italian name? She looks sickly to me, no color at all. I warned you to eat better but would you listen? No, you never do Renee."

"I like the name and I assure you that our daughter is fine and healthy."

"Well you should leave the window open a little in her bedroom, the fresh air will do her good. Children need plenty of fresh air. Gone are the days of you sitting idle while Charlie does everything."

I contemplated slapping her but I couldn't cope with the hassle it would cause. I'd had a difficult time during the birth and was still recovering so I held my temper with difficulty but Charlie and I needed to talk, and soon.

The final straw was when I came home from the library to find Isabella missing and Charlie in the garden drinking a beer with Harry Clearwater and Billy Black.

"Where's Isabella?"

They all looked up a little guiltily then Charlie came over and guided me into the house,

"Mum came over and Bella was crying so she took her to the clinic just to have her checked over."

"Did you feed her?"

"What?"

"I left a bottle ready in the fridge, All you had to do was warm it."

"Oh, no. When mum got here she said Bella had colic and took her off so I thought I'd wait here for you to get back."

I was so angry I couldn't speak at first and the others felt the tension in the air because they took their leave soon after.