Free Paradise Revisited by Norman Filler

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    Copyright © 2013 by Publisher
    All Rights Reserved.   No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder
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    This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, places, events, locations is purely coincidental.
     
    Click here to check out other titles by Norman Filler:
    Love Among The Tea Bushes
    Amanda’s Fantasy
    And many more…
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Contents
     
    Chapter 1 – The Arrival
    Chapter 2 – Catching Up
    Chapter 3 – Settling In
    Chapter 4 – The Tour
    Chapter 5 – A Look Back
    Chapter 6 – A Look Forward
    Chapter 7 – A Failure
    Chapter 8 – A Difficult Visit
    Chapter 9 – Healing Begins
    Chapter 10 – The Funeral
    Chapter 11 – A New Beginning
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 1 – The Arrival
     
    When Andy drove up to Matambala, he wondered why he was going home.  It certainly wasn’t to relive the last unhappy months he had lived there. Once had been enough.  Was it to recapture the happiness of his youth there?  Andy had lived through too much to believe that it was ever possible to go back and recapture the past.  For one thing, he was different; both his heart and his body had been whole, and his dreams intact. And Matambala had changed too.  So much of the beauty had gone. Land distribution had torn great holes in it and replaced meadows with dusty fields of maize stalks. The forest on Thyolo Mountain had shrunken, he’d heard, to half its size.  Mike was gone, the rest of his family scattered; only Megan, his sister-in-law was there.  Andy had fond memories of Megan, but who was Megan now? Was there any of the old Megan left after the tragedy of her marriage? Not for the first time, he told himself he should have steered far away from the place. Coming back could only bring back memories best forgotten.  But something had drawn him, almost against his will, and here he was.
    When he drew up in front of the verandah of their old house, the first thing he noticed was that the potted plants were gone.  His mother had had them everywhere; they were her pride and joy.  Without them the wide verandah seemed bare and empty, though all the old furniture was there.  It seemed appropriate somehow.  There was less life and more death around than there had been – in him, on the estate, in his family. His mother was dead, his brother might as well be, and Siobhan was living an empty life in a bedsit in Brixton.  And Megan?  He didn’t know. Maybe what he’d come back for was to find out.
    As if in answer to his thought, the door opened and Megan appeared in it and paused, unsure who was in the car. She was heavier, he thought, not only in weight, but in the way she held herself.  Her beautiful auburn hair had streaks of grey and her face showed that life had not been kind. He thought back to the first time he had seen her on this very spot when she arrived at Matambala from Leicestershire: young and lithe, healthy and hopeful. Even then there had been sadness in her eyes and vulnerability.  He’d fallen in love with her more or less at first sight, though too young and too bashful to do anything about it but be her advocate.
    When she had watched Mike throw him off th e estate – or to be fair, sack him, for he could have stayed as a dependant  – he had been bitter. She hadn’t lifted a finger – gross ingratitude, he figured, after all he’d done to make Mike see her for the prize she was.  And a denial of the affection he had thought she had for him. But the bitterness had mostly faded as he had mulled over the