Chapter notes:

Sorry this has taken so long for this next chapter to come out. I have been working with a second beta and we were getting it fit to go on , so all the grammatical errors have been fixed in previous chapters.

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Chapter 2 - New Turf

As we settled down into our first class seats, the panic started to settle in at the thought of leaving my daughter. I looked over to Edward who was staring out of the window, a frown crossing his perfectly formed face. I stretched out the bind around my brain to encompass Edward's mind. Did we make the right choice? I thought, before bringing back my bind.

Edward jumped slightly at the sudden entrance of my thoughts to his brain; it still shocked him occasionally when he was deep in thought and I took him off guard.

"Well it wasn't really our choice to make, love. It was what she wanted and we had to respect that." He whispered to me so humans couldn't hear us.

Alice then leaned over the aisle to me. "I've looked ahead and she's going to get home fine, I cannot see any trouble. She's safe with Jake and the others; we know they can be trusted."

"I know, they're our family too," I replied.

I saw Alice tap Jasper, who was already immersed in a book, on the shoulder and tilt her head slightly over towards Edward and me. A sudden feeling of calm seeped through my body, washing away all of the feelings of anxiety and worry. I was slightly annoyed at the manipulations of my emotions, although I was grateful as I knew there was nothing that I could do now.

"Thank you Jasper," I said sincerely, and settled back into my seat for our long plane journey ahead.

After we had moved from Forks to Darrington, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett all joined Darrington High School as freshmen, as Alice didn't want to be left for a year on her own. Edward and I, however, felt that due to our extreme feelings for one another, we should miss high school as we didn't think we would be able to focus, what with our minds otherwise preoccupied. Our days were spent with our Renesmee and then in the evenings, Jake or Rosalie would spend time with her whilst we had the evening to ourselves in a separate house just a mile away, down the river, from the Cullen household. Then when it came to morning, when everyone would depart for school or work, we would go back to Renesmee. Occasionally Jake or Rose would offer to stay with her for longer and we could have a bit more time for just the two of us, but we never wanted to spend too long away.

Although at this time Nessie was fully matured and didn't really need a babysitter, she was never left alone. We all craved her attention and she adored us anyway, so it was never a problem. After the ten years in Darrington, Edward and I were finally starting to be able to focus on more than our passion for each other and decided that on our next move we would all (Renesmee included) attend high school.

Just over five hours later, our plane landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We exited the plane with our hand luggage and headed to the departure lounge to wait for our next flight.

I took out my cell and phoned Renesmee.

"Hi Mom."

"Hi dear, how are things going? Have you settled in yet?"

"Yeah, everyone from the pack helped Jake move his stuff over this morning and it's already starting to look like a home. We'll be collecting mine from the storage unit in a couple of hours. We're just having a late lunch at the moment, with everyone jammed into our kitchen. Everyone say hi to Bella, she's on the phone."

A chorus of 'Hi's' and 'Hey Bella's' were shouted to me.

"Say hi back from all of us."

"Will do."

"So who's the lunch courtesy of? I hope you're eating too, I don't like to think of you not getting enough to eat, and those guys prefer their 'normal food'."

"Emily came over and is cooking for everyone. You know how she loves to cater for us, and of course I'm eating enough, I could never say no to Emily's cooking," Renesmee replied happily.

In the background a 'why thank you' was said from Emily.

"Good, and how's the house, dear?" Esme and Alice made their way over to me to listen in. "I think Esme got everything to your liking. She's standing next to me now waiting to hear your verdict," I asked tentatively.

"Oh it's perfect; it's exactly what I want! Feels very homely and I can see right over the sea. Thank you so much, Esme. And Jake loves it, he can't stop talking about the garage you built him for his cars," Nessie replied knowing that Esme could hear her, even though I had the phone to my ear.

"You're welcome dear, anytime, and if you ever need anything for it, just let us know and we'll get it right away," Esme said joyously.

"What about her closet? What does she think about that?" Alice chirped

"Oh Alice, of course it's the best bit of the house! No one will ever get to see me in the same thing twice!" Renesmee said delightfully.

At this news, Alice looked as if she was about to bounce off the walls with excitement. Trust my daughter to love clothes just as much as Alice. It's like there's a bit of everyone of our family in her – probably why no one could resist her. Although the fashion shows and photographs probably didn't help from when she was a child, that Rose and Alice put her through.

"It's great to hear everything's going well and you've already settled in. I am afraid we have to go now, our next flight will be leaving soon. I will ring you tonight when we're home and we have everything sorted. Give our love to everyone, and everyone here gives their love to you."

"OK Mom, I will speak to you later, love you."

"Love you too dear," I said and I hung up the phone.

We gathered our luggage and went to the plane. Once again we settled down for the journey in our first class seats. Because our family was so large, we took up almost half of the first class cabin.

Emmett turned around from the seats in front of us, looking happy-go-lucky as always. "Well this is exciting isn't it? We haven't tried living together out of America before. Well, Bella's hardly been anywhere before, so it must be extra exciting for her." Emmett smiled and winked at me, and I let out a too-quiet-for-human-ears growl in return.

"So excited, I can hardly contain it," I said, heavily plastering it with sarcasm. Edward rubbed my shoulder comfortingly.

"Lighten up Bella, we get to experience more of what the world has for us. I was getting bored of America, it's a good time for a change of scenery." I rolled my eyes as Emmett back around and hugged closer to Rose, whispering to her so low that none of us could even hear it, I didn't want to know what was being said between those two at this point; none of us did, although I think if anyone dared to ask, Emmett wouldn't hesitate to tell us every detail.

Trust Emmett to look on the positive side of everything, I could only think about everything that had gone wrong for us and had caused us to move so suddenly,to have to flee the country and split our family apart. I knew Renesmee wanted her independence, but I just wished it didn't mean we'd have to live in different continents for it to happen.

When we moved from Darrington, we decided we should move further away from the Olympic peninsula. As the years were passing and we were all looking just as youthful, we couldn't afford being seen by an old friend. So we moved to Warrensburg, New York and settled into the local school. I still kept in touch with my Mom, Renée, although this was strictly e-mails and phone calls. I knew she wouldn't be able to cope seeing the 'new me'; she was very fragile in that respect. So we cooked up a story about working around the world and kept her updated on what we were supposedly doing. She was thrilled with the stories and I had a great time writing them. She fully accepted how much Edward and I loved each other and so never minded that we kept to ourselves and didn't see her. She was just happy with my constant updates – I even got to send her pictures of Renesmee after a couple of years, when it would seem more feasible we would have a daughter. Although the pictures Alice and Rose had taken we're done in such a short period of time I spread them over the years to make it more believable.

Once our cycle ended and we moved on from Warrensburg, Nessie asked if we could be slightly closer to La Push, as she found it very hard being away from Jake for long periods of time, though she was not ready to leave our family yet. We found our next home in Jasper National Park in Canada. It was close enough for Jake to go between us and La Push, but not too close we might risk being recognized. Hers and Jake's relationship had fully blossomed by this point and they had become a couple while we lived in Darrington, but our close family bond made her want to stay with us, and Jake was all too willing to split his time between Nessie and his pack.

When we settled in Jasper Park, it was not long before Jake got down on one knee and asked Renesmee to marry him. He even did it the proper way by asking Edward,s permission, not that we all wouldn't have known beforehand, thanks to Edward's mind reading abilities and Alice's ability to see the future. Of course she said yes and Jake came to live with us, but keeping regular contact with the pack.

The ceremony was beautiful; mostly filled with werewolves and vampires, strangely enough. However, there were some humans present, mainly other wives, parents, and family friends. Even Tanya's coven came down. It was a quiet ceremony set on the La Push First Beach with decking placed on the floor, and foldable chairs placed on top, with eucalyptus torches lining the edges, and down the aisle were orchids and lilies with tea-lights placed inside. The ceremony took place under the stars. I had never seen Nessie look so beautiful, her bronze hair pinned up behind her head and the curls flowing delicately from the clips, her cheeks tinged pink, and her eyes glistening against the stars. Her white dress accentuated her figure perfectly; it was sleek and flowed in the wind, a strapped dress with delicate crystal decorated flowers covering the upper half of the dress.

Myself, Rose, and Alice were her bridesmaids and of course Edward gave her away. Jake had Quil, Embry, and Seth as his groomsmen, and Leah was the flower girl. An added wonder was that Charlie wanted to be the one to read the vows; he got a clerical license especially for the ceremony.

After the wedding, everything was moved around at the usual vampire speed, and the reception was laid out with tables and chairs and even an area for dancing. Edward's Steinway grand piano was brought down and he played a song he wrote for Nessie and Jake's first dance. Everything was perfect and not one complaint was made about the werewolves and vampires having to spend the whole evening together. Alice had once again done a fantastic job. Jake was officially welcomed into our family, not that this was ever denied beforehand.

In a little over seven hours from take-off, we suddenly landed with a thud and I was pulled from my train of thought. I looked out the window and although it was August, it was tipping it down with rain.

"Well, home sweet home. Come on guys, let's go check out or new digs," Emmet announced.

"So this is England? Well it lives up to expectations of being dismal," Rosalie remarked.

"This is only Heathrow airport. England's a beautiful place, just you wait to see where we're living," Carlisle said, and then added in a whisper just for us, "Also, it rains a lot. It's more often than not cloudy, there's animals to hunt, and if we need anything larger to settle us we can just go away for the weekend, as we did in America. I thought this would be the next best place."

"Don't forget that London is one of the fashion capitals of the world! We even moved here in time for London fashion week," Alice squealed and I groaned, knowing that I was going to be dragged along with Alice and Rosalie on yet another one of their shopping excursions.

As we regained our luggage and found our pre-booked cabs, we started the final journey to our new home.

"What is the place called, this new area we're moving to?" I asked Edward, having not actually paid attention to the planning of the relocation, as I was worrying too much over how Nessie and Jake were going to cope with being so far away from their family.

"The New Forest. It's one of the national parks here; we thought it was best as there are wild deer, horses, donkeys, and cows." To anyone else, and that included our cab driver, this would seem like a perfectly innocent remark; however, we knew that this was for our hunting needs. "Esme has found us a perfect house in the middle of it, completely hidden away in the forest and I'm sure the renovations will start immediately."

At this, Alice, who was sitting next to me, turned with a huge grin plastered over her face.

After a couple hours of listening to Alice and Esme debating over color schemes and layouts of the new house in the front of the cab, we pulled up to the edge of the driveway.

We paid the cab drivers, including a generous tip. Grabbing our luggage, we walked up the driveway to our home. The driveway was gravel and twisted around large ash trees. At the end of the drive it opened out onto an extensive lawn with the driveway running up the middle of it. In the center was situated our new home.

It was a large red-brick country house, although I thought house was an understatement; it was a mansion. It was two stories high, with ivy elegantly creeping up the sides of the house and around the large sash windows. There were three sets of these along either side of the centrally placed doors, flanked by a wing on either side with two more sets behind these. I was pretty sure the building went just as far back as it did along; it was one of the most extravagant buildings we have lived in, compared to the more modern mansions previously chosen by our family.

This was more my taste of home; it made me feel as if I could actually be living in the Jane Austen era. I loved it. I turned to Esme. "Wow! So maybe there are upsides to living in England, although I am starting to wish I could live on the Yorkshire moors where Cathy and Heathcliff lived or maybe Hertfordshire along with the Bennets."

"We thought you would like this house, knowing your love of English literature," Esme replied. "Well, we better start getting ourselves acquainted with the house and start refurbishments, we have a couple of days before all of our stuff will arrive. Why don't you all go and choose your rooms?" She said passing us all keys to the house.

And just like that we were like children again; we all glanced in each other's directions, and then sprinted to the house as fast as possible in hope of getting the best room to suit us. Luckily for me Edward was the fasted out of us, so he managed to get up to the house first, but also meant he had to unlock it. Once he had done this we had all caught up, then it was the fight to get through the door first. Alice, being the smallest, managed to wiggle her way though, closely followed by myself. She threw herself up the stairs in the center of the large open hallway; she took a right and made her way to the room at the end of the long hallway. I halted and looked at her. She was smiling widely.

"Damn it, Alice, I forgot about your stupid abilities, you knew which room was going to be best, you've seen them all before! Please tell me which one will be the best for me," I begged as Alice just continued to smile. Everyone else was still fighting to get through the door way, which I was sure they were going to destroy soon if they continued fighting like that, apart from Jasper who had stopped, knowing he already had his room.

"Ours is the one to the left of Alice and Jasper's room," Edward called to me, looking into Alice's thoughts and seeing which one we would want.

"No fair, Edward! I wanted her and Emmett to fight for that one; it would have been so much fun! You would have won it anyway, Bella," Alice added.

The fighting at the foot of the staircase ceased knowing that the best rooms were taken. Rose and Emmet could take their time in choosing their room as they knew that Carlisle and Esme would just take what was left over.

"Damn it!" Emmett boomed, thumping his fist into the wall.

Edward came up alongside me and slid his arm around my waist. "We're never going to hear the end of this! He's going to be challenging us so much over the next few months, trying to gain back his winning reputation. Remember the last time?"

I rolled my eyes and nodded. Of course I did; my vampiric mind never let me forget any details. Last time Emmett lost a challenge it was quite a big mistake on my behalf. Back in Jasper Park everyone was getting tired of Emmett challenging them all of the time, so I came up with a plan that would hopefully put a slight damper on this. I had a plan and all I needed was a little help. So I found Alice; she loved my plan and help me work it all out. That evening while Alice and Rose were working on designing dresses for the upcoming winter formal, Edward was playing piano and I was reading, and Jasper and Emmett had just finished a game of chess, of which Emmett only just won.

"Ha! I win, I am the undefeated," Emmett announced loudly. "Who wants their butt kicked next?" The rest of us just sighed or rolled our eyes. "Come on, no one thinks they can beat little old me? Come on Bella, what about you? Or not feeling so brave since your Newborn strength vanished years ago?" Emmett challenged.

"You know what Emmett, I will challenge you, and you'll see who the real champion of this house is."

"Game on! What we playing?"

"How does a simple game of table tennis sound?"

"OK." Emmett went off into the side room to get the table and racquets, while Jasper, Edward, and I cleared the room, moving all the sofas and tables to the edge. I glanced down at Alice, who was laying stomach down on the floor surrounded by material and threw her a quick smile. Edward's head then spun to Alice, obviously hearing what we were planning, and then he turned to me, eyebrow quirked. He didn't say anything, just smirked and shook his head.

Emmett then reappeared in the room carrying in hand our table and racquets, which we had specially made in aluminum so it was harder to break.

We took up our positions at the table and as I knew I would, I won on the toss of the coin and got to serve first. "First to nine shall we say?" Emmett asked.

"Sounds good to me," I replied.

I served to the right knowing Emmett's next move and on my next hit I got him out. "One to me," I chirped, as Emmett scowled at me.

His turn to serve, I hit it back to the left and he retaliated as planned. However, when I hit it back I heard from Alice, "Hey Rose, could you pass me that blue fabric please?" I knew this meant that Emmett had suddenly changed his mind on how he was going to react on the next hit. But thanks to Alice and my previously thought out plan, those little words meant I knew Emmett's next few moves and how to get him back onto our pre-planned track. And yet again, I won the next point.

The game continued like this, with the occasional hints from Alice of Emmett's moves, such as "should I make this a halter neck", "what about having a corset underneath this dress," or "I can't wait for the new line of Jimmy Choo's to come out."

In the end I managed to make a clean sweep of Emmett, winning 11-0. The plan went perfectly – what we weren't expecting was Emmett's reaction. He went quiet for a few days, hardly speaking to anyone, not even Rose, just caught up in his own thoughts. Edward and Alice both assured us he was going to be alright, so we carried on like normal and Rose just spent her time with the cars while Emmett was brooding. After a couple of days, Emmett finally snapped out of his stupor, but started challenging us to everything in order to gain back his reputation. These challenges were never ending and ranged from blood draining contests to who could get the most obscure words into a homework assignment. It nearly drove us all insane, which I imagine would be quite hard to do to a vampire, and from then on I knew not to push Emmett to his challenging limits again.

With Edward's arm around my side we carried our stuff into our new room. It was pretty much a perfect square, spanning almost thirty feet each way. The room was high-ceilinged and ornately decorated and the walls were paneled in oak. The windows faced onto the back garden and extended to a superb view over the forest.

"How do you think we should lay out our room, my love?" Edward enquired.

"Well, I'm assuming in good old Esme fashion, this wall will be turned into one large window?" I pointed to the windows overlooking the garden and Edward smiled, confirming my assumptions. "So how about you take the wall to the left here for your music collection and I'll have the wall here, for all of my books?" I said, turning back around to the wall with the door we had just come through. I had grown quite a large collection over the years. "And then the other wall we can cover with curtains, the same with the windows for all of the acoustics, which we can draw back when they're not needed, as I could not keep this wonderful paneling covered up."

"This is just one of the many reasons I love you. It sounds perfect. Exactly right for us," Edward replied.

"I wonder what this door leads to," I said, glancing to a door on the only unclaimed wall. I made my way over to it, turned the knob, and let it slowly swing open. "Wow." It was our ensuite bathroom, and it was lavish to say the least. There were two sinks on top of the white marble surfaces, with the toilet, bath, and bidet seated upon the grey stone floor. The cupboards were of light colored ash and a separate shower was fitted in the corner. "It's not like we'll really need any of this, but it is fantastic!" I exclaimed.

"I'm glad you like it here. Shall we go and join the others?" Edward asked.

"Lead the way."

We left our room and walked back down the long landing and down the central staircase. Although we didn't know the layout, we could sense everyone was in the room to our left. The room we entered was obviously the lounge, although no furniture had been placed in it yet. The ceiling was again high set, paneled, and painted white, whilst the walls were covered in a stunning antique wallpaper. Two suitcases were placed in the center of the room and Esme had already laid out her blueprints on top of them. She and Alice were already starting to decide over how to re-design and refurbish our house. Emmett was in the far corner of the room staring out of the window, a look of deep annoyance set on his face; this was probably why Rose was choosing to be with Esme. It was best to ignore Emmett when he was like this.

Carlisle, Jasper, and Rosalie were discussing hunting techniques for our new location. Edward went over to join them while I went over to Esme to help out with the design of the house, and just like that we were settled into our new home to live as a family in England.

Chapter End Notes:

Again a great thanks to my betas Boufanu and Antebellum, who help me with my big comma problem! Please read and review, I'd love to hear what you think.