‘My husband built me a treehouse and made my dreams come true’
Cathy Bramley, 50, from Nottinghamshire, knew she needed her own space, so her husband came up with a plan.
On crisp autumn mornings, I fill my thermos flask with reviving coffee, slip on my wellies and cross the dewy grass to my treehouse at the end of the garden. There’s nothing fancy about it, but it was built with love by my husband Tony and it’s the place where I escape to think and write. I’ve now written 10 books – and I know I couldn’t have achieved my dream without it.
In 2011, we moved to a little village and rebuilt the bungalow Tony had inherited from his father. I had a busy job in marketing, but I’d wanted a change of direction for a long time. One day I was walking through the village when I spotted a lovely old-fashioned phonebox. It had been converted into a charming book exchange, like a mini-library, and I
borrowed a book, Jenny Colgan’s Meet Me At The Cupcake Cafe.
It was one of those books that you can’t stop thinking about, where you feel like you know the characters and the story stays in your head for weeks. I started to wonder if I could write a book myself, one that would make readers feel as connected as I had done when I was racing through the pages. I decided to give it a go.
Before going to work, I’d get up early and make a start, but as soon as the rest of the house – Tony and our daughters, Phoebe, 18, and Isobel, 16 – woke up, I couldn’t concentrate any more. I knew I needed my own space; a place to really get lost in my writing. Tony suggested a treehouse and drew a little sketch on a scrap of paper to illustrate what it might look like.