Heading Home to Lavender Cottage

Alison Sherlock

Description

Welcome to Alison Sherlocks new series, full of heart warming characters set in the idyllic English countryside.

With nowhere else to go, Harriet Colgan has returned to the sleepy village of Cranfield to sell her beloved aunt and uncle’s cottage, the only place she ever called home.
When she arrives at Lavender Cottage, Harriet discovers plans to replace the beautiful lavender fields, her uncle’s pride and joy, with an industrial warehouse.
With time on her hands, she realises she must fight to protect her family’s legacy and the village of Cranfield as well.
Workaholic businessman Joe Randall was expecting an easy purchase of the lavender fields. But suddenly his quiet life is disrupted by protests from angry locals, organised by Harriet.
Can Harriet show Joe that there’s more to life than just work? And can Joe change his mind and help Harriet save the lavender fields?
Over a long, hot summer, and with the help of a stray dog, perhaps Harriet and Joe can find their way home too.
Perfect for the fans of Holly Martin and Cathy Bramley

Sujets

• Mashups
• Wholesome
• Women
• Coming of Age
• Friendship
• Contemporary history
• Woman
• The Women
• Clean
• Contemporary
• Family Life
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 09 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781804264270
• Langue: English

Extrait

HEADING HOME TO LAVENDER COTTAGE


ALISON SHERLOCK
To Auntie Margaret. With much love x
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56


More from Alison Sherlock

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Alison Sherlock

Love Notes

About Boldwood Books
1

According to the proverb, with age comes wisdom. Which left Harriet Colgan wondering why, at the age of thirty, she had forgotten to fill her car with petrol and was now sitting on a dark country lane in a broken-down vehicle.
She knew why she’d forgotten, of course. Having spent most of a frantic day packing up her car with nearly everything she owned, desperate to get to her aunt and uncle’s cottage far away in Cranfield before nightfall, she had pushed on all the way from London without stopping. So, there she was, only two miles from her destination and stranded.
Well, not exactly stranded, she reminded herself. She had sent a text to Libby, one of her best friends who lived in Cranfield, asking her to come out and rescue her. The trouble was that the signal in the middle of the English countryside was decidedly hit and miss, and Libby hadn’t replied yet.
Not to worry, thought Harriet, taking a calming breath. She would, as always, remain optimistic. A positive mental attitude meant everything to her. After all, although she was stuck, she was now able to look out at the beautiful starry March sky through her windscreen. She should be thankful that it was so clear and cold that night, thereby giving her a great view.
Actually, it was very cold, she realised with a shiver. She pulled a nearby sweatshirt over her head before checking her reflection in the mirror. She winced at the silhouette in the darkness. As anticipated, her long red hair was as wild and wavy as ever. No matter how many times she had tried to straighten it, her hair always kinked almost immediately afterwards, so she had given up trying. Although, the state of her hair was really the least of her worries right now.
Hoping for some kind of miracle by way of positive thinking, she turned the key in the ignition once more, but the engine merely gave her a pitiful sigh in response and refused to start up.
She rubbed her forehead where a headache threatened to come rushing in. Despite all of her determined positivity, it was a bad end to a spectacularly awful week.
The previous day, the beauty therapy salon in London that she had owned and managed had closed after three years. The exclusive address in Knightsbridge had provided droves of satisfied clientele, but it was the business figures that had let her down. The SW1 postcode came with way too high a rent for Harriet to cope with. She had tried to make the figures work in her favour by taking on even more customers over the past six months, working late into each and every evening, but it had been to no avail.
As the lease had been due to expire in the next few days, she had decided with a heavy heart to give up the business before she was saddled with ever-increasing amounts of debt. As it was, she had nothing but a bank balance in the red to show for all the long days of hard work tending to the whims of the demanding clientele she had catered for.
Harriet knew that her skills as a beauty therapist were good, but she should never have let her parents persuade her to set up a business in such an expensive area. If only she had been brave enough to say no at the very beginning and thus save herself all the current heartache. But, as always, Harriet had put on a brave front and found herself agreeing to run things their way, even though they were currently in the Caribbean setting up yet another law practice, this time in the tax haven of Bermuda. Her older siblings were in Paraguay and Australia, both also specialising in law with their own successful practices.
Harriet, born ten years after her brother and sister, was a red-headed anomaly in a family of high-achieving brunettes. She didn’t excel at any kind of academic profession, even though she had tried many times over, every attempt ending in failure. Even her looks were different from the rest of the family. They all had straight, manageable hair and skin that tanned easily. Harriet had pale skin and freckles with wild, long, wavy hair.
Sent to an extremely expensive all-girls boarding school at the age of ten, she had continued to feel like an outsider, especially when frequently reminded by the teachers how her sister had excelled at most subjects when she had been there a decade previously. It hadn’t helped Harriet’s self-esteem that her dyslexia had been undiagnosed until she had been well into her teenage years, by which time any confidence in her academic abilities had completely disappeared.
However, whenever she had tried to tell her parents just how miserable she was feeling, they had dismissed her unhappiness as teenage grumbles. She always remembered the most brutal conversation of all with her mother, soon after her first term at senior school had begun.
‘You’ll find life very difficult if you’re going to see the negativity in everything,’ her mum had snapped, interrupting her daughter’s moaning. ‘For goodness sake, keep a stiff upper lip and carry on. Remember the family name. We have a reputation to uphold.’
So, Harriet did as she was told. She suppressed her unhappiness and, in turn, most of her emotions, instead putting on a brave face. The trouble was that she had continued to do so ever since, and now she wasn’t sure she could be true even to herself any more.
Only in the tiny village of Cranfield had she ever felt as if she could behave truly like herself. With her parents abroad most of the time for work and her siblings already having left home to start studying for their law degrees, Harriet normally went to stay with her Aunt May and Uncle Fred for the school holidays. In complete contrast to her own parents, her aunt and uncle had never put any pressure on Harriet, merely giving her the love and support which she so desperately craved, having received almost no affection from her parents.
Uncle Fred had continued to encourage his niece to keep following her dreams, even when her business in London seemed doomed from the outset.
‘So, your business might fail,’ he had told Harriet only six months ago when she had confessed how worried she was about it. ‘It happens, love. I know it’s rubbish, but you’ll be just fine. You’ve got a good heart, and that’s all that matters. Just remember how much you’re loved and always will be. That’s the important thing.’
It had been the last conversation that they had ever had.
One day later, her uncle had passed away. The official reason had been listed as a heart attack, but Harriet knew it was a broken heart after the loss of his dear wife one year previously.
Equally broken-hearted six months on from that dreadful day, Harriet was still struggling without her beloved aunt and uncle in her life. But she was still carrying on, putting a brave face on her grief, even when her best friends pushed her to be open and honest with them.
Sitting in the darkness of her car, Harriet shook her head at herself. Why did she always have to put on a show and be so cheerful when really, she just wanted to wail and wallow that life was sometimes just too hard, too unfair? It was ridiculous.
But the positive attitude she had tried to live by since her childhood had saved her from much heartache, and it was a hard habit to break.
Libby and Flora mocked her gently for it. Her best friends had tried over and over to encourage her to be honest and lose the protective shell she had worn for so long. But it had gotten her this far, hadn’t it?
At least their bond of friendship was unbreakable. There, in the tiny village where there weren’t too many other children of a similar age, she had bonded quickly with Flora and Libby during the school holidays, both of whom had grown up in Cranfield.
Twenty years on, they were still as close a group of friends as ever, despite Harriet trying and failing to make her beauty salon business a success far away in London and Libby often absent with her job as a flight attendant. Only Flora, struggling to take care of the family farm, had remained in Cranfield full-time.
Harriet missed her friends terribly, although they tried to meet up as often as possible whenever she returned to Cranfield during the holidays. She would have loved to have lived closer, but glamorous beauty salons were hard to come by in the middle of the quiet English countryside. And business was the most important thing in life, as her father constantly reminded her.
She had yet to work up the courage to tell her parents of her decision to close down the beauty salon. She had last seen them at Uncle Fred’s funeral, a sad, blustery, autumnal day six months ago. They had swiftly returned to the warmth of the Caribbean soon afterwards, leaving her to fend for herself once more.
She glanced over at the passenger seat, piled high with bags of clothes and shoes. On the back seat and in the car boot was everything else. She had kept most of her beauty therapy items but had had to leave all the larger technical equi