A Way Back Home: Full of warmth, laughter, tears and a wedding! (The Willow Tree Hall Series)

by Alison Sherlock

  A WAY BACK HOME

  Alison Sherlock

  Start Reading

  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About A Way Back Home

  After recent heartbreak, Skye Jackson finds herself homeless and on the road with only a classic Airstream trailer to her name. A surprise inheritance of a rundown little lodge in the grounds of beautiful Willow Tree Hall forces her to change her plans. However there is a problem…

  The lodge is co-owned by care-free playboy Will Harris, who finds himself unemployed after a recent tabloid scandal.

  Skye desperately wants a home to call her own and needs to move on as quickly as possible. Will doesn’t want to stay at his family home either to face the ghosts of his past. So they decide to put aside their differences and renovate the cottage together.

  But when a storm hits, Skye and Will are forced to stay on to ensure that an important wedding goes ahead. Can Skye finally find a home of her own? Can Will stop running from his past and help out his family when they need him the most?

  The magic of winter at Willow Tree Hall is about to change everything…

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About A Way Back Home

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About Alison Sherlock

  The Willow Tree Hall Series

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  Behind every author is a best friend who has read all the books, even the unpublished ones! So this book is for Jo Botelle who has encouraged me every step of the way. Thank you, Jo. I’m so glad you sat next to me in typing all those years ago. x

  1

  There is a skill to driving a car whilst towing a trailer. Unfortunately Skye Jackson had yet to master it.

  The loud sound of a metal clang rang out and Skye slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt halt. She checked the view in the driver’s side mirror and grimaced. It was as she feared. The back of the shiny silver Airstream she was towing was caught on the wrought-iron gate entrance she had just driven through.

  Feeling worried, she opened the door and got out to inspect the damage. Thankfully, even in the gloom of the heavy autumn fog, she was pleased to see no dents or scars in the aluminium surface.

  Despite her complete lack of towing abilities, she loved the tiny but classic 1950s American trailer. It suited her bohemian style with its retro design of smooth rounded edges and lack of hard corners. It wouldn’t have looked out of place on the fields at Glastonbury. After all, this wasn’t a traditional caravan. The clue was in its name. It was designed to move like a silver stream of air and be light enough to be towed by a car.

  Which was a good thing, as she only had her dilapidated Fiesta to tow it with. The problem hadn’t been towing the vintage Airstream in a straight line. The difficulty had been manoeuvring the eighteen foot long trailer around corners.

  Skye ran her hand down the smooth side of the Airstream again but there was definitely no damage. She gave a shaky sigh of relief. That would have been the worst thing to have happened, especially now that it was hers to keep.

  Dear sweet lovely Norman. How she missed him. The thought of him still gave her a lump in her throat on top of an already emotional day. She had just closed the front door for the last time on the happy home that they had shared for the past decade. Just Skye, her sister and Norman. They had been a very happy threesome with Norman becoming a surrogate grandfather to both women.

  Now all she had to remember him by were her precious memories and his beloved Airstream. It had been one of Norman’s most treasured possessions. Apparently he and his late wife had travelled across America with it before bringing the trailer back to London in the early seventies. After he had been widowed, Norman hadn’t had the heart to go on any more adventures in the Airstream and so it had remained in front of his house for the past decade.

  With no children to pass anything onto, he had told Skye that it would become hers one day. ‘It’s worth quite a bit of money,’ Norman had told her.

  But Skye didn’t care about what it might be worth. She would never dream of selling it, despite being stony broke. The Airstream was her last link to Norman and she treasured it just as much as he had done.

  Although the truth was that she had much preferred renovating the inside of the pretty travel trailer than the eventful afternoon she had just endured towing it for the first time ever behind her car. She had caused the traffic in central London to almost grind to a halt as she had crawled down the busy streets at 10 mph, desperate not to mount the kerb and hurt anyone.

  Then, once on the motorway, she had dragged a couple of traffic cones underneath the trailer before a fellow motorist had pointed them out to her at a service station.

  Finally, she had had to endure the horror of the narrow country lanes with their many corners and hills before arriving at the entrance to Willow Tree Hall which is where she found herself now.

  She glanced around to see if anyone had witnessed her towing failure. But thankfully there was nobody in sight. In fact, she had barely seen anyone as she had driven through the tiny hamlet of Cranley a few minutes previously.

  Feeling thoroughly spooked, she quickly got back into the car and considered whether she should just get out of there. She was in the middle of the countryside, for goodness’ sake! It was creepy and far too much of a contrast for someone who had never left the busy streets of London.

  Skye didn’t do different. For the past ten years, she had enjoyed an orderly, steady life where she knew what she was doing and where she was going. The fact that Willow Tree Hall was such an unknown just added to her already heightened state of anxiety.

  Why on earth was she putting herself through the misery of this magical mystery tour? It was a ridiculous idea. She should have just driven straight to Liverpool to stay with her sister. That had been her original plan and would have mainly involved motorways which were nice and straight. She should never have been sidetracked.

  Her mobile rang whils
t she was still deep in thought. Seeing the name Summer on the screen, she immediately picked up the phone to talk to her younger sister.

  ‘Hey,’ said Summer. ‘Are you there yet?’

  ‘Nearly,’ said Skye, peering through the front windscreen. She could just make out that the driveway was surrounded on both sides by fields full of golden brown long grass before they disappeared into the fog. ‘It’s taken me hours to get here. Far longer than Google said it would. But look, I was thinking, maybe I should just turn around and come straight up to Liverpool. I mean, it’s no big deal if I don’t visit this Willow Tree Hall, is it?’

  ‘Are you mad?’ said Summer, groaning down the line. ‘Don’t give up now, sis! What about your dream? Have you forgotten about Venice?’

  Skye blew out a long sigh. ‘Yeah, but maybe I can find the plane fare some other way. I could get a really cheap deal once I’ve got another job and saved up.’

  ‘And stay where when you get there? I can’t see you sleeping rough on the side of a canal,’ said Summer. ‘Mind you, if it involved a hunky gondolier then I’d say go for it!’

  ‘Of course you would,’ said Skye, rolling her eyes. Her sister had a long history of interchangeable boyfriends. ‘Look, this is all way too much for me to handle. I’ve just said goodbye to the house for the last time and that was hard enough.’

  ‘I know. It was hard for me too.’ Skye heard the sadness in her sister’s voice.

  Summer had left a few weeks previously and Skye could still remember their shared tears.

  ‘But maybe you could treat it as a sort of day off,’ carried on Summer. ‘I mean, when was the last time you did anything but work at that café?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ replied Skye quickly.

  ‘That was your first day off in months,’ her sister reminded her. ‘Years actually, come to think of it. And that was only because the environmental officer shut the place down and your boss legged it out of London, leaving you without a job. When was the last time that you went out on a date? Lived a little?’

  ‘I’ve been busy, remember?’ Skye’s voice cracked with emotion. ‘Bills still needed to be paid even though you’ve already moved out. And you know that I had to go through Norman’s house before the whole place was sold.’

  The past six months had been the worst of times for Skye. Although Norman had moved into a care home eighteen months before he had passed away, the house had remained exactly the same as if he had still been living there. But once he had died, the fees for the care home had to be settled from the estate and used up every penny of the proceeds from the sale of the house. Summer had helped as often as she had been able to, but her hours at the hospital were so busy that the bulk of the clearing of the house had been shouldered by Skye, especially as the unhappy task had needed to be done quickly.

  Still grieving for Norman, it had been a double blow when Summer had then moved permanently up north a few months previously for her new job. They had always been so close, a constant source of comfort to each other during their tumultuous childhoods. To not have her sister close by had been difficult for Skye.

  ‘I know it’s been horrible for you,’ said Summer. ‘But I’m a junior doctor in a crazily busy A&E department and I still get time off to go out.’ Her voice became softer. ‘Norman wouldn’t want you to just fritter your life away, would he?’

  Skye gulped away the tears that stung her eyes as she shook her head in response.

  ‘Why else would he leave you that lovely Airstream when I only got his book collection?’ carried on Summer with a soft laugh.

  Skye smiled. She knew that her sister cherished Norman’s classic novels and would never part with them. She forced herself to sound more cheerful. ‘Well, maybe I won’t come and sleep on your sofa tonight after all. Maybe I’ll go touring round Europe in my lovely trailer!’ She bit her lip. She could barely drive it around her own country, as that afternoon had proved. What hope did she have of driving it through narrow roads winding up and over the Alps?

  Anyway, her inner voice reminded her, this wasn’t just about her dreams, whatever they were. This was about moving up to Liverpool and finding a new life for her and Summer Although Summer was a little further ahead with that than Skye was.

  ‘Did you manage to put that traffic cone in the parking space outside your flat?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry. I forgot and I’m at the hospital now,’ said Summer, sounding sheepish. ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll sort something out.’

  Skye rolled her eyes. Her sister was spectacularly disorganised. Oh well. She would sort it all out when she arrived. The curse of the older sister was that everything fell onto her shoulders.

  ‘Well, here’s hoping that whatever else it is that Norman’s left you at this Willow Tree Hall can be sold,’ said Summer. ‘Then you can have that wild afternoon in bed with a gondolier before too long.’

  ‘It’s all about the sex with you today,’ said Skye. ‘Shouldn’t you be saving lives or something?’

  ‘I can do both. I’m very flexible,’ replied Summer, the sound of sirens getting louder in the background. ‘Hey, I’d better go. Let me know how you get on. Love you.’

  ‘Love you, too.’

  Skye put down the mobile with a sigh, grateful that her younger sister’s life was sorted. All the sacrifices that she had made whilst Summer had completed her medical degree had been worth it. She was happy and settled.

  Of course, it was ironic, she thought, that whilst Summer had a bright future ahead of her, Skye had no job and, as of that morning, nowhere to live. To some people, that would have been an exciting adventure after so many years taking care of everyone else. A leap into the unknown. But Skye and her sister had grown up never knowing what tomorrow would bring or where their mother’s wanderings would lead them next. Skye had had enough of insecurity by the time she reached eighteen years old.

  Thankfully, then, they had begun to live with Norman. Once their mother had moved on once more, Skye and Summer could begin to settle into a home at long last. For the past ten years, Skye had taken charge of their lives and guardianship of her younger sister. Independent of their mother’s contrary life, Summer had finished her schooling and, thanks to Norman, they both had a secure and stable home life.

  Skye had just about managed to pay the rent on their rooms to Norman every month for the past decade, taking any jobs she could to make ends meet. In return, she had taken care of him as his health had begun to deteriorate and the house had become too large for him to cope with. He had slowly and steadily become a grandfather to them both.

  But now that Norman had passed away, all that security had been taken from her once more. His house had needed to be sold to pay for all the bills that had been incurred in the final few years. She hadn’t been able to find anywhere else to live as rental prices had shot up in London and, with the double whammy of the café she ran closing down, she had no job either. Everything she owned was packed away in the back of the car and her trailer. The car seats were chock full of her personal possessions. The trailer itself was crammed with boxes of spare materials, paint and anything else that she could use to upcycle any living space once she had found somewhere for both her and Summer to live.

  Her original plan had been to head straight up north to Liverpool but the unexpected discovery of the letter a few weeks previously had changed everything.

  Whilst clearing out Norman’s paperwork, Skye had discovered a letter telling her to visit this strange place.

  Dearest Skye,

  Go and find Arthur Harris at Willow Tree Hall in Cranley. He’ll show you what is rightfully yours. You deserve it. Be happy.

  Love always,

  Norman x.

  Skye had been too busy to bother with the matter until now. So her great plan was to visit Willow Tree Hall and then continue on to Liverpool that evening where Summer was now sharing a flat with three other medical students. Once there, the sisters were going to figure out some kind of living arrangement
whilst Skye found a job.

  She stared out at the long driveway disappearing into the mist far beyond. But first she had to be brave and do this.

  What did she expect to find from this unexpected inheritance she had only just found out about? A nice piece of jewellery? Some old antique? Surely it didn’t matter that much. She still believed that she should never have come on this wild goose chase.

  So why did she? Because Norman had left her this note telling her to. Because they had looked after each other for so long that she trusted him, a rare thing in her life so far. Because the note had made her feel as if Norman were still with her even though her heavy grieving heart reminded her otherwise.

  She glanced at her handbag on the passenger seat. The letter she had found addressed to her was sticking out of the top.

  It was going to be fine, she told herself. She just had to take control again.

  So she took off the handbrake and forced herself to carry on driving. Just as soon as she had backed up the car and taken another go at manoeuvring the trailer past the gates, of course, which only took a further four attempts.

  Thankfully, the long driveway she now found herself in was relatively straight with no sharp corners. What it did have, however, was potholes and lots of them. She could feel the Airstream bouncing around on its tow bar, so quickly slowed down so that it didn’t catapult them both off the road.

  Skye had never left the city. Had never needed to. Her life was with her sister and everything they had ever wanted was on the streets of London. And yet, here she was in the middle of the countryside. No traffic noise. No buses. No people apparently. Just the large, empty fields on either side of the driveway.

  In the field to the left, a massive willow tree loomed out of the fog, its leaves a golden yellow. And just beyond it, the huge building after which it had been named came into view.

  Skye was stunned. She hadn’t known what to expect from Willow Tree Hall but this imposing stately home hadn’t been anywhere close in her imagination.