Page 2 of Daydreaming at the Boathouse Cafe

Nowadays, it was a two-storey building with long wings that extended along the sandy bank of the lake. It was too large a building for just his parents, his wife and two children to live in, so Hannah’s father Tony had decided to open up the place as a hotel in the early 1980s. He had altered the top floor to accommodate twenty guest bedrooms with en suites, leaving the family to sleep in private staff quarters at the end of the west wing.

What would their dad have made of their recent success, wondered Hannah, glancing up at the nearby hotel. She hoped he would be glad of the hotel being busier than she had ever known. After all, it had been a struggling business for many years, only becoming successful once Ben had taken over as hotel manager after their father’s sudden passing a year ago.

She knew that Ben felt the weight of the success of the family-run hotel on his shoulders. Something he had been anxious to relieve their grandad of when he had moved back home a year ago when their father had died unexpectedly.

Things were definitely on the up for Maple Tree Lodge thanks to a major renovation but Hannah knew that the frequently unoccupied rooms during the week were still a worry for her big brother. Ben, helped by Lily’s interior design skills, had helped steer the hotel into a booming business over the winter most weekends when every one of the hotel’s twenty bedrooms had been occupied with guests. But during the week when the hotel became quieter, the lack of steady income played on everyone’s minds.

But, despite their business worries, to Hannah and the rest of the family, it wasn’t just a hotel. Maple Tree Lodge was their home as well.

‘Come on, Alex!’ shouted Walter as the group of athletes began to draw near on their penultimate lap of the lake.

‘We should be fair to everyone taking part,’ Faye reminded him in a hushed tone.

‘Humph,’ said Walter, his grey eyebrows fusing together in a frown. ‘It’s a competition, isn’t it?’

Hannah’s diminutive grandmother, Dotty, agreed with her husband. ‘Oh, clever Alex! Come on!’ she yelled, before noting her daughter-in-law’s look. ‘What?’ she asked Faye. ‘Why can’t we cheer him on?’

‘Of course you can,’ Ben told her in a quiet tone. ‘He’s my best friend and I want him to win.’

‘Quite right,’ added Jake, Ben’s other best friend, who was standing nearby. ‘I mean, it’s not the Commonwealth Games yet. But everyone says he’s going to win the gold there so why shouldn’t he win this little race as well?’

‘Littlerace?’ Lily laughed. ‘When was the last time you were in an endurance event?’

‘Last weekend when I had that awful date,’ replied Jake, making a face. ‘If you’d had to put up with Annabel’s inane line of conversation, you’d have been in run-away mode as well.’

Ben rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t tell me, another one to add to the pile of abandoned ex-girlfriends.’

‘Too right,’ muttered Jake, with a shudder.

Hannah smiled. Jake’s lack of desire to have any kind of long-term relationship was legendary.

‘Come on, Alex!’ shouted Ben, as his best friend ran past them, in the lead.

Lily nudged him in the chest at his lack of diplomacy but she was smiling and clapping the rest of the pack at the same time.

‘I’ve got the champagne ready,’ said Frankie, their mum’s best friend, joining them. Frankie had moved in after being widowed a few years ago. She now ran the bar in the hotel where her expertise with cocktails had made the snug, as the family referred to it, a success with the guests at the weekends. ‘Alex will have to be careful when he opens the bottle. I’m not sure how long it was in the cellar for.’

‘Alex might not be the winner,’ Lily reminded her in a whispered tone.

‘Rubbish!’ replied Frankie, who wasn’t known for her diplomacy. ‘Of course he’s going to win! Anyway, he’s part of the family!’

Hannah nodded in agreement. It was true. As soon as Ben had brought his best friends Alex and Jake back from university to visit them after their graduation, both men had quickly become close to the Jackson family.

Two years older than Hannah, it was like having two extra older brothers. But where Jake was flirty and fun, Alex was the quieter, dependable one. From his personality, he was entirely suited to the steady life of an accountant. And yet, somewhat to Hannah’s amazement, she found out that his free time was spent taking part in triathlons. Since then, apart from work he always appeared to be training with his father and now he was aiming to reach the highest of goals in four months’ time.

Hannah looked across the lake to where Alex was out on his own at the front, still wearing the wetsuit, which showed off his athletic prowess. There were many admiring females in the crowd nearby and Hannah knew that Alex always attracted women wherever he went, with his handsome face and incredible athletic body. But she had always tried not to think of him like that. He was just Alex, lovely, reliable Alex who was always so kind and generous to her.

All the men in her family had been supportive, especially with her struggles with dyslexia growing up. Ben had tried to shield her from any school bullies but, as wonderful as her big brother was, he couldn’t protect her from everyone.

From Sean, in particular.

He had been Hannah’s first and only serious relationship. She’d had dates before the age of twenty-one but had never fallen in love with anyone before then. Never felt that swimmy feeling in her stomach until she met Sean at work one day.

He had arrived in the position of deputy chef at the restaurant in London where she was a junior pastry chef. As far as she was concerned, Sean had much more talent than she did and so she was flattered when he asked her out, amazed that he had even noticed her. He was dark in both looks and personality, which reflected his skills in running the kitchen in strict style. A lot of the other staff grumbled about him but Hannah had liked that he wasn’t too silly compared to the other men his age.

At the time she had been living with Lily in a shared house with their two other best friends, Beth and Ella. But when Sean had asked her to move in with him, Hannah had jumped at the chance. In love for the first time ever, Hannah had envisaged romantic meals for two, lazy Sunday mornings in bed and giggling in front of the television at the latest comedy series.

But Sean didn’t giggle, she began to realise as soon as she had moved in with him. In fact, he barely smiled. When he did, it made her nervous. As if he was testing her to find out whether she was telling the truth. He would deliberately pick fights and escalate arguments for no reason. Then she would be accused of deliberately making him cross. Over and over again, it was a familiar story that ran all the time. Before she knew it, Hannah was trapped in a spiral of anxiety, dread and fear.