Page 55 of Daydreaming at the Boathouse Cafe

‘Humph,’ muttered Dotty. ‘I’m really too old to be mollycoddled but I see your point, I suppose.’

She returned to walk with her friends to the nearby beach. Dotty’s friends suddenly looked less keen on entering the water as without the sun, the lake looked grey and uninviting.

‘We must be mad,’ muttered someone.

‘Come on, ladies,’ hollered Dotty. ‘Just remember, adventure before dementia!’

With that, Dotty slid off her tracksuit bottoms and sweatshirt to reveal a bright pink swimming costume. She then shucked off her Crocs and headed for the water.

‘Go, Grandma!’ came a nearby shout.

Alex spun around and saw Hannah waving at the group from the balcony of the boathouse. He was glad to see her smiling, despite the nerves that she had confessed about the opening of the café the following day.

Among the group, and far more slowly than Dotty, robes and jumpers were then stripped off and shoes removed.

Then someone yelled, ‘Charge!’

With a collective groan, her friends followed suit, shivering across the sand towards the water’s edge. On putting their feet in, there were squeals of shock as the icy water hit the ankles and the cold bit to the bone. From his years of experience, Alex knew exactly how that felt.

‘Let’s just get on and get it over,’ muttered someone.

‘Ten minutes only,’ announced Alex. ‘I’ll be timing you all.’

‘Can’t you make it five?’ asked Mavis, one of Dotty’s least athletic friends.

He smiled at her. ‘Just remember, you’ll be at your coldest when you get out of the water so wrap up in your clothes as soon as you get out,’ he told them.

‘Come on, girls,’ urged Dotty, already up to her knees in the water.

Accompanied by various squeals and screams in deference to the cold temperature of the water, the women finally went in.

As they paddled out, Alex could hear their chatter as they all moaned and groaned in solidarity in the freezing cold. He checked his watch and set the timer, determined to watch them all.

Once exactly ten minutes were up, Alex called across for them to come out of the water. He noticed that there wasn’t too much resistance being made, and that included Dotty.

As they all waded back to shore, Alex kept an eye on each of the ladies to make sure that they didn’t go into shock from the chilly temperature.

‘Get dressed quickly, remember,’ he told them.

‘As if we’re going to stand around in the freezing cold,’ muttered someone.

Alex shot them a grin, just grateful that they were all safe and had survived their first icy-cold dip.

30

Hannah looked down from the boathouse veranda at her grandmother and friends shivering on the beach as the sun went back behind another cloud.

She immediately felt glad that she had already asked Dotty to invite them into the boathouse for some warm drinks.

In a way, it would be a trial run for any customers that appeared for the opening of the café the following day. She was torn between wanting it to be busy and successful and just wanting to hide behind the counter all day.

She felt a little nervous when the women came into the café but then noticed that, despite getting dressed, they were still shivering from the cold and decided that it was more important to get their temperatures back up to normal once more, given that none of them were under the age of seventy.

‘Please sit down,’ she told them. ‘I’ll bring you all some hot drinks.’

A new coffee machine had been delivered the previous day but the instructions might as well have been written in Mandarin for all the sense she had been able to make of them. She had already decided to ask Alex to help decipher them but as he was still chatting with Ben outside, she decided on heating up some milk on the stove for a mug of hot chocolate which would help warm them all up on the inside. Then she added tiny marshmallows and whipped cream on the top with chocolate flakes, all in an effort to make a good first impression. And this was her first dummy run.

She put all the mugs onto a tray and carefully carried them outside where the ladies had decided to sit to carry on enjoying the fresh air.