Coming Home to Maple Tree Lodge (The Inn on the Lake #1)

Chapter 1

‘Turn left here,’ announced the satnav. ‘You have arrived at your destination.’

Lily Wilson turned off the country lane and immediately slammed on the brakes. She peered through the car windscreen at the locked wooden gate in front of her, barely visible through the heavy rain.

She pressed the button to wind down the window and stuck her head out before sighing as she stared at the vast overgrown and empty field beyond the gate. This most certainly was not Maple Tree Lodge.

The rain was running down her face so she quickly wound the window back up. Lily glanced at the Google Maps screen on her mobile. But her phone had no signal at all and was still under the impression that she was back in the small village of Cranley which she had driven through ten minutes ago.

So she switched off the satnav screen in the hire car and set off once more, hoping blind luck would help her find the hotel.

She flicked the windscreen wipers to double time but could still see hardly anything on the road in front of her, such was the intensity of the downpour.

It was the end of September and autumn was arriving with an extremely soggy fanfare.

She had to face facts. She was completely and utterly lost in the middle of the English countryside on a rainy Friday afternoon. And there wasn’t a single person around to ask for directions.

It felt as if the universe was sending her a clear signal. You’re lost and it’s pouring down with rain. Are you sure you don’t just want to turn around and go home to London instead?

She shook her head at the idea, telling herself that there were three problems with giving up on this journey despite the odds seemingly stacked against her.

First of all, her current home wasn’t really somewhere that she wanted to go at any time of day or night.

She had rented the small double room in a shared house in Wimbledon for six months and that was over five months too long to live with the three strangers that were her current housemates.

Between Wayne starting up his thumping music every afternoon and leaving it on until midnight, Moira saying that she wasn’t ‘borrowing’ Lily’s make-up every time she went out and Jason with his dubious plantation growing in the attic, Lily couldn’t wait to leave the following week when the lease ran out.

She had lived in various grim places in the capital city over the past decade and each seemed to be worse than the previous one. It was all a stark contrast to the fancy upmarket residences that she had grown up in.

Lily had been born in England but the family hadn’t remained in the country for very long and had left when she was only two years old.

Her father was a diplomat and, as far back as Lily could remember, they had moved every two years or so from country to country, being sent wherever the current government at that time decided to post them.

Her mother was an English teacher and thus was able, most of the time, to continue teaching in each new country whilst also supporting her husband.

Lily had spent her entire childhood starting a new school every year or so in a different country and sometimes a different continent as well. She was barely given enough time to make friends before leaving and having to start all over again. It was extremely unsettling.

As the years went on, Lily began to hold back from making friends, getting used to the feeling of nothing ever feeling permanent as it always, inevitably, changed – schools, friends and homes.

As such, and being an only child, she only had her parents for company most of the time and the feeling of loneliness never really went away.

At the age of twelve, she was sent away to boarding school in England and hated it as soon as she had arrived.

Almost immediately, she had begged her parents to let her return to them but they had refused, telling her that it would get better.

But it hadn’t. The feeling of not being accepted by the tight-knit groups of girls only exacerbated her loneliness and feelings of abandonment.

So Lily withdrew into her shell, deciding that she didn’t need anyone.

That she was stronger on her own and that life would be easier that way.

When she went to stay with her parents during the school holidays, they didn’t seem to sense how much she was missing out by not having friends, merely encouraging her to focus on her schoolwork so that her own career would be as stellar as theirs.

But Lily had never been overly ambitious.

In fact, it sometimes felt as if the only things she had inherited from her parents were her mother’s thick red hair and green eyes.

She only ever wanted attention from her parents but with their hectic social calendar, they didn’t have a great deal of time for her.

However, her bright mind ensured that her exam results were always satisfactory and pleased them.

One Christmas when she was growing up, her parents had gifted her a large doll’s house. It wasn’t very big, with only two floors, but she loved it. For Lily, it represented a permanent home, the one thing she had always dreamt of.

At the age of ten, she was too old to play with dolls but the empty rooms sparked something else inside of her.

She would redecorate them over and over, playing with different styles and ideas for each room and becoming excited when a new idea formed for the next design.

She knew from that moment onwards that she wanted to be an interior designer, despite her parents’ reservations.

They wanted her to follow in her father’s footsteps, telling her that it was a more steady career, but Lily’s mind was made up.

At sixth-form college, she studied graphic and textile design. Once she had left school, she had moved to London to start her apprenticeship in interior design.

She knew that her parents were disappointed in her choice of career.

They knew how little money she earned each month as an apprentice but her creative side was too strong to resist. She refused all offers of money from them, determined to prove that their reservations were wrong.

So she had worked endless weekends and overtime to get ahead of her competition.

The goal had always been to have her own interior design company, a dream that had always been just out of reach. But she had to make it. Had to make that ambition come true. Because then she knew that her parents would finally approve of her choice of career.

However, the hard work had meant that she had put her ambition above almost everything else, including the small group of people in her life who meant the most to her.

Which was reason number two why she couldn’t turn the car around despite feeling ever more lost in the unfamiliar Cotswolds countryside.

When she had arrived in London fourteen years ago, Lily didn’t know anyone.

She had managed to secure rent on a room without first viewing it.

London rental prices were ridiculously expensive so her choices had been limited to a shared house in an extremely undesirable area.

But despite the shabbiness of both the location and the house itself, it turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to Lily.

The house was a brand-new listing and had attracted three other women of the same age: Hannah, Beth and Ella.

Despite Lily’s reluctance to get close to anyone, she couldn’t help herself from slowly bonding with her housemates over their first weeks of living together.

They were all fresh out of college and eager to commence what they hoped would be long and glittering careers in their chosen fields.

Hannah was training to be a pastry chef at a popular restaurant in the West End, Beth was an aspiring astronomer and so was thrilled to be working at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and Ella was a social media assistant in Canary Wharf.

Coming from different areas in England, it was the first time living in London for all of them and after a hard day’s work, they enjoyed nights out in wine bars and even cheaper nights in gossiping over pizza whilst Desperate Housewives and The Big Bang Theory played in the background.

They were all different in their personalities, as well as choices of career, but had remained best friends ever since.

After being so lonely for much of her life so far, Lily instantly felt comforted by their love and friendship.

However, she still never really opened up fully to any of them about her innermost feelings.

The legacy from being sent away to boarding school meant that she would always fear rejection and getting hurt.

And yet Hannah, Beth and Ella had become her family when her parents had always been so distant.

After a couple of years living together, however, things in the house began to change.

Beth had been the first to move out with a once-in-a-lifetime offer of a two-year sabbatical at the South African Astronomical Observatory.

Ella followed soon afterwards, heading to Manchester to work for a tech start-up company.

Only Lily and Hannah remained in the house, and the two new housemates did nothing to endear themselves to the firm friends, so they kept to themselves for another two years with intermittent meet-ups with Beth and Ella whenever they could.

Four years after arriving in London, Lily was still a lowly junior in an interior design firm, not having progressed at all, and Hannah was far too shy and unconfident to make a name for herself in the cut-throat world of catering.