Hannah was twelve when her mother Debbie and I first got together and only two years older when we were married. Her parents had divorced when she was only three and her 'real' father now lived in Toronto with his new wife and a gaggle of younger British-Canadian kids. Hannah hadn't seen him in years. The last time she had gone to stay she had felt so awkward with his new wife clearly resenting her presence in the house and the kids being far too young to be company for Hannah that the experience had not been repeated - to the disappointment of no-one other than me.
As a result, being an only child of a single mother, Hannah had grown up seeing Debbie, her Mum more as a sister than a mother (in truth there was only an eighteen year gap between them) and the two were extremely close when yours truly first came on the scene.
Debbie and I had been introduced at a friend's barbecue party one warm summer day. Both damaged divorcees in our thirties, we had surprisingly hit it off straight away and Debbie had accepted my suggestion that we meet for lunch later in the week. Over the coming few months, lunch dates had become dinner dates; quick kisses goodbye in the doorway had become slow kisses in the hallway and eventually one wonderful morning I woke up in Debbie's bed with her naked body alongside me.
Within three months we had moved in together and less than a year later we were married. It should have been a happy ending or a new beginning, but our attempt at playing 'happy families' was seriously marred by Hannah's behaviour. I suppose in retrospect, this was entirely predictable.
Hannah took after her Scottish-born father both in appearance and in temperament. A natural redhead with pale, slightly freckly skin and deep green eyes, she was tall and slim to the point of skinny, a situation that made her rather self-conscious and which changed little as she passed through puberty.
She also had a fiery Celtic temper to match and used it to the full on those of whom she disapproved - which in most cases was me!
When I was merely a visiting boyfriend I was tolerated with cool, almost excessive politeness.
When it became clear that her mother and I were sleeping together this changed to bad tempered grumpiness and long silences when we were together.
When I actually moved in with them this became almost open hostility, manifesting itself in ways as trivial as deliberately not setting a place for me at the table; hiding my car keys (eventually found under her bed) through acts of increasing seriousness all the way to teenage temper tantrums and on one memorable occasion the cutting in half of all my ties for a supposed slight I had given her over breakfast.
"She's just trying to get your attention!" Debbie would say. "And mine too. It's only to be expected. She'll grow out of it!"
In my opinion she couldn't grow out of it quickly enough but I bit my lip and kept my mind on my lovely fiancée, as Debbie was at the time.
Debbie was, of course, quite right. Hannah did improve considerably, but not gradually as expected. No. to our joint amazement she changed dramatically almost overnight. Looking back, the key moment in her transformation, to our surprise, was the one time we thought she would be at her worst - our wedding!
Because we had both been married before, we didn't want a long, drawn-out engagement in which Hannah could create disharmony, but did want to make it a very special event for us both so invited a lot of family and friends to a large wedding breakfast. Hannah at first grudgingly agreed to be a bridesmaid and for most of the time maintained an air of bad tempered grumpy co-operation but as preparations progressed and the day approached, she seemed to start actually enjoying the whole process.
It certainly helped that the colour scheme was chosen to suit her. I wasn't allowed in on the plan but when the day finally came and my family and I arrived at the stately Edwardian Registry Office for the ceremony I was completely gobsmacked when my stunning wife-to-be and stepdaughter arrived in the bride's father's cherished Jaguar.
Debbie's figure-hugging mid-thigh length cream dress was trimmed with pale jade, the same colour as the flowers she carried and her long blonde hair was trimmed with pale green ribbon.
A better looking Spring Bride never was seen!
But my mouth truly fell open when Hannah stepped out of the car behind her beautiful mother, looking simply stunning in a close fitting very short sleeveless green dress which matched her mother's to perfection and showed off legs of a length I had never dreamed she possessed. If she had been blessed with boobs it would have shown them off too. Her red hair had been brushed till it shone and was trimmed in the same green ribbon her mother wore.
I positively floated through the ceremony - partly on a raft of champagne, but mostly in disbelief that I could be such a lucky man - and emerged with a ring on my finger and a broad smile on my face.
But what really put the icing on the cake was that, when Debbie and I returned from our honeymoon, it was to a step daughter transformed - sweet, happy and beautiful.
That doesn't mean that the next few years were without their challenges. No indeed!
Apart from the usual 'discussions' about homework, TV and the balance thereof, there were the inevitable 'girly' arguments about make-up (too much), dress style (too tight), skirt length (too short), heel height (too high), fake tan (ridiculous on a freckled red head!), party hours (too late), unsuitable friends (too disreputable) and, of course boyfriends - although there were surprisingly few of these.
To be honest, I stayed well away from most of these issues, leaving Debbie to lay down the law as she saw fit. It was cowardly I know but the two of them had been so close it made my position difficult.
And then there was the issue of privacy.
As Hannah maturated physically if not emotionally, it became increasingly difficult to move around the house without being embarrassed or causing offence.
Sometimes she would sit cross legged casually watching TV either in her underwear or with her skirt up around her waist. I didn't know where to look!
Sometimes the bathroom door wouldn't be properly locked allowing me to accidentally walk in on her in the bath with consequent embarrassment and resentment.
On other days, her bedroom door would be left ajar as she got changed with the same result - trouble for me.
As she grew older and taller so her skirts became shorter and shorter and she continued walking round the house dressed only in her underwear as if she was still a child which made my position very difficult indeed.
Thank God her boobs remained tiny - a fact I knew only too well after walking unsuspecting into my own bedroom one evening to find the newly nineteen-year-old Hannah flagrantly bare-breasted, trying on a new red bikini in front of her mother.
Needless to say I was not popular that night either, but over time we reached an acceptable, if sometimes tense way of living and life carried on.
***
In the spring, just after Hannah's eighteenth birthday, Debbie and I decided to treat ourselves and bought a hot tub for the garden. What with the famously bad British Summers, this was a risky purchase but we had been hankering after one since our family holiday in Portugal the previous year. The villa in which we had stayed had been on a complex which included, amongst other things, a sauna, a steam room and several hot tubs.
