Tiff still hadn’t told her she was staying at the gym. There was so much to do in the building, and really the stack of gym mats were proving to be a perfectly adequate mattress, if on the severer side of firm. Firm was supposed to be good for the back, wasn’t it?
‘I’ve worked out a deal on the accommodation,’ Tiff said. Not quite a lie, more a manipulation of the truth. ‘Once this place is up and running, I’ll have time to find the right place.’ That was true, at least. ‘And I plan to buy,’ she stated, hoping the decisive tone would appease her friend.
The phone rang, which neatly curbed that conversation, as she crawled up on to her chair to grab it. Shelby grabbed her other foot, continuing the massage.
‘Tiffanie Trent,’ she said.
The line was silent.
‘Hello? Blackie’s Gym.’ As the silence continued through the receiver, Tiff felt a chill descend on her. Perhaps the phone wasn’t faulty at all. She’d experienced this before; the echoing void, the malignant connection. She’d put the fear of it behind her when she’d moved in with Gavin, but now it eked its way back into her. Surely not. Not again. She replaced the receiver and stared at it.
‘All right, babes?’ Shelby asked.
‘Mmm,’ Tiff said, trying to rouse herself from her concerns. Why would the calls start again? Why here?
A tap at the door was a welcome distraction.
‘Tiff, we can start a day earlier,’ Jess said, with a nod of hello towards Shelby, not batting an eyelid at the in-office foot massage.
‘That’s excellent,’ she said. That’s scary, she thought. ‘I’ve just ordered a tonne of kit for delivery on the dates you gave me.’
‘Right oh. Catch you later.’ Jess moved off, whistling.
Shelby took it as her cue to leave too. With a kiss planted firmly on Tiff’s cheek she headed for the door. ‘Remember as soon as Jess has the walls up and sorted I’ll come over and help you clean.’
‘I love you, mate. Have I told you that recently?’ Tiff said with a wan smile. She knew Shelby’s offer was genuine and she’d be there broom in hand – unless of course a hot date came up in the meantime.
‘Not enough. And don’t get too excited, I’m expecting a free life-time membership.’
‘Of course,’ Tiff nodded, ‘S’not like you’ll do anything with it, so that’s no loss.’
‘Hmm,’ Shelby mused in agreement, ‘I’ll have my own designated seat in the bar then. See ya, babes.’
Looking at her spreadsheet, with the odd sideways glance at the phone, Tiff felt the room was always much emptier and lonelier when Shelby left it.
Chapter 15
There was generally a lull in the sparring hall’s activity around mid-afternoon. The lunchtime crowd had moved off and Ron would tidy the hall ahead of the after-school mob. He’d hardly been upstairs in the last few weeks. While she wasn’t desperate for his company Tiff knew she ought to make some effort to fix their relationship, so centred herself when she heard the heavy feet on the stairs.
‘Good, you’re here.’
She looked up with surprise. Gavin. There was a huge sucking sensation in her stomach and she was pretty sure she heard a thud as her jaw hit the desk. It was the first time she’d laid eyes on him since they broke up.
He was still breath-taking. His jaw was chiselled to perfection and he always, ALWAYS, looked razor-sharp in a suit. Estate agents seemed to pride themselves on their suits and Gavin’s collection was impressive. She invariably felt funny in her knickers looking at him in a suit. Which was in direct conflict with her heart which was dancing a tango of pain and hurt.
‘I came to see if it was true. About the gym.’ Oh. Not to see me then. But she didn’t say it. She wasn’t going to start out being needy.
‘You thought I was lying?’ Tiff swivelled from side to side. She was hoping the effect was of a global mogul, but really she felt like a kid in Daddy’s over-sized office chair.
‘No, no of course not,’ he said carefully, ‘not lying. Exaggerating, perhaps?’ He cocked his head at her to see if he was right. She’d told him once it made him look boyish and irresistible. He’d done it regularly ever since.
He was inferring she’d deliberately overplayed the facts in order to get at him. How petty did he take her to be? Of course, she had blurted it out to get exactly a reaction like this, but it was in fact the truth, which clearly exonerated her.
‘Nope. No exaggeration,’ she said plainly, resisting the urge to fling her arms open and shout ‘Behold! My empire.’
‘Well then, congratulations,’ he said amiably, which surprised her. She hadn’t thought he’d take it so well. Gavin wasn’t an envious guy as such; he aspired to be successful and admired people with their own businesses, but he liked to see people earning their successes. Earning success gives it value, Tiff – Donald Lynn Frost. So she’d expected him to be put out by hers. Had she really dropped the news on him hoping he’d come spinning over in a pique of envy? Had she done it to show him he should have stuck around, as she was worth a bit now?
Totally.
She knew she had. And if that was why he was here, she’d willingly take him back and share it with him. Shelby would kill her obviously, but how could she turn him down? There was that suit, for starters.
‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, straightening the paraphernalia on the desk trying to look commanding, but really she wanted to stare at him and drink him in. He wandered into the office and sat in the opposite chair. This was it. This was her moment to start impressing him. She wished she’d had a little forewarning; a hairbrush and some mascara wouldn’t have gone amiss. She smoothed her unruly curls as subtly as possible, as she sat up straight and tried to channel Karren Brady.
‘So what have you got yourself?’ He looked around. ‘Three storey self-contained office space—’ His voice had shifted into estate agent mode.
‘Well two storeys are currently office, downstairs is obviously—’ she interjected, but he wasn’t listening.
‘Mixed usage, I’m guessing a total of about three thousand square metres, yes?’
‘I’m not—’ she hadn’t looked at details like that. Jess had done all the measurements.
‘The dedicated off-road parking is an asset.’
‘Yes, Blackie was always chuffed with the parking.’
‘I’m sure you’d rent it out for a decent value Tiff, but honestly that’s a huge faff, unless you engage a management agent and then you can kiss goodbye to their cut every month.’
‘No, that’s not what I’m doing,’ she said quickly, for once managing to complete a sentence. But she could see from his gaze and the way he was steepling his fingertips, he was in the zone. His espousing zone.
‘Good girl, I knew you’d be smart.’ He thought she was smart! ‘Selling to developers is definitely the way to go.’ He caught himself as a thought hit him, a look of horror crossing his face. ‘You weren’t thinking of developing it yourself, were you? You know nothing about house development.’
That was a tad harsh, given she’d watched hundreds of Sarah Beeny shows, and made all his design wishes come true in their flat. But Tiff took his point.
‘No, I—’ she began, but he took it as a starting pistol and set off again.
‘There’s a raft of decent firms who’d be interested in this plot. I can connect you, but don’t leave it too long. You want the money out as soon as you can before it starts racking up bills and eating into your savings. No doubt a place like this bleeds heat. It’s got money-pit written all over it.’
Tiff felt a stab of outrage, as if he’d insulted her first-born. It made her chip in flippantly, ‘That’s okay, Blackie left me money too.’
‘What?’ His head recoiled slightly.
She shrugged at him, playing it cool. Was that a tinge of envy? Was it? Now his ears were pricking up.
‘He left me funds to sort things,’ she said, willing him to be excited for her and then to please get onto the wanting her back pa
rt.
‘That’s fair enough, I suppose. Decent, in fact. Can’t leave someone a fiscal drain and expect them to keep running it without some finance. Hopefully it’s enough to get you through the interim until you can sell.’ He was back on his pre-determined track. ‘This is an up-and-coming area, Tiff.’ He stopped and had looked vaguely shifty, ‘Okay, there’s other parts of town which are probably next in line, but I wouldn’t wait.’
Clearly he was in full estate agent spiel at this point, because it was going to take more than some new housing to bring this area up. A fitness club though would help bring it to within a sniff of ‘up-and-coming’.
‘I’m not selling it, Gav,’ she said, firmly, but with a smile. It was time to lay it on the line and watch the admiration, possibly awe, dawn on his face.
‘Pardon? But you said you didn’t want to develop—’
‘I don’t.’ She cut him off for once, but only to cut to the chase. She was too excited to wait for him to get there. ‘Not develop it into houses.’
‘Tiff,’ he sighed, as if she didn’t understand the first thing about, well, anything, ‘I seriously doubt you’ll get planning to build anything other than houses here. A factory? For what? The industry’s gone. Councils need more housing.’
‘Not industry. In fact, not changing the use at all. I want to use what I’ve got.’
‘Bookkeeping? You want to extend the business? Three floors worth of people?’ Why wasn’t he getting it? She wanted the dawning! Okay then, more clues, but it was killing her.
‘No, Gavin. This building is a gym.’
‘It’s a boxing club. And that’s one room downstairs.’
‘It’s more than that actually. This floor is part of the club too. I intend to spread it all the way up to the roof.’ Oh! thought Tiff, a roof garden. Could she do that? The thumping in her heart stepped up a notch and she noticed it had nothing to do with Gavin who was staring at her slack-jawed. She took the opportunity.
‘Blackie left me the money to do the place up to be a proper gym – you know, unisex, health and fitness. I’m having the upstairs gutted out to home the social club, this floor’ll have a studio for classes and the body sculpting area, and the boxing club downstairs will get a comprehensive overhaul.’ She stopped and, just because she could, cocked her head at him, watching him process it all. She prayed she appeared ambitious and driven and smart and industrious and brave and extremely capable and, bottom-line, desirable.
‘But, you’ve never set foot in a gym,’ he babbled. Where was the dawning!?
‘I’ve worked in this one every week for eight years. Blackie and I discussed these ideas for half of them.’
‘You never mentioned them to me.’ He sounded affronted. She wasn’t sure why.
‘Actually I started to a couple of times, but you always said, “Let’s not talk shop at home”.’ Oddly enough though, Gavin had always been ready to moan about missed viewings, gazumping and clients getting cold feet on the eve of completion.
‘Well, you never made it sound serious,’ he said, sounding sulky. Was he pouting? He was taking this so personally. He must really feel they’d had a lack of communication in their relationship.
‘Well, it wasn’t,’ she said gently, letting her mogul persona go, wanting to placate him, ‘Not then. It was pie-in-the-sky stuff. I didn’t own a gym back then.’
‘Boxing club,’ he corrected, as if that made it less of a deal. Definitely sulky. ‘You should have shared Blackie’s plans with me. I feel totally let down, Tiff. Things could have been so different.’ Different?
‘Gav, I’m sorry,’ Tiff said, baffled. ‘It really wasn’t proper plans – Blackie wasn’t up for any of it. I never imagined you’d be so bothered or even interested.’ Had she missed the signals that he’d wanted to do something bigger with her, some combined ambition? But owning the gym hadn’t even been on the cards. Was this what the separate paths thing had been about? A combined project? Because honestly, they could start this path together right here, right now. She just needed him to say the words.
‘You know how many properties I get in this part of town Tiff, and what a pain they are to shift. If I’d had that nugget of info, Blackie’s plans for a fitness club, I’d at least have had something to work with. You can’t polish a turd, you know, but you can stick sequins on it.’ She had a feeling he wasn’t quoting Buddha. ‘The boxing club was never a draw, but a fitness centre…’ He looked at her bug-eyed, like she’d missed the most rudimentary of points and ruined his life.
‘The boxing club is the cherry on the cake,’ she pointed out. He wasn’t getting these were her ideas, she was the ambitious one here, not Blackie. ‘It’s my USP, my first stream of income and hopefully a source of members to the rest of the club.’ Tiff had switched to The Apprentice mode again, trying to knock him back on track. She knew this wasn’t what he’d been used to hearing from her and she’d hoped he’d be blown away. Instead he looked confused.
And then he looked sort of… full of pity.
‘Tiff. Sweetheart,’ he began slowly. Calling her sweetheart brought a small lump of joy to her throat, but all the other signs were off. ‘You can’t possibly think this is a good idea.’
‘I do—’ she started, but he cut her off with the slow shaking of his head.
‘Sweetheart, I know you have your little business, and it ticks over admirably. It fills your day neatly and you earn enough to cover all the bills we had, but taking on a thing like this, trying to make it something more, that’s not realistic, is it? It’s just not you.’ He got up and moved around to sit on the side of the desk. Reaching out, he gently tipped her face up by her chin so he had her full attention. ‘Sometimes, we need to accept our limitations, don’t we? We need to see when we reach our ceiling. That’s what I was saying at Lorenzo’s. You’re there already. You’ve reached your limits. You’ve no need to make mistakes like this.’
‘But Gav…’ she began, but faltered. She wanted to say she’d already taken it on. And it wasn’t a mistake, because she’d planned it; she’d done the numbers. She slept with a calculator by the bed. She’d been over the figures a hundred times, because there were parts that scared the pants off her, but she knew her numbers and it wasn’t that risky a venture. The money was there, just, to cover what she wanted to do. But she didn’t say any of that. Because she couldn’t get her mouth to contradict him, not when he was looking at her like that. That small lump of joy in her throat felt like cement now. ‘You … You don’t think I’m capable, do you?’
‘Oh, Tiff, you are capable of many things,’ he gave her a wink that made her stomach wrench, ‘but not business of this size. Taking on staff? You’ve only ever worked by yourself, for yourself.’
Tiff couldn’t disagree with that. She hadn’t, but she reckoned she could. Couldn’t she? She believed decency, diligence, listening and respect were key to man-management and she could give all of those a fair go. But he’d said she was limited. The word flashed neon before her eyes, accompanied by a mortifying klaxon.
‘Is that what you’ve always thought? That I’m limited?’
‘Tiff, there’s nothing wrong with knowing your limits,’ he said, as if offering her a blessing. That was a yes then. “Happiness is to know your limits and be happy with them”, Tiff – Romain Rolland. It’s when you try to go beyond them, you fall foul. I still have lots of scope before I reach mine – that’s why I’m still striving.’ He took a breath, clearly not done yet. ‘Let me illustrate; you and I, we were like a horse and cart.’
‘A team,’ Tiff agreed, nodding dumbly, numbed by his words.
‘Well, more that I was drawing you along.’ He may as well have slapped her.
‘You consider me ballast?’
‘Don’t be unfair to yourself Tiff, the cart can be important too. It facilitates things, brings things to market and so on, but the horse is the driving force, isn’t it? It can race off on its own and the cart goes nowhere. Unless, of course, the untethere
d cart rolls downhill – like taking on a business beyond its capabilities – and then it’s in all sorts of trouble.’
Tiff could only look at him aghast. She was NOT a bloody cart. She wanted to say so, but the horror of this conversation kept her mute.
‘And a fitness centre, Tiff? Really?’ He gave her a speedy once over, followed by his mouth pulling up to one side in a ‘you know’ kind of way. Instinctively Tiff pulled the hem of her sweatshirt further down, but her prickling eyes were locked on his. Just as Ron had been giving his honest opinion saying she couldn’t do it, so Gavin’s eyes said he was being equally sincere. She shrank with the crushing disappointment. He thought so little of her. She’d apparently been some charity load to his beast of burden for the last decade.
Watching his face now, the dawning was all hers; she was never going to impress him. However brilliant her plan, his view of her was set. Whether she owned a building and business or not, he still thought the same of her as he had at Lorenzo’s. Which, pain aside, begged one question:
‘Gavin?’ She stacked her hands on the desk to control their shaking. ‘You coming here today? Why exactly was that?’
‘We lived together for a long time, Tiff,’ he said ‘and while we’ve agreed to go our separate ways, I thought it would be heartless not to offer you my expertise and advice when you’d been lumbered with this… this…,’ he looked around the room searching for the word, ‘prehistoric behemoth.’
‘You came here to get business off me?’ she asked, with a gulp. ‘After dumping me?’
‘Now Tiff, we agreed. We had different paths, although yours has changed somewhat since, but it need only be a blip and you can settle back to where you were again, only significantly better off. I daresay I should be sending you sales particulars now instead of rentals.’
‘You. Came. Here. To. Tout. For. Business,’ she reiterated through gritted teeth. Her hands were still stacked, but more gripped than poised.
Sweatpants at Tiffanie's Page 12