Where was Mike’s head at now, she wondered. He’d just split up with an OK Magazine-level prize. That might explain everything. Just as she craved to be touched, why shouldn’t he? Most likely, the reality was both of them were rebounding, and unfortunately they’d crossed each other’s paths. Her mind lingered on the notion of unfortunately, wondering exactly what she meant by it.
Finally, he stopped the car, and whipped off the beanie, making her hair go mad and her eyes blink like crazy adjusting to the light. He’d parked on the brow of a hill. Once she could see again, she could clearly make out the gym down in the distance, a black Lego cube in a sea of grey. It looked less ugly from up there.
‘Late lunch,’ he said. ‘Gotta eat.’ He held up a large paper bag from Greggs. No wonder the bakery smells had lingered. Oh man, it was years since she’d had lunch from Greggs.
The warmth from the bag wafted up around her nose. Her mouth was salivating and her stomach groaned again. Perhaps he’d let her steal some. She was prepared to beg.
‘Chicken and Mushroom slice and an iced bun, right?’ he asked, handing her two smaller bags and a cup of tea. She was glad he had his head back in the carrier; he would have seen the dopey grin on her face, tempered by the worry she might just have fallen in love with him all over again.
She didn’t speak for the first three mouthfuls. Ecstasy like that was not to be interrupted, and he seemed to appreciate this, partly as he was experiencing the exact same thing, but also because he was enjoying watching her and her pleasure.
‘What?’ she finally asked, feeling self-conscious. Strike that; more self-conscious. The kiss thing was hanging over them, and neither was touching the subject with a shitty stick.
‘I never met a girl who could demolish a pie as quickly, yet neatly, as you. Nobody manages puff pastry without flakes or crumbs, except you.’
‘Should I be proud or ashamed?’
‘Proud. You’re an arbiter of non-wastage. At least in food matters. I can’t currently comment on the rest.’
The ‘currently’ was interesting. Implied future interaction was interesting.
‘Can’t beat a Gregg’s chicken slice,’ she murmured. The view out over her business was a close second though. They both sat on the grass, leaning against the front bumper of the Aston, the sun shining on them. It was lovely up there and she wondered why she’d never been before. It wasn’t like she and Gavin had done much with their weekends; he went running while she caught up with the chores and perhaps a soap omnibus.
‘Gastronomic alchemy,’ he agreed, polishing off the last bite of his Cornish pasty. ‘I haven’t been allowed these for years.’
‘Training rules?’
‘Verity rules.’ He lowered his eyes and reconsidered. ‘Probably training rules; these things are addictive.’
‘You could live on Greggs now,’ she mused.
‘I should buy shares if that’s the plan,’ he played along.
‘Not sure your sports channel would appreciate your five-a-day habit. The camera already adds pounds. You’d fill the screen eventually.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ His indignation made her giggle. ‘My enormous wonky face in your living room.’
‘There’d be complaints.’ The sunlight cast a golden hue around him. No wonder the TV wanted him; he was total eye candy. Surely, he couldn’t not take the job… The thought cast a shadow over her memory of their kiss.
‘Or I might get offered the Sumo show too.’
‘Greggs might sponsor you,’ Tiff pointed out, shamelessly licking the last of the pastry crumbs from her fingertips.
‘I could have a triple XL tracksuit and everything. Happy days,’ he sighed.
‘Do you want some of this bun?’ she asked, tentatively. She hoped he’d say no. She couldn’t wait to sink her teeth through the thick icing into the soft white bread.
He snorted. ‘Don’t give me that, Trent. D’you think I know nothing about you? I value my kneecaps. I bought myself an Eccles cake – at least I can claim the dried fruit is healthy.’
Relieved, Tiff attacked the bun and while floating through the sugary heaven, she wondered whether she’d have got his Greggs order exactly right, like he’d got hers. They’d spent every Saturday lunchtime in there as teens. She recognised his selection immediately, but she wasn’t sure she’d have remembered when faced with the whole counter of choices.
‘Where did they come from?’ she suddenly asked, noticing his feet. A brand-spanking pair of Adidas Sambas adorned them. Not a speck of soot or poo in sight.
‘Sports shop next to Greggs. Otherwise, I would have been out in five. I signed the non-shitty old one for the guy at the till.’
‘Wow,’ she said in mock awe, ‘Two signings in one morning. Mikey Fellner really is famous.’ She popped the last morsel of bun in her mouth and savoured it. If she put someone trying to burn down her business to one side, and focused on the view, the food and the company, it was turning out to be a lovely day. She wanted to share the joy. ‘I think you’ve got your answer now Mike, about Blackie rating you.’
‘He should have told me when he was alive.’ She turned, sensing some bitterness.
‘Mikey, you keep coming down on him, but I guess he might just have been angry and hurt.’ She absolutely understood not wanting to talk to Mike due to anger and hurt. And yet, here they were. If she could reach this point of reconciliation with him, perhaps Blackie could have too. Panged with regret for them both, it took her a moment to interpret the look on his face as confusion.
‘What did Blackie have to be angry about?’ he asked, plainly.
‘Well, you leaving, for starters and the never contacting him again,’ she rolled her eyes to make light of it, but it didn’t work. Mike’s brow drew further together. ‘He sent you off on that training camp,’ she expanded, ‘and when you didn’t come back, he took it really badly. From what I heard, he was a bloody nightmare for a long time after you left.’ She didn’t add that the exact same went for her.
‘I didn’t leave.’
‘Yes, you did,’ she insisted, amazed he would dare deny it. ‘You went to train for two weeks in Kent and when they made you a better offer you took it.’ He’d ditched Blackie without so much as a backward glance. He’d ditched them both.
Mike was shaking his head, his jaw tight, an appalled look in his eyes.
‘That’s not how it was. That’s not what happened at all, Tiff.’
Chapter 26
Tiff crossed her arms. Granted, it had been many years, and she’d moved on, but it was an intense, upsetting time and she remembered it clearly. Mike sitting beside her, declaring things weren’t as she thought, made no sense.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t just not come back.’ He crossed his own arms to mirror hers. The air between them crackled with defensiveness.
‘I distinctly recall you didn’t come back.’ She had waited. God, how she had waited. No Mike, no call, no message at all.
‘No, I didn’t come back, that’s right, but it wasn’t that I couldn’t be arsed, or I got a better offer. I fought to come back, but I wasn’t given a choice.’
He was adamant. Whatever the story was, Mike definitely felt he hadn’t stayed away of his own volition.
‘Look, I did go on the training camp. We had that date the night before, remember?’ Tiff detected a smirk. Really? Now?
‘Of course, I remember. First times are generally memorable,’ she snapped.
‘I thought I’d died and gone to heaven that night,’ he said, the smirk widening to a grin. ‘I dreamed about it through the whole camp.’
She looked out over the town which appeared quaint from a distance with the surrounding summer greenery, but had also had her trapped. She’d relived that night for a long time too, but when he hadn’t returned, her sleeplessness was from questioning what she’d done wrong. That pain, the blow to her confidence, had been devastating.
‘So I was primed
to come back,’ he continued, his grin giving way to concentration, ‘when Nanna calls to say the hosting club wanted me to stay on. It was a huge honour, they were right up there at the time, but I didn’t give it a second thought. I said no. But she says it’s already agreed with school, and she’s sorted accommodation with a host family. Then she says she’s spoken to you, you understood and wished me the all the best.’
‘What? No.’ That wasn’t true. Nanna Bea hadn’t seen her and there was no way she would’ve wished him all the best. Sixteen-year-old Tiff would have kicked-off big time. It hadn’t been her selfless period – not as a rule, nor during the stress of what had followed. While she’d been at home waiting for Mike, the police arrived with news of her father’s arrest at the bank. All their accounts were frozen. People started coming to the door demanding compensation, which they didn’t have and couldn’t give. It was awful. And all she could think of was when would he show up, hold her tight and tell her they’d get through this?
‘No, I didn’t think so either,’ Mike said, ‘so I rang your house and your mum picked up and said not to call anymore. Honestly, Tiff I didn’t know what to think. Your mum was acting weird. I mean, I know she probably wanted someone posher and white for you, but she’d never tried to split us up.’
Tiff felt herself rock. Her mum had seen Tiff beside herself, but never mentioned a call. Sounded exactly like her; her mind had twisted completely when the final blow of Tiff’s father’s mistress came to light. The Saturday ‘golf’ games had been a somewhat different ball sport.
‘She never said,’ Tiff said, stunned. ‘She had the number changed soon after because of the other calls…’
‘What calls?’
‘Malicious ones,’ Tiff supplied, but changed the subject quickly. The evil calls had stopped but been replaced by more activity around the house, including those burning bags of shit sliding through the door. And all the while she’d kept asking herself what she’d done wrong with him. ‘You could have written?’ Mobile phones had been way too expensive for kids back then. If only…
‘I did Tiff. You never replied.’
‘I never got anything.’ If she’d heard it third-hand she might have doubted his story, but seeing his face, she knew it was true. Her mum must have binned it.
‘I missed you, Tiff,’ he insisted. ‘I knew no-one, the training was bloody hard, and the school was awful, but I would’ve been alright if I could’ve spoken to you.’
‘I didn’t know.’ She shook her head, ‘I just thought…’ She couldn’t physically say it.
‘What? Go on.’
‘I thought you’d slept with me and gone,’ she whispered, embarrassed. Had they not been sat side by side, he might have missed it on the breeze.
‘Aw no,’ he said, appalled. He turned to properly face her, holding her knee. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. I mean yes, technically that’s what happened, but it wasn’t my intention. I thought of you constantly. I wanted to be around you – not just for… you know,’ he twitched his eyebrows, ‘You were my best mate. I missed my best friend.’
‘I hated you at one point,’ she said quietly, ducking her head. ‘Hated you. I cut up the photos and ripped the cinema stubs I’d kept. All of it.’ The hurt lay between them for some long moments.
‘And that other guy?’ she heard him ask. She snapped her head up.
‘What?’
‘I came back. I saw you with some guy.’
‘What? When?’
‘About ten weeks later. Nanna fell off that stupid stool she had for the high cupboards. Remember it? She toppled trying to reach some tinned ackee. Bruised her hip. Bloody lucky it wasn’t worse to be honest, and I travelled up. It was my chance to see you. Your mum answered the door, and she didn’t look pleased to see me. She said you were out with your boyfriend. That was probably one of the worst punches I’ve ever had; sucker punch right to the heart.’
Tiff sat shaking her head. This was unbearable. She hadn’t known any of this; her mum had never said. How must it have looked to him?
‘And then I saw you,’ he added. ‘I was walking through the town and there you were in the window seat of that posh restaurant.’
Tiff’s heart sank. She remembered that night. She’d not felt like going out, but her mother had forced her near enough, virtually slapped the makeup on her herself. Her mother said Tiff shouldn’t let Gavin go; he was a good prospect. While his attention was flattering, Tiff hadn’t been thinking about his credentials. At the time she’d mainly agreed to date him to get over Mike’s rejection. A retaliation of sorts, which was daft as he wasn’t there to see it, or so she’d thought. It was an act of defiance against the town for shunning her too; still going out, being wined and dined was a visual ‘screw you’.
She’d desperately needed to feel she was still attractive, that Mike walking away was due to his stupidity, not her flaws. That was what Gavin had offered her, all rolled up in a good-looking, upwardly-mobile package, and it was exactly the rescue she’d needed. When she broke it down like that now though, Tiff experienced a sensation of shame. One day, when everything wasn’t so manic and screwed up, she should probably take an objective look at her relationship with Gavin. But not now, because right now things were crazy enough, as Mike was deftly turning the world on its head.
‘I stood rain-soaked in the street, watching you. You were laughing.’
She’d been faking. It was a while before she’d twigged Gavin’s sense of humour, but sitting there in that window, she’d wanted the world to think she hadn’t been defeated.
‘All I could think was it hadn’t taken you long.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she began.
‘It’s fine, Tiff. It’s fine,’ he said waving it off. ‘It was what I needed, I guess. Focused me on the boxing. On fitting into the new club. It cut the ties I’d been hanging onto, you know?’
Tiff hung her head again. She didn’t know what was worse; thinking he’d just left her, or knowing leaving her had been so beneficial.
‘Did Blackie know you came back?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Course,’ Mike said, plainly. ‘After seeing you, I needed somewhere to think. I let myself in with the key, but he was up there working.’
‘He never mentioned it. He was always careful never to mention you around me.’
‘Yeah well, we had a bust up that night. He wasn’t chuffed to see me back either. Not even for Nanna. Said he’d seen the old girl himself and she was fine. If there’d been a need to come, he’d have called. He said I should get myself back to Kent and focus on my future, and not to let anything get in the way. But the way he said it, his anger at me coming back, felt like he wanted shot of me.
‘I said I’d seen you and he went mental, spitting that I couldn’t throw talent like mine away on some girl, which hacked me right off, because you weren’t just some girl to me. And then he said you’d been seeing some guy before I’d left but he hadn’t wanted to say, and now I should know the truth and walk away.’
‘I had not!’ It exploded out of Tiff. ‘I never did. I didn’t meet Gavin until six weeks after.’ She’d been a mess at that point, scraping her up-ended bag off a pavement, the other kids laughing, when he stopped his sports car to help her. ‘I was completely faithful to you. I never liked girls who two-timed. You know that.’ She corrected herself. ‘You knew that.’
He hung his head slightly. ‘It was a pretty rough night, Tiff. I reckon I was prepared to accept anything, because I’d already seen something I’d believed impossible, you know? It pushed me over the edge. I told him he was a bastard for not telling me before. It felt good to lay into someone. And he just took it. He took it all. In the end I told him he wouldn’t see me again, save on the telly. I slammed the key on the desk, called him a bastard again for good measure and left. Didn’t set foot in town for the next eight years until Nanna moved to the home.’
Tiff’s heart was racing. Everything was inside out and upside down.
Kicking a stone about, while Mike was lost in his own thoughts, Tiff began to piece things together. She knew why Blackie had lied about her. He must have heard about her dad and immediately been onto Nanna. They knew Mike would have ditched everything to come back. The two of them working together – he hadn’t stood a chance.
Ultimately, Tiff could see Blackie’s plan had worked. Mike had had a fantastic career, and she’d still managed to salvage something of a life for herself. She couldn’t have done it without Blackie; he’d kicked her bum through college and the bookkeeping course. He’d been her first client and set her up with others. Clearly he felt guilty. Suddenly she wondered whether he gave her the gym out of guilt too. She didn’t know what she wanted the answer to be.
Tiff decided not to tell Mike the rest, about the trouble her dad had brought. What good would it do? He already felt bad about her thinking he’d just left. He’d feel worse if he knew about the awfulness that followed. He didn’t need that. More to the point, she was shrouded enough in the shame of what her dad had done and its impact; businesses folding, pensions wiped out, homes repossessed. She didn’t want to chance Mike’s judgement or his pity. She was already feeling sick that Nanna and Blackie had regarded her a millstone about to drag him down.
‘I never came back, in case I saw you,’ Mike said, interrupting her speculations. ‘I was in two minds about the funeral. But I needed to pay my respects. I owe most of it to him. I regret calling him those names.’
‘He put the key back,’ Tiff said.
‘What?’
‘That first night you came, you said the key was still hidden.’
‘Right.’
‘Well, in spite of everything you said, he decided to replace it.’
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