Читать книгу Punch-Drunk Love - Pernille Hughes - Страница 13

‘Afternoon.’ Ron stood in the doorway to the office. Tiff froze with her mug of tea halfway to her mouth and looked at the clock. It was still morning. He was having a dig.

‘I was at the will reading.’

Ron’s brow furrowed. ‘That was today?’

‘Nine o’clock.’ The scowl on his face told her exactly how he felt about not being invited.

‘What’s the score then?’ He needed to know whether he had a job or not. Whilst he was a grumpy bugger, Tiff knew he worked hard. He’d have a job if he wanted it. She tried not to think about how much she was depending on him if she was going to do this. He was her continuity.

‘You’d best sit down,’ she said. Ron slumped in the corner armchair, an apprehensive look on his face.

‘Is it closing?’

‘No,’ she said, adamantly. Whatever happened, she’d do everything to keep it open. Blackie’s legacy demanded it.

‘Being sold?’

‘Not if I can help it.’ Ron’s face perked up. ‘See, Blackie left the place to me.’

‘You?’ he asked, incredulous.

‘Me.’ There didn’t seem much to add. She could desperately start justifying it, but she didn’t want to come across as panicking. And she was panicking.

‘Didn’t see that coming.’ Tiff didn’t take it as a compliment, nor had Ron meant it as such. To be fair she hadn’t seen it coming either.

‘You and me both.’

‘You don’t box.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t even follow boxing.’

‘No.’

‘And you’re a w—’

‘Yes.’ Tiff considered having a feminist debate with him but didn’t have the strength. What would be the point?

‘What the hell was he thinking?’ Ron exploded, expecting her to share his outrage.

She tried to placate him. ‘Um, perhaps he was thinking I didn’t need to box or follow the sport,’ or have a penis she added, but only in her head, ‘to be a business manager. Perhaps he thought, having worked with him, I knew enough about the place to keep it going, to progress it, and more importantly give proper consideration to the people who work here.’ Tiff gambled Ron’s primary concern was his own job.

‘Too right. About the staff, I mean.’ Neither mentioned that beyond themselves, the sum of the staff came to precisely one, in the form of Vonda the intermittent cleaner. ‘He should have told us what he was planning.’

‘Well, he liked his surprises,’ was all she could think to say.

‘This is going to have a major impact on the business. The lads aren’t going to like it.’ She hadn’t really considered that bit, but his prejudgement seemed a tad unfair.

‘Apart from Blackie’s absence, the clients shouldn’t feel any difference, Ron. Blackie’s will stipulated that your job should be safeguarded, if you still want it.’ She’d hoped to see relief in his face, but he’d moved on from that. ‘I’m hoping you do want it, Ron,’ she added to be clear.

‘Well, I’m sure you do. A club without a trainer isn’t much of a club, is it?’

‘No, of course not.’ He was talking to her like she was an idiot. She wanted to show him she wasn’t. Vision. Vision and ambition, that was what impressed people. ‘Going forward,’ she said, feigning confidence, ‘I’ll be looking to modernise the club, but it will always be a boxing club at heart, and you’re integral to that.’

‘Blackie didn’t want to modernise it. It works perfectly as it is – provided I’m here to make it work – so what’s the point?’ Ron was sporting a fine display of outrage. ‘Don’t mess with things that aren’t broken, Tiffanie. Why do women always do that?’

Tiff bit her tongue.

‘He left you everything?’ Ron double-checked, with an air of disbelief and a hint of resentment.

‘The building, the land, some capital,’ she detailed, feeling uncomfortable. She tried to divert the conversation. ‘The ring goes to Mike Fellner as some penance for the past – don’t ask, I don’t know – so I’ll need a new one ASAP. All the sappy pictures with the moody shots and emo texts go to Aaron. For guidance apparently.’

That raised a wry smile from Ron.

‘Nice one, Blackie. He always liked a subtle jab to the nuts.’

‘So Ron,’ said Tiff, making her first managerial move, ‘if you’re on board then the title of Head Coach is yours and obviously there’ll be a salary increment attached.’ She tried to sound as professional as possible, until she saw his eyes ker-ching at the money, which caused her to falter a little, ‘The exact details of which to be confirmed once I’ve checked the figures.’

Ron stood up, nodding. His staying was a massive weight off her mind.

‘Glad you can see sense, Tiff. You leave running the club to me while you crunch the numbers and things will be fine.’ He left the room shaking his head.

Watching him disappear down the stairs and finally having a large gulp of her tepid tea, Tiff couldn’t help but feel her first step into her future had lacked any clout or elation.

Tiff’s lunch hour mainly involved staring at the office in fear and disbelief. It was all hers, from the walls to the bins. Yet little plan-bubbles were beginning to form. She’d be thinning out the glut of furniture for a start; navigating the office was an obstacle course in itself. The posters on the walls were going, which would expose the fade of the paintwork, adding another thing to the To-do list. Still, with their phrasings of Dream Big and to go Above and Beyond, she’d happily lose them. They annoyed her. They were Gavin’s clearly destructive life-coaching DVDs in paper form.

Getting into it, she wandered down the corridor and stairs, surveying her domain until she found herself standing outside the sparring hall door. It was years since she’d set foot in there. She’d spent hours in there as a teen, watching one Mikey Fellner, but that had stopped when he’d left. Coming to work for Blackie she’d still managed to dodge it; there was nothing urgent enough in the bookkeeping to force her in there.

‘’Scuse me, love.’ A client moved around her and entered the hall. The open doorway blasted Tiff with the squeaks of footwear on the polished floor and also a potent waft of testosterone and sweat. She couldn’t think of a space smelling more of bloke. And yet it was a nostalgic odour to her. She’d never minded it back then.

It took her a moment to realise the guy was holding the door for her.

‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, scurrying through. This was hers now. She needed to know it again.

Brick walls and wooden floor, it wasn’t a million miles away from a school gym, with the exception of the massive ring at the far end, with its white ropes keeping the boxers in, and the royal blue pelmet to hide the supports. Ron hung over the ropes barking at the two fighters for being a couple of wimps and not being worth his time if they weren’t going to ‘put some bloody effort in, ya pair of pansies.’ In the rest of the space, boxers trained with skipping ropes, weights and punch-bags until it was their turn to vie for Ron’s approval. Tiff suspected they’d more chance of winning Miss Universe than winning his praise.

Walking around the perimeter of the room, the sound of her heels drew attention. She didn’t feel unwelcome as such, the guys just got on with what they were doing, more out of place and surplus to requirements. She had no role in there. She got half-way around the room, before Ron abruptly acknowledged her.

‘Need something?’

Ron’s glare forced her to fabricate something. He made her feel she was trespassing. ‘Um, yes,’ she said, clip-clopping up to the ring. She didn’t want to shout, she wanted to sound in control. ‘The new ring. I wanted to check the required dimensions.’

‘Twenty by twenty. Feet. No point having anything smaller than competition size if this lot are to have any sense of space. RingPro is the best make.’ He turned back to his boxers. Tiff wondered whether they needed the best. Best usually meant most expensive. But she didn’t have the spuds to question Ron. His glare was pretty ferocious and it would be remiss to doubt him in front of the clientele. Instead she fingered the fabric of the pelmet. ‘RingPro. Is that what this is?’

Ron tutted loudly as she distracted him again. ‘Are we compromising on quality now?’ She cowered at his hostility. Clearly he’d been mulling the news and his mood had turned sour. Sourer.

‘You don’t need to worry about quality, Ron. We’re on the same side here,’ she said. She pulled herself up to full height, but it didn’t help when he was already three feet off the ground. She took a couple of steps back to create a clear line of sight between them, without the ropes getting in the way. ‘I’m not here to cause havoc, Ron.’ Her next step back caused her to trip over a discarded kettlebell. Tiff felt her balance going, instinctively twisting, bringing her face to vinyl with a swinging punch bag.

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ She opened her eyes to see a relieved face. ‘Are you okay?’

Tiff nodded, trying to convince her eyeballs to align.

‘It’s Jess.’ She was looking Tiff over intently. ‘You passed out.’

‘Umm..?’ Tiff knew her, but she couldn’t place the face. It was a sweet elfin face, severely framed by cropped red hair. She understood and helped Tiff out.

‘Jessica Dent. Akehurst Street.’

Tiff’s eyes widened. ‘Whoa, didn’t you grow up,’ she said, now recognising the features of a girl she’d tutored when she was eighteen. Last she’d seen Jessica, she’d sported a dodgy perm.

‘I box here. With Amina.’ On cue, they were joined by another woman, gorgeous with tight cornrows on her head, who rested her hand gently on her girlfriend’s shoulder.

‘She okay?’

Tiff nodded vigorously before Jess could answer, embarrassment setting in. She pushed herself up from the floor, keen not to look a complete lemming.

‘Sorry. I should’ve cleared my weights and I didn’t see you behind the bag,’ Jess said.

Tiff shook her head insisting she hadn’t looked where she was going. Taking a look back towards the ring, she saw Ron hadn’t budged. He sent her a withering glance and turned back to his fighters.

‘Nice seeing you again, Jess,’ she said, checking her skirt, hoping she hadn’t flashed everyone in keeling over. ‘What are you up to now?’ Small talk. Yes that worked; inane small talk could cover all sorts of humiliation. Plus she was getting to know the clients. Ron couldn’t begrudge her that.

Jess stood up straight with a proud smile. ‘I’m a builder now. Took over my dad’s business.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful, Jess,’ she gushed, enthusiastically. ‘He must be delighted to hand it on to family.’

‘He died.’

‘Oh god,’ she choked, plunging straight back into a state of mortification. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She reached out and gave Jess a sympathetic squeeze on the arm. It was rock-solid. The equipment definitely did the business. ‘I’ll see you around, all right? Stuff to do upstairs.’ Flailing, she pointed upwards, then to the door, then felt like a prat. Wobbling back across the gym, wishing again she wasn’t in heels, Tiff suspected she’d be hard pressed to make it more obvious she was way out of her depth.

Her intention was to hide for the rest of the day. She worked through the admin, but progress was slower than normal, her mind getting distracted constantly. Finally she gave up, deciding to sort out her boxes and bags currently stashed in the storage cupboard next to the office. Shifting them had taken several trips up and down the stairs the morning after Mike’s nocturnal visit. She bristled at the thought of him. Seeing him stride in at Leonards’ made her want to gnash her teeth. And he’d shot her a cocky look which tempted her to hurl a ledger at him. So much for telling him to stay out of her life.

If she was going to try the hotel tonight, she thought, dragging her cross thoughts away from him, she’d need some clothes and various nick-nacks for her overnight stay. The idea of living out of a bag depressed her. It didn’t feel like money well-spent either.

Switching the light on in the storage room she took a proper squizz around. It was large – the club had never lacked space – and Blackie had been tidy. One corner homed a stack of exercise mats and the opposite wall was racked-out with shelves, half-filled with yet more files of outdated paperwork.

Ditching the files would free up more shelf room for… well she wasn’t sure yet, but Storage space is gold-dust, Tiff. Hearing Gavin’s words in her head made her eyes sting. Blinking it away she looked at the mats in the corner. The way they were stacked reminded her of The Princess and the Pea. An idea started to germinate.

So it was a bit grim, but there was shelving, space to move about and the door locked. That wasn’t much different from a hotel room. In Tiff’s mind it was a battle between a window at the Premier Lodge versus no cost here. Not having to pack up again was the clincher, she was sick of that already. The building was hers, and the store cupboard with it. If she was going to buy a flat when she finally found time to start looking for one – screw you, rental market – then she shouldn’t be spaffing the cash on a crappy hotel room. Seen like that, she could easily cope with temporarily living in a cupboard. A nice lamp and her duvet would make this quite cosy, she convinced herself, conveniently ignoring the strip lighting and the chipped floor tiles. A rug and fairy lights maybe…

‘You got a minute?’ Ron’s gruff voice ripped her away from her planning. He didn’t wait for her to respond and she followed him obediently into her office.

‘I should take it on,’ he said, rounding on her.

‘Take what on?’

‘The club. Watching you down in the gym I reckon it’d be best for all concerned, yourself included, if I took over the club.’

Tiff’s jaw flapped but no words came. Ron went on.

‘I can’t see how Blackie didn’t see it; I’m far better qualified to run it.’

‘You’re head coach,’ she pointed out, finding her tongue. ‘As far as the clients can see, you are running it.’ Additionally, she doubted he had the money to buy her out. If it was the glory he needed, he already had it. There was no need to tie up his finances.

‘Yes, but let’s be honest, it’s only a matter of time before you start making unnecessary changes. You setting foot in the gym was one and look how well that went.’

‘I tripped over strewn kit. It was an accident.’

‘My point exactly. The gym’s always like that. We’re all used to it. You’re clueless.’

This was grossly unfair, Tiff thought, taking a breath to say so, but Ron shook his head to stop her.

‘I’d been thinking about this before all of that anyway. I’ll rent the place off you. Blackie wanted this place to stay as it is, or he would have changed it himself. It’s what the lads would want too. I’ll run it as normal and pay you rent out of the profits.’

Tiff hadn’t expected that. Not for a second. She didn’t know what to say. Instinctively she wanted to shout But it’s mine!, but his words had her stumbling. He thought she was clueless.

‘Think about it, Tiffanie,’ she noted she wasn’t Tiff anymore, ‘you could expand your bookkeeping business, you could keep the days here obviously – that’s two bites of the cherry given I’d have to pay you for that too – and then you could spend Blackie’s money and the rent on other things; shoes or whatever you women spend money on nowadays.’

Tiff bit her cheek at the reference to Blackie’s money. She supposed every penny she ever spent hereon, anywhere, would be seen as Blackie’s money.

‘And no offence,’ he continued, though from experience Tiff knew any sentence beginning with ‘no offence’ was about to cause exactly that, ‘but you can hardly call yourself a poster girl for fitness.’ Tiff instantly looked down at herself. So fitness wasn’t her thing, but she wasn’t massively out of shape. Okay, maybe she was puffed scaling the stairs, but she could still recognise her sixteen-year-old self in the mirror. They might just not have shared clothes for a while.

‘Nobody joins gyms run by chubbies. Just saying.’ He said it with a shrug, and his face wasn’t twisted in the malicious sneer such a sentence should be accompanied by. It was his honest opinion. Embarrassed, she wanted to exit the room immediately.

‘You really don’t want me to do this, do you?’ she stammered.

‘It’s not a matter of want. I don’t think you can. I don’t want Blackie’s hard work and sacrifice wasted, when I can do the job.’

His words plunged her right in the chest, but not like a sharp implement, rather something wide, blunt and far more devastating.

‘You think about it,’ he said, ‘but for the sake of getting on I’ll expect an answer by Friday.’ Tiff could only stare at him speechless. Ron took this as assent. ‘And Tiff,’ he said, more kindly now, like she was a sad child, ‘in the interests of health, safety and corporate image, best stay out of the gym, eh?’