Page 57 of Too Busy for Love

‘Why not? If he’s the kingpin of your business plan, the whole thing kind of goes up in smoke if he says no, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, but equally it wouldn’t really have been fair to get his hopes up if you were going to turn me down flat.’

She takes another bite of her carrot cake, and I can practically hear her brain whirring as she chews.

‘How much longer are you planning to stay in Margate?’ she asks eventually.

‘I’ve booked the apartment for another week. I was supposed to be applying for jobs this week but I’ve been a bit busy with this, so I’ve pushed my other plans back.’

‘Let’s just say, and this is absolutely theoretical, that I went for this. It’s going to take a while to get the building up to standard. What are you going to do while the building works are going on?’

‘I’d want to be onsite,’ I tell her firmly. ‘I have a vision for this building, so I’d want to be very hands-on.’

She looks wary. ‘When you say “vision”…’

‘You can’t take a building like that and just turn it into a bland corporate hotel, with identikit rooms all painted the same colour. It needs personality and period features. It needs the right fittings, the right furniture. Not repro crap; the punters will spot that immediately.’

‘Sounds expensive.’

‘Not necessarily. I mean, there will be some areas where we have to spend a bit of money, but you can pick up period decorations from auctions and stuff. It’ll still come in at a fraction of the cost of converting it to flats, I reckon.’

‘Do you have project management experience?’

‘No,’ I admit.

‘But the role you’ve just described to me, being onsite and supervising the renovations, that’s project management. I’d have to be mad to give you that level of responsibility when you don’t have any experience.’

‘I may not have project management experience but, as I told you, Iknowthis industry. I know what works and what doesn’t. If you bring in someone who knows how to manage a project but doesn’t share the vision, you’ll end up with something soulless.’

Abby drains her tea before picking her phone out of her bag and dialling a number.

‘Ella, it’s me,’ she says into the handset. ‘What’s your diary looking like tomorrow?’

She frowns as she listens to the answer. ‘Fine. Can you reschedule that and come to the Margate site instead? Bring Noah and John too. Oh, and can you pick up a pair of boots for me please? Size…’ She looks at me expectantly.

‘Five,’ I tell her.

‘Size five,’ she repeats into the phone. ‘Yes, there’s a plan, but I want your input to see if it’s viable or not. Great. I’ll see you here at ten.’

She disconnects the call and fixes her eyes on mine. I’m sure she’s at least a year younger than me, but she’s exuding the kind of authority you’d normally see in someone much older.

‘I’m not promising anything,’ she says firmly. ‘But I’m prepared to look into this a little further. Ella is my senior project manager in the south of England. She knows her stuff and I trust her implicitly. Noah is her fiancé and also one of my site managers – there’s almost nothing he doesn’t know about buildings – and John will never forgive me if I don’t let him come too. We’ll see you onsite at ten tomorrow. Don’t be late.’

With that, she gathers her belongings together and strides out of the café in the direction of her car, leaving me open mouthed.

23

After Abby left, my first thought was to rush over and tell Reginald, but sense won out in the end. It wouldn’t be fair to get his hopes up when all I’d managed to do was secure another meeting with more people who would probably be against my idea. I did visit him, but we confined our conversation to chatting about his daughter, Jeannie, who lives in New York with her husband. He’s prodigiously proud of her, showing me pictures not only of her and her husband, but their children, children’s spouses and grandchildren. They used to fly him and Annie over once a year, but that stopped when she fell ill and now Reginald feels he’s too frail to make the journey. They talk frequently on the phone, and she’s coming over to see him in a month or two.

I’ve elected not to say anything to Jock just yet either. In my fantasies, he jumps at the chance, comes down and we pick up exactly where we left off, but I’m realistic enough to know that he may not feel like that at all. The messages we’ve exchanged have been friendly, but no more than that, so it’s possible he’s moved on. If he has, that will definitely be a dent in my dream, but I’ve realised it doesn’t diminish my enthusiasm for the hotel project,so I’ve decided to hold off until I have a concrete proposal to put to him.

It’s just before ten and I’m making my way to the hotel to meet Abby and the others. I’m scanning the parked cars for her silver Porsche, but there’s no sign of it. I’m just about to congratulate myself on getting here first when she climbs out of the passenger side of a van. A large, bearded man who looks to be in his fifties steps down from the driver’s seat. Behind this van I spot another, and a woman and man who are probably my age get out of it. I’m guessing the woman is Ella; she’s blonde and very pretty. That would presumably mean the dark-haired man with her is Noah, so the big guy with Abby must be John. After brief introductions during which I learn that Ella is also from Leeds but John and Noah are both local, Ella hands me a large box with a pair of sturdy-looking boots inside.

‘Put those on,’ she instructs. ‘They’ll feel like lead weights at first, but they’ll protect your feet and you’ll soon get used to them.’ I glance at her and notice that she’s wearing a similar pair under her jeans, although hers are scuffed from hard use.

She’s not wrong. I feel like I’ve got clown’s feet once I’ve put them on, but there’s no time to get used to them as, after handing me the same hi-vis jacket and hard hat I wore yesterday, Abby crosses the road and unlocks the steel mesh gate.

‘Fuck me, Abs!’ John exclaims, looking around him in dismay once we’ve congregated in the lobby. ‘Couldn’t you find a proper shithole to buy?’

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