Page 58 of Too Busy for Love

‘You’re funny,’ she tells him sarcastically. ‘You should be on the stage.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘The original plan was to redevelop it as flats, but the local council didn’t like that. So then I was just going to mothball ituntil it either fell down or the council changed their mind, but Beatrice seems to think it could be viable to reopen as a hotel.’

‘What do you want from us?’ Ella asks.

‘I’d like you to take a look around and try to get a feel for the amount of work that might be needed to bring it up to standard. I’m not talking super detailed at this stage, just t-shirt size it.’

‘What, like small, medium, large and fuck-off enormous?’ John continues, still staring around him in disbelief. ‘I think we can answer that one right now.’

My heart sinks. In my down moments, this is what I feared would happen. They’re going to tell Abby it’ll cost a fortune and she’ll promptly lose interest.

‘When you say “up to standard”, what are we talking about?’ Noah asks.

‘I want to open it as a four-star hotel,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what it was in its heyday. In the public areas like here and the dining room, I want to restore the art deco feel. I’d also like to rip out that hideous concrete staircase and recreate the original. Here, I’ve got a picture of what it looked like.’ I fish out the photos and go through them until I find the one of Reginald and Annie that clearly shows the sweeping staircase in the background, handing it to Noah.

‘You’ve got no chance of that, darlin’,’ John observes dismissively, looking at the picture over Noah’s shoulder. The way he’s just called me ‘darlin’’ gets my back up and I decide I don’t like him.

‘Why not?’ I demand, trying and failing to keep my tone calm.

‘Fire regs,’ he says simply. ‘You would probably have got away with it as an original feature of a historic building, but a new one would have to conform to all the latest regulations, including fire doors and stuff. That’s probably why they took it out in the first place. Am I right or am I right, Michael?’

‘He’s right, I’m afraid,’ Noah agrees, completely ignoring the fact that John just called him by the wrong name. ‘There might be something else we can do, though. Is there a service staircase as well as this one?’ he asks Abby.

‘Yes, at the rear of the building.’

‘OK.’

‘What are you thinking?’ Ella prompts after a pause.

‘I agree with Beatrice. If you’re going to recreate the art deco vibe in here, you can’t do it with those hideous doors and a concrete staircase. But, instead of trying to recreate the original staircase, we could put in some retro-style lifts here. You know, the ones they used to have back in the day with dials above the doors and arrows pointing to which floor they’re at. There’s a company that makes them. All the lifting gear and so on is modern, but they look antique. As long as the service staircase meets the fire escape requirements, I think we’d be fine.’

‘What about the floor?’ I ask, pointing at the geometric-patterned tiles in the photo. ‘Can we recreate that at least?’

John walks over to a corner of the room and lifts the carpet, which comes away easily to reveal a sheet of wood underneath. ‘We might not have to,’ he remarks. ‘Who wants to bet that they just laid this over the top of it to take the carpet? Give us a hand, Michael.’

‘Why does he keep calling Noah Michael?’ I ask Ella as the two men set to work trying to lift the sheet of wood and Abby wanders over to watch.

‘It’s his thing.’ She smiles. ‘Everyone has a nickname, the more obscure the better. Noah is named after Michael Fish.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A weather forecaster who was famous for failing to predict a hurricane in 1987. Noah predicted the flood in the Bible, Michael failed to predict the wind. See?’

‘Blimey, that is obscure. Have you got one?’

‘Yes. I’m Carol, after Carol Vorderman. She was the mathematician on the TV programCountdownback in the day. I’m the project manager, so we’re both, to use his words, “numbers birds”.’

‘What about Abby?’

‘She doesn’t get one because she’s family.’

‘They’re related?’

‘No, but he’s been like a surrogate father to her. She lived with him and his wife for a while when she first came south to work on site, and she still stays with them whenever she’s down. It was John that persuaded her to apply for your show.’

‘Really?’

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