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Chapter 3

‘Drink, Tiff?’ The shout from the bar was a welcome one, as the Pig & Whistle was rammed. There was no way she’d get through, at least not without kicking some shins. Now was exactly the time she needed Shelby’s foghorn mouth and industrious elbows by her side, but she’d been shanghaied on the way from the funeral. The evil Lorraine, Shelby’s generally absent boss, had unexpectedly appeared at the beautician’s salon and had subsequently phoned to shout about Shelby’s scrawled Closed due to bereavement sign on the door.

‘Tiff! Drink?!’ Ron, Blackie’s assistant coach, had noticed her chronic lack of bar-presence and come to her aid. Tiff was briefly stunned by Ron’s offer – he was generally an abrasive man who kept himself to himself, but then funerals often made people behave out of character.

‘Gin and Tonic with a packet of scampi fries, please.’ There were times in life when only scampi fries would do. They had seen Tiff through the woes of her teen life and she needed a pack now. ‘I’ll be over there,’ she shouted across the din, pointing to the far corner where there appeared to be a pocket of air available.

Safely tucked into the corner, Tiff surveyed the room. The packed pub was bouncing: the sadness of the day was being sloughed off, as anecdotes about Blackie were bandied back and forth; about his coaching methods, his encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport and from the older set, tales of his own boxing achievements back in the day. By all accounts Blackie could have been something, if not for a leg injury. Instead he’d dedicated himself to furthering the careers of others.

There was something pleasing about watching people reminisce. The sad eyes of earlier were now lit up as they drew on memories of Blackie, shared their experiences and celebrated him.

‘Where’s your mate?’ Ron asked gruffly, setting their drinks on the table.

‘Shelby? Currently spitting bricks having been unceremoniously summonsed back to work. I pity anyone being waxed this afternoon.’ Ron looked uncomfortable. Tiff suspected it was more at the mention of women’s grooming than in sympathy.

‘He’d have enjoyed this.’ For a second Tiff saw a hint of a smile on Ron’s face. It was a rare occurrence. He normally nurtured a persona of miserable old git.

‘He’d be totally narked to be missing it,’ she said, letting her own smile unfold for the first time in days.

Ron sat down on the nearest stool, legs spread wide in that way blokes had, as if their tackle was simply too huge to be accommodated between closed knees. Tiff took a long slug of her drink, closed her eyes and leaning back into the banquet seat, took her first moment to relax.

‘Know what’s happening to the gym?’ Ron asked. Ah, that explained the friendliness.

‘Nope. You?’

‘He never said. Just that it’d be left in good hands. He was a vague bugger when it suited him.’

‘Ha!’ she said with a short mirthless laugh, remembering numerous occasions when Blackie’s hearing got selective and his answers non-committal. ‘But on the other hand, he could be as forthright as they came.’

‘He didn’t suffer fools,’ Ron said with a nod, clearly concurring with Blackie’s policy.

Oh, how she missed him, and it’d only been five days. Ron apparently felt the same, Tiff thought, as they sat in silence. The lack of conversation suited her; she was still slightly freaked by having spoken more words to Ron in the last five minutes than in the last eight years. Ron had joined as assistant coach the year before she started.

Tiff sensed the change of atmosphere in the bar almost immediately. A whisper flew through the room followed by a hubbub of greetings by the doors. The mass of boxers, visibly gravitated to someone on the far side. Neither Ron nor Tiff could see who it was, until the crowd parted in a Moses fashion and two people gained instant access to the bar.

‘There’s bar presence for you,’ Ron noted, but Tiff was busy staring. The guy at the bar was the guy at the church, still flanked by the woman in heels. From Tiff’s current position, it was apparent his face was not only bruised, but also very swollen. And under the swelling, his nose bore a strong resemblance to a banana. Whoever he was, he’d recently taken a fair old beating.

Ron let out a slow long whistle. ‘Well well well, Blackie would have been flattered, not that you’d recognise him easily.’

Tiff looked from the guy to Ron and back.

‘You know him?’ Tiff knew many of the boxers’ names, but not faces.

‘You must know him. From the telly?’

‘I don’t watch much telly.’

‘But you watch the boxing, don’t you?’

‘Nope. Never,’ she stated, tight-lipped. In spite of working a large part of her week around boxing, she’d always made a point to have nothing to do with the sport after hours. She didn’t watch it, she didn’t read about it. In fact, outside of what was happening inside Blackie’s walls, she refused to listen to news from the boxing world. She had a terrible feeling she might, right now, be looking at the reason for that.

‘He’s a world champion,’ Ron explained, incredulous at her ignorance. ‘Career like a firework; more wins, more titles than anyone else in the shortest time. Fights like he’s angry at the world. Absolutely stellar. But fireworks burn out, don’t they? On the brink of retirement, and given those bruises, I’d say it’s due any minute.’ Ron shook his head. ‘How’s Blackie got on his radar?’

The deep feeling of dread had twisted a knot in Tiff’s belly, but she managed to ask weakly ‘What’s his name, Ron?’

‘Mike Fellner. Mike “The Assassin” Fellner.’

‘Right.’ Tiff’s heart sank another rung down the misery ladder. ‘Gotcha.’ No wonder he’d been looking at her. Seriously? As if this week hadn’t been dire enough. Life had pummelled her twice already and here was a brisk jab to the guts.

‘See, I said you’d know him. Household name, even for philistines like you.’ Ron gave her an unimpressed snort, but her focus was on the bar, where ‘The Assassin’ was still greeting fans. Then he was looking for a space to sit or maybe for someone. There were only two empty chairs in the room. Tiff retracted to blend in with the flocked wallpaper. An encounter was not something she could deal with. Not today, not this week.

‘I suppose he must have met Blackie,’ Ron said with a grunt.

‘Blackie was his first trainer,’ she supplied, tersely. She braced herself as she saw him approach the table, feeling in all senses backed into a corner. His date moved away towards the toilets and Tiff briefly considered joining her, then fleeing via a window.

‘You sure?’ Ron asked, unconvinced. ‘He never told me that. Why wouldn’t he have told me that? That’s a great claim to fame.’ Ron’s curiosity had turned to disgruntlement at having been kept out of the loop. ‘How would you know, anyway? You don’t follow the sport.’

Tiff didn’t answer, she’d zoned out, trying to prepare for the imminent arrival.

‘Tiffanie Trent.’ He said it as a statement. His voice was deep and low, but carried as far as it needed to, in spite of the babble of the room. She felt foolish for not having recognised him immediately. But the bruising, the nose, the growing up – ten years did things to faces and bodies. Plus he was the last person she wanted to see.

‘Mikey Fellner.’ She didn’t know what to say, or what to do, so she settled for matching his opener, although she was moved to fidget and pull at her clothes, in an attempt to escape feeling appraised. Fail. Epic fail. Everything about that moment made her want to crawl under the bench. As if she didn’t feel rubbish enough already, seeing him in front of her dredged up every bad thought she’d ever had about herself.

He sat without being invited, knees spread wide, trousers taut against monster-muscled thighs. Tiff sensed Ron instinctively retract his own legs fractionally in what she assumed was some weird macho knob deference. Respects paid, Ron introduced himself with uncharacteristic gusto. Tiff experienced a faint sensation of nausea, as Ron gushed on, not put off by the fact Mike’s attention was rock solidly on her.

‘So,’ Ron finally concluded, ‘how do you know each other?’

Mike arched one eyebrow, but he didn’t comment. Instead a silence ensued as they all waited for one of them to fill Ron in. Eventually Tiff caved out of sheer choking discomfort.

‘Mikey and I went to school together, Ron.’ She knew this wasn’t enough of the truth, judging by the way the other eyebrow now met its wingman, but she couldn’t bear to venture deeper into it. Opening it all up, peering at what it had been, examining what it had done to her, would twist the knife in an already debilitating wound.

She waited to see if he’d offer more.

He did.

‘Ron, mate,’ he started, genuinely as if he’d known Ron forever, ‘this was the first and last girl to break my heart.’ He didn’t say it with any sense of wistful nostalgia; in fact, it felt as if Mike bore a grudge.

He had a bloody nerve! He had a bloody nerve even showing up here in his fancy suit with his fancy girlfriend and coming up to her like this. Something shifted in her, something akin to anger that overrode the hurt.

‘Um, want me to leave you to it? Catch up, like?’ Ron was torn; he was sat with a boxing legend, but it was all feeling a bit … squirmy.

‘Stay put, Ron. I’m leaving after this drink,’ she said pointedly, refusing to be intimidated by a man who had no right to try to make her feel bad about the past. He was the one doing the heart-breaking, not her. Tiff tilted her chin at him. ‘It’s been a long week and I’ve got a killer headache.’ This was a whopping lie. She had packing to do, but nobody needed to know that.

‘You look different, Tiff,’ Mike said, ignoring her headache.

‘It’s been ten years, Mikey,’ she snapped, conscious that after the last week, she did not look her best. Sod’s law they’d meet when she was looking rough. ‘You’re hardly the fresh-faced teen.’

‘You should see the other guy, Angel,’ he countered. Angel. No-one had called her that in years. His tone was curt, and whereas ‘Angel’ had once made her feel special, it now sounded vaguely like a put-down. ‘And don’t let the bruises fool you. Every bruise I ever got brought experience, a lesson to protect myself better next time.’ Tiff knew he was making a point, but she wasn’t having any of it. He had let her down. She held his gaze, trying not to rise to the bait, but the simmering fury kept building.

‘I didn’t recognise you at the church. Maybe it was the blinding ego.’ He was different. He wasn’t that lanky lad anymore, whose body was growing in spurts his self-image couldn’t keep up with. He’d obviously got the muscles from the boxing, but they now balanced his limbs in a way they hadn’t when they were teens. They weren’t the arms she’d stroked and clearly not the chicken’s legs she’d once entwined with her own. She flushed at the thought, then looked away, hoping he wouldn’t notice the bloodrush.

‘Looking a smidge red there, Tiff. Maybe you aren’t used to seeing me with another woman,’ he said, ignoring her swipe. ‘I only had eyes for you back then.’

Well, she definitely wasn’t rising to that. She didn’t give a stuff who he was with. That said, she couldn’t help but think about what his eyes must see now. Last he saw her, she was sixteen, confident – cocky even – the daughter of the local bank manager. Physically she still looked similar. She’d gained some weight, but who didn’t do that when they settled down with someone? That was happiness, right? And her hair could probably do with sorting, but Tiff had learned a long time ago to avoid hairdressers and the insatiable gossiping. But this was a funeral, so she was entitled to look weary and wan, if not slightly dishevelled. He could put it down to grief, rather than her life being a total shitstorm.

Not that she cared what he thought either. Why would she care about his opinion? They’d known each other a long time ago, she reminded herself, for an intense but short time, and in the end, they’d crashed and burned. So why should it bother her, when she was deeply in the throes of losing Gavin, what Mikey bloody Fellner saw when he looked at her? After today she doubted they’d meet again, so, pulling herself up in her seat, Tiff decided she’d look him straight in the eye and not be cowed.

‘I’m not used to seeing you at all, Mike. It’s been ten years since you went. Ten years. And you’re long forgotten.’

He made a show of looking around the room, where right on cue all the boxers who’d greeted him earlier looked over. Bastards.

‘Clearly not that forgotten.’

‘Oh, get a grip, Mike.’ She was finding it hard resisting the urge to punch him in the face. ‘They don’t remember you; they didn’t know you. They’re just celebrity gogglers. World champion or performing seal, same/same to them.’

That garnered her another arched eyebrow. She’d once spent an hour trying to do the eyebrow thing, to no avail. She’d looked like she was experiencing some form of facial seizure. But his reaction now brought her back to the task in hand. She knocked back the remainder of her drink and pulled on her coat.

‘Been keeping an eye on my career, have you?’ he asked, with a particularly smug smile. He was patently enjoying winding her up. Infuriating tosser.

‘Hardly,’ she sneered. ‘Ron just insisted on updating me.’ Ron looked at her, appalled. He hadn’t seen this side of her before, and he definitely didn’t want to be complicit in disrespecting a legend.

‘Really?’ Mike drawled. Not just a git but an arrogant git.

‘Really,’ she shot back. ‘Not remotely interested; not in sport, not in you.’ She stood up, almost shaking from keeping the rage in. ‘And the nickname? Seriously? My best friend’s got a vibrator called “The Assassin”.’ She grabbed her bag and the packet of scampi fries before he could respond. ‘Thanks for dropping by. Blackie would have been touched you bothered.’ See? She could be composed and calm-ish – in spite of the way he’d behaved back then. She also managed ‘brave’ and ‘stoic’ as she stifled an agonised yelp having hit her shin leaving the table. Dammit.

She left, trying not to hobble, aware of his eyes drilling into her back and that he hadn’t said goodbye.

Well, she should be used to that.