With Love From London

‘Since when does a hard-headed businessman offer help to the business next door?’

When it was owned by a friend, one whom he happened to know was doing this single-handedly. Not that he thought she’d accept that. And part of him thought that he was crazy. Why would he help her, when he wanted her to sell the place to him? He ought to be making life hard for her, not bringing her coffee and offering help from his staff.

Yet part of him wondered—was there a compromise? Could he forge a deal that would both please his father and help his friend? ‘Damage limitation,’ he said. ‘If your place goes up in smoke, it’s going to affect mine.’ It was true. The fact that he couldn’t quite separate Nicole from Georgygirl was irrelevant.

‘Right.’ She grabbed a cloth and rubbed the worst of the dust from one of the chairs. ‘Since you’re here, have a seat.’

‘Thank you.’ He sat down.

‘So why are you really here?’ she asked.

Because he missed her. But he didn’t think she was ready to hear that. He wasn’t sure he was ready to hear that, either. ‘Being neighbourly. Just as you’d do if you were a lot further on in the restoration here and I’d just started up next door.’

‘With the exception that I wouldn’t be trying to buy your hotel so I could raze it to the ground to make a car park for my cinema,’ she pointed out.

‘I did say that was one option. There are others,’ he said mildly. He just hadn’t thought them all through yet. He wanted the land for car parking. Restoring the cinema instead and using it as part of the hotel was unlikely to be cost effective. To give himself some breathing space, he asked, ‘Why did you call yourself Georgygirl on the forum?’

It was the last question Nicole had expected. She frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with the cinema?’

‘Nothing. I’m just curious. Before I knew who you were, I assumed maybe your name was Georgina, or your surname was George. And then afterwards I thought of the film.’

‘A film that’s half a century old and has never been remade—and you loathe romcoms anyway.’ Or, at least, Clarence did. She didn’t know what Gabriel Hunter liked. How much of Clarence had been real?

‘OK. So I looked it up on the internet. But the synopsis I read—well, it doesn’t fit you. And neither does the song. You’re not dowdy and any male with red blood would give you a second glance.’

‘I wasn’t fishing for compliments,’ she said crisply. ‘For the record, I’m not interested in flattery, either.’

‘I was merely stating facts. Though there is one thing,’ he said. ‘You’re Nicole on the outside and Georgy on the inside.’

Two parts of the same person. Was it the same for him? Was the nice side of Gabriel Hunter—Clarence—real? But he’d lied to her. How could she trust him? Especially as she’d made that mistake before: putting her trust in the wrong man. She’d promised herself she’d never repeat that mistake again.

‘So—why Georgygirl?’ he asked again.

‘It’s not from that film. If you must know, it’s George, as in Banks, because I’m—well, was—a banker, and girl because I’m female.’

‘George Banks from Mary Poppins,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’d believe that feeding the birds is a waste—so I’m guessing that you never find the time to fly kites.’

‘Clever.’ And a little too close to the truth for her comfort. ‘So why did you call yourself Clarence?’

‘Because my name’s Gabriel.’

She frowned. ‘I’m not following you.’

‘As in the angel,’ he said.

She scoffed. ‘You’re no angel.’

‘I don’t pretend to be. I just happen to have the name of an angel.’

The Archangel Gabriel; and an angel called Clarence. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Her favourite film: the one she watched with her mother every Christmas Eve and wept over every time the townsfolk of Bedford Falls all came with their savings to help George Bailey. She shook her head. ‘No. You should’ve called yourself Potter.’

‘Harry?’

‘Henry,’ she corrected.

He grimaced. ‘I know you think I’m a corporate shark, but I’d never cheat or steal like Henry Potter.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘For the record, that wasn’t my teenage mistake, or have you already checked that out?’

‘Once I found out who you really were, I looked you up,’ she admitted. ‘I saw what the papers said about you.’

‘It is what it is.’ He shrugged. ‘So now you know the worst of me.’

‘Yes. It’s a hell of a teenage mistake, crashing your car into someone’s shop.’

‘While drunk. Don’t forget that. And my father had enough money to hire a top-class lawyer who could get me off on a technicality. Which makes me the lowest of the low.’ He suddenly looked really vulnerable. ‘And you think I don’t know that?’

She winced. Clarence had told her he regretted his teenage mistake bitterly. That he was still paying for his mistake over and over again. There was a lot more to this than the papers had reported, she was sure.

And she’d just been really, really mean to him. To the man who’d made her life that bit brighter over the last six months. How horrible did that make her?

Then again, Gabriel had tried to leverage their friendship to make her sell the cinema to him. Which made him as much of a user as Jeff. And that was something she found hard to forgive.

‘Mr Hunter, we really have nothing to say to each other.’

‘Georgy—Nicole,’ he corrected himself, ‘we’ve talked every night for months and I think that’s real.’

‘But your company wants to buy my cinema.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not for sale. Not now, and not ever.’

‘Message received and understood,’ he said. ‘Have you spoken to a surveyor yet?’

‘No,’ she admitted.

‘I can give you some names.’

‘I bet you can.’

He frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘A surveyor who’ll tell me that there’s so much wrong, the best thing I can do is raze it to the ground and sell you the site as a car park for your new hotel?’ she asked waspishly.

‘No. I’m really not like Henry Potter,’ he said again. ‘I was trying to be nice. To help you, because I have experience in the area and you don’t.’

‘Why would you help me when we’re business rivals?’

‘Because we don’t have to be rivals,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can work together.’

‘How?’

‘What do you intend to do with the place?’

‘You’ve already asked me that, and my answer’s the same.’ She looked at him. ‘Would you tell a business rival what your strategy was?’

He sighed. ‘Nicole, I’m not asking for rivalry reasons. I’m asking, are you going to run it as a cinema or are you going to use the space for something else? You once said if you could do anything you wanted, you’d open a café and have a space where people could do some kind of art.’

‘It’s a possibility,’ she allowed. ‘I need to sort out my costings first and work out the best use of the space.’ And she really had to make this work. She didn’t want to lose all her savings and her security—to risk being as vulnerable as her mother had been when Nicole was growing up, having no choices in what she did.

‘If you want to set up an art café,’ he said, ‘maybe I can help you find better premises for it.’

‘And sell you the cinema? We’ve already discussed this, and you can ask me again and again until you’re blue in the face, but it’s not happening. Whatever I do, it’ll be done right here.’

‘OK. Well, as a Surrey Quays resident—’

‘You mean you actually live here?’ she broke in. ‘You didn’t just join the forum to listen out for people protesting against your development so you could charm them out of it?’

He winced. ‘That was one of the reasons I joined the forum initially, I admit.’

So she’d been right and their whole relationship had been based on a lie. Just as it had with Jeff. Would she never learn?

‘But I do live in Surrey Quays,’ he said, and named one of the most prestigious developments on the edge of the river. ‘I moved there eighteen months ago. And I’m curious about the cinema now I’m here. It’s been boarded up ever since I’ve lived in the area.’

‘You seriously expect me to give you a guided tour?’

‘Would you give Clarence a tour?’ he asked.

Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. She blew out a breath. ‘You’re not Clarence.’

‘But I am,’ he said softly. ‘I know things about you that you haven’t told anyone else—just as you know things about me. We’re friends.’

Was that true? Could she trust him?

Part of her wanted to believe that her friendship with Clarence wasn’t a castle built on sand; part of her wanted to run as fast as she could in the opposite direction.

Hope had a brief tussle with common sense—and won. ‘All right. I’ll show you round. But it’ll have to be by torchlight,’ she warned.

‘Cinemas are supposed to be dark,’ he said with a smile.

She wished he hadn’t smiled like that. It gave her goose-bumps. Gabriel Hunter had a seriously beautiful mouth, and his eyes were the colour of cornflowers.

And why was she mooning over him? Ridiculous. She needed to get a grip. Right now. ‘This is the foyer—well, obviously,’ she said gruffly, and shone the torch round.

He gave an audible intake of breath. ‘The glass, Nicole—it’s beautiful. Art Deco. It deserves to be showcased.’

The same thing she’d noticed. Warmth flared through her, and she had to damp it down. This was her business rival Gabriel Hunter, not her friend Clarence, she reminded herself.

‘The cinema itself is through here.’

He sniffed as she ushered him through to the auditorium, then pulled a face. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got a mouse problem. That’s a pretty distinctive smell.’

‘They’ve chomped the seats a lot, too.’ She shone a torch onto one of the worst bits to show him.

‘There are people who can restore that. I know some good upholst—’ He stopped. ‘Sorry. I’ll shut up. You’re perfectly capable of researching your own contractors.’

She brought him back out into the foyer. ‘From what you said the other day, you know that this place was originally an Edwardian kursaal or leisure centre. The downstairs was originally a skating rink and the upstairs was the Electric Cinema.’

‘Does that mean you have a projection room upstairs as well as down?’ he asked.

‘I’m still mapping the place out and working my way through all the junk, but I think so—because in the nineteen-thirties it was changed to a ballroom upstairs and a picture house downstairs.’

‘So is upstairs still the ballroom?’

Upstairs was the bit that she hoped would make him change his mind about ever asking her to sell again. Because surely, working for a company which renovated old buildings and redeveloped them into hotels, he must have some appreciation of architecture? Clarence would love it, she knew; but how much of Clarence had been designed simply to charm her and how much of Clarence was really Gabriel? That was what she hadn’t worked out yet. And until she did she wasn’t prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘The stairs,’ she said, gesturing towards them.

‘That’s beautiful, too. Look at that railing. I can imagine women sweeping down that staircase in floaty dresses after waltzing the night away.’

Just as she’d thought when she’d seen the staircase. And there was no way that Gabriel could’ve known she’d thought that, because she hadn’t told him. So was his response pure Clarence, and that meant Clarence was the real part of him, after all?

‘And this room at the top,’ she said as they walked up the stairs, ‘was used by Brian as a store-room, or so Mum says.’

‘Is your mum OK?’ he asked.

She frowned. ‘OK about what?’

‘This place. It must have memories for her. And, in the circumstances…’ His voice faded.

‘She’s fine. But thank you for asking.’

‘I wasn’t being polite, and I wasn’t asking for leverage purposes, either,’ he said softly. ‘I was asking as your friend, Nicole.’

Gabriel wasn’t her friend, though.

Saying nothing, she opened the door to the upper room and handed him the torch. ‘See what you think.’

He shone the torch on the flooring first. ‘That looks like parquet flooring—cleaned up, that will be stunning.’ He bent down to take a closer look. ‘Just look at the inlay—Nicole, this is gorgeous.’

But it wasn’t the really stunning bit of the room. She still couldn’t understand why her grandfather had wasted it by using the room as storage space.

‘Look up,’ she said.

Gabriel shone the torch upwards and she actually heard his intake of breath. ‘Is that plasterwork or is it pressed tin?’ he asked.

‘I assume it’s plasterwork. I didn’t even know ceilings could be made of anything else. Well, except maybe wood?’

‘Do you have a ladder?’ he asked.

‘It doesn’t tend to be something that a banker would use in their everyday job, so no,’ she said dryly.

‘I’ll bring one over from next door later this afternoon, so we can take a closer look,’ he said.

We? she wondered. It was her cinema, not his. But at least he seemed to appreciate the ceiling.

‘Do you still want to raze the place to the ground, then?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘If that ceiling’s tin, which I think it might be, that’s quite rare in England and it’ll probably get this building listed. Look at those Art Deco stars—they’re absolutely amazing.’

He’d already told her that if a building was listed it meant extra work and delays. ‘You mean, that ceiling will get the building listed if someone drops the council an anonymous letter telling them about it?’ she asked sharply.

‘If you mean me or anyone at Hunter’s, no. That’s not how I operate. But I’ve got experience in this sort of thing, Nicole. I can help you. We’re not on opposite sides.’

‘It feels like it.’

‘We’ve been friends for a while. We probably know more about each other than most of our non-online friends know about us.’

‘But do we really?’ she asked. ‘How do we know it wasn’t all an act?’

‘It wasn’t on my part,’ he said, ‘and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on yours.’ He held her gaze. ‘Have dinner with me tonight.’

No. Common sense meant that she should say no.

But the expression in his eyes wasn’t one of triumph or guile. She couldn’t quite read it.

‘Why do you want to have dinner with me?’ she asked.

Gabriel couldn’t blame her for being suspicious. He had been trying to buy her cinema, planning to turn it into a car park for his hotel. But now he’d seen the building and its potential he was looking at the whole thing in a different light. Maybe there was a way to compromise. OK, so he wouldn’t get the parking, but he might get something even better. Something that would benefit them both.

‘Because then we can talk. Properly.’ He sighed. ‘Look, you know my background’s in the service and entertainment industry. I’ve worked with several renovations, bringing a building kicking and screaming back to life and then into the modern age. I’ve got a lot of knowledge that could help you, and a lot of contacts that would be useful for you.’

‘And what’s in it for you?’

She was so prickly with him now. And he wanted their old easy-going relationship back. ‘Does something have to be in it for me?’

‘You have a reputation as a very hard-headed businessman. I can accept that you’d maybe do charity work, because that would double up as good PR for Hunter Hotels, but I’m not a charity.’ She looked at him again. ‘So why would you help me for nothing?’

‘Because,’ he said softly, ‘I live in Surrey Quays and this building is part of my community. Plus Georgygirl’s my friend and I’d like to help her make her dreams come true.’

‘And there’s really nothing in it for you? At all?’

Maybe this was the time for honesty. And she was right in that there was some self-interest. ‘Do you remember suggesting to me that I ought to take the family business in a different direction—that I should do something that really interests me, something that gives me a challenge?’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe this would be my challenge.’

‘And that’s it? To help someone you think is your friend and to give yourself an intellectual challenge?’

And to give him some freedom. But he wasn’t quite ready to admit how stifled he felt. Not to Nicole. Georgy was a different matter; but right now Nicole wasn’t Georgy and she didn’t trust him. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Have dinner with me tonight and we can discuss it properly.’

Nicole intended to say no, but the words that came out of her mouth were different. ‘Only on condition we go halves on the bill tonight—and I owe you for the coffee and brownie.’

‘You can buy me coffee later in the week,’ he said. ‘I’ll be around next door.’

‘You’re trying to tell me you’re the boy next door, now?’

He shrugged. ‘My business is next to yours and I have a Y chromosome, so I guess that’s the same thing.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s a million miles away, Mr Hunter, and you know it.’

He didn’t argue with her; instead, he said, ‘I’ll book somewhere for dinner. I already know we both like Italian food. I’ll pick you up at, what, seven?’

‘I suppose you’ve already looked up my address,’ she said, feeling slightly nettled.

‘On the electoral roll, yes.’ He paused. ‘It would be useful to have each other’s phone number in case one of us is delayed.’

‘True.’ And in the meantime she might be able to think up a good excuse not to meet him, and could text him said good excuse. She grabbed her phone from her pocket. ‘Tell me your number, then I’ll text you so you’ll have mine.’

It only took a matter of seconds to sort that out.

‘Thank you for showing me round,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘OK.’

But she couldn’t stop thinking about him all afternoon. Was she doing the right thing, going to dinner with him? Could they work together? Or was she just setting herself up for yet another fall and it’d be better to call it off?

Halfway through the afternoon there was a knock on the front door, and she heard Gabriel call, ‘Hello? Nicole, are you here?’

She was about to ask what he thought he was doing when she realised that he’d changed into jeans and an old T-shirt—making him look much more approachable than his shark-in-a-suit persona—and he was carrying a ladder.

‘Why the ladder?’ she asked.

‘Remember I said I’d bring one over? I thought we could take a closer look at your ceiling,’ he said.

‘Don’t you need to be somewhere?’

He smiled. ‘I don’t have to account for every minute of my time. Anyway, I promised you a ladder. Given that you’ve already said a ladder isn’t part of your everyday equipment—whereas it is part of mine—I’ll carry the ladder and you do the torch?’

‘No need for a torch. The electricity’s back on now.’

‘The fuses are OK?’

‘So far, yes, but obviously I’ll need to get the wiring checked out properly.’

This time he didn’t offer help from his team next door; part of her was relieved that he’d got the message, but part of her was disappointed that he’d given up on her so quickly. Which was ridiculous and contrary. She didn’t want to be beholden to Gabriel Hunter for anything. But she missed her friend Clarence.

‘Let’s go take a look at that ceiling,’ he said instead.

In the old ballroom, he rested the ladder against the wall.

‘So you’re going to hold the ladder steady for me?’ she asked.

‘Do you know what to look for?’ he checked.

‘No, but it’s my ceiling.’ And she wanted to be the first one to look at it.

He grinned, as if guessing exactly what was going through her mind. ‘Yes, ma’am. OK. You go up first and take a look.’ He took the camera from round his neck and handed it to her. ‘And photographs, if you want.’

She recognised the make of the camera as seriously expensive. ‘You’re trusting me with this?’

‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I?’

He clearly wasn’t as suspicious and mean-minded as she was, which made her feel a twinge of guilt. ‘Thanks,’ she said. She put the camera strap round her neck so it’d leave her hands free, then climbed up the ladder. Close up, she still didn’t have a clue whether she was looking at plasterwork or tin. But she duly took photographs and went back down the ladder.

Gabriel reviewed her photographs on the rear screen of the camera.

‘So can you tell whether it’s tin or plasterwork from the photographs?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Would you mind if I went up and had a look?’

‘Go ahead. I’ll hold the ladder steady.’

As he climbed the ladder, Nicole noticed how nice his backside looked encased in faded denim. And how inappropriate was that? She damped down the unexpected flickers of desire and concentrated on holding the ladder steady.

‘It’s definitely pressed tin,’ Gabriel said when he came back down. ‘It was very popular in early twentieth-century America because it was an affordable alternative to plasterwork, plus it was lightweight and fireproof. So I guess that’s why it was used here, to keep the ceiling fireproof. The tin sheets were pressed with a die to make patterned panels, then painted white to make them look as if it was plasterwork. Though, if that’s still the original paint up there, it’s likely to be lead, so you need to be careful and get a specialist in to restore the panels.’

‘It sounds as if you’ve come across this before.’

He nodded. ‘There was a tin ceiling and tin wainscoting in a hotel we renovated three or four years ago. Basically you need to strip off the old paint to get rid of the lead—for health and safety reasons—then put on a protective base coat, patch up any damage and repaint it.’ He paused. ‘Usually the panels were painted white, but there seem to be some traces of gold on the stars.’

She looked up at the ceiling. ‘I can imagine this painted dark blue, with gold stars.’

‘Especially with that floor, this would really work as a ballroom—and ballroom dancing is definitely on trend. There are even fitness classes based on ballroom dance moves. You could take the kursaal back to its roots but bring it into this century at the same time.’

He was talking a lot of sense. Putting things into words that she’d already started to think about. ‘It’s a possibility.’ She continued staring at the ceiling. ‘There are all kinds of styles around the cinema, everything from Edwardian through to slightly shabby nineteen-seventies. It’s a mess, and it’d be sensible to take it back to one point in time. And, with features like this, it’d make sense to restore the building back to how it was when it was a ballroom and cinema. It’s a shame there won’t be any colour pictures to give me any idea what the original decorative schemes looked like, though. There definitely isn’t any paperwork giving any details.’

‘Actually, there might be colour photos,’ he said, and grabbed his phone. After a few seconds’ browsing, he handed the phone to her so she could see for herself. ‘Just as I thought. According to this website, colour photos exist from as far back as the middle of the eighteen hundreds.’

‘But weren’t they coloured by hand, back then—so they were colourised rather than actually being printed in colour?’ Nicole pointed out.

‘Look, you can see the three different print overlay colours at the edge of this one.’ He pored over the screen with her. ‘But it also says the process was time-consuming.’

‘And expensive, so it’d be reserved for really big news stories—unless I guess someone was really wealthy and did it as a hobby. Though would they have taken a picture of the building?’

‘There might be something in the local archive office,’ he said. ‘Photos or sketches that people haven’t seen for a century.’