Undertaking Love (28 page)

‘But the one thing I really can’t stand is men who hurt women. This is for Marla.’

And with that, Gabe smacked his fist straight into Rupert’s jaw.

Rupert howled and wiped his mouth with his arm. ‘Fuck off, Ryan! The little bitch deserved it!’

‘I doubt it, but you deserve this.’

Gabe hit him again, harder this time causing blood to spring from Rupert’s nose and splatter down the front of his pristine candy stripe shirt.

‘You bastard! That’s only just healed after that Freddie fucking Mercury wannabe broke it!’

Gabe made a mental note to shake Jonny’s hand the next time he saw him.

Rupert spat out blood and breathed hard, a crazed glint in his eye.

‘You really think you stand a chance with her now I’m not in the picture?’ He sneered at Gabe. ‘Good old Gabriel, patron saint of dead dogs.’

Gabe watched him, trying to decide where to hit him next.

‘You’re so dumb, Irish. Always trying to do the right thing. You didn’t even realise that I was shagging both of them right under your nose, did you?’

‘Both of them?’

Rupert laughed, enjoying his big revelation. ‘You want to watch that receptionist of yours, Gabriel.’ Rupert pointed his finger in Gabe’s face. ‘You’ve got yourself a right little viper in the nest, there. Right little viper in the sack too, actually.’

Melanie?

Gabe shook his head and backed away. ‘You disgust me. Just stay the fuck away from Marla.’

He picked up his helmet, and the staff parted like the crowds of Galilee, clearing a path for him.

Jonny kicked open the funeral parlour door and eyed Melanie with distaste. ‘Get Gabriel.’

Fake regret dripped from Melanie’s every pore as she shook her head.

‘Sorry. He’s unavailable.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Melanie looked momentarily disconcerted by Jonny’s bald confrontational manner, before she recovered herself and lifted a nonchalant shoulder.

‘Sorry. Do you want to leave a message?’

‘With you?’ Jonny laughed. ‘Err, hello? I don’t think so, honey. You have a nasty little habit of not passing messages on, don’t you?’

Melanie stared at him with a bland expression, but Jonny noticed the agitated way she fidgeted with her pencil. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘Really?’ Jonny spat back and shot her daggers across the desk. ‘Only I think you know
exactly
what I’m talking about.’ He didn’t hear the door open behind him.

‘If I said fireworks, July Fourth and dead dogs, would that jog your memory, I wonder? And what about a certain wedding-funeral clash that Dora definitely mentioned to you?’ He wagged his finger at her and gave her his Oprah-inspired neck wiggle. ‘I’m onto you, lady.’

A hand landed on Jonny’s shoulder, and he whipped around to find himself face to face with Gabe.

‘What’s going on here?’ Gabe asked quietly.

‘Nothing,’ Melanie said with a smooth smile. ‘Jonny was just leaving.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’ Jonny turned to Gabe. ‘Marla asked me to do a last run through with you, make sure everything is clockwork for tomorrow.’

Gabe nodded. ‘Sure. Come on through.’

‘I can do it, Gabe,’ Melanie jumped in. ‘Really.’ She picked up a grey folder and tapped it. ‘I have all of the info right here …’

‘Thank you.’ Gabe took the file from her fingers. ‘But I’d rather do this myself.’

‘But …’

Gabe dismissed her protests with a curt shake of his head and waved for Jonny to follow him through. ‘Come up to the office.’

Jonny couldn’t resist a victory wink at Melanie, and she met his eyes with a look of malice that would have rattled a mass murderer.

Gabe sat alone in his office for some time after Jonny left.

The preparations for Dora’s funeral were watertight; it was the knowledge of Melanie’s duplicity that held him despondent in his seat. The smokescreen she’d cloaked herself in had blown away on the winds of truth, and the additional information Jonny had just revealed about the note from the fireworks had been the final nail in the coffin.

It came at great cost to Gabe. He’d been determined to think the best of her, and it unnerved him that he could have got her so wrong.

When had his judgment become so skewed?

He dropped his head into his hands and pushed his palms into his eye sockets.

He was starting to wish he’d never set foot in this place.

This thing with Marla was going nowhere, and he missed Dora’s unique brand of acerbic humour around the place more than he’d care to admit. The realisation that Melanie had played him for a fool felt like one blow too many, and for the first time he questioned the wisdom of doggedly sticking it out when everyone was against him.

He’d had just about a gut-full of Beckleberry.

What was the point?

He shoved his chair back and headed downstairs.

Melanie buttoned her winter coat as Gabe walked into reception, and she met his eyes with the startled gaze of a fox staring down the double barrel of the farmer’s shot gun.

He crossed to block the closed door.

‘I trusted you,’ he said softly.

‘You can
still
trust me,’ she whispered as she stepped towards him.

‘No.’ Gabe laughed bitterly and shook his head. ‘No, I can’t. You slept with Rupert. You took the note from the fireworks and gave it to him.’

He drew no pleasure from the way she flinched at each new accusation.

‘But worst of all, you deliberately let a defenceless old woman take the blame for something that you did.’

‘I can explain, Gabe. Please, just listen …’

‘I don’t think so.’

He handed her a brown envelope. ‘Just leave, and don’t come back.’

He swung the door wide and stepped aside to let her pass.

A little later, Gabe nudged the door to the Chapel of Rest open with one foot and carried two mugs of tea into the quiet room. He sat down next to Dora’s lifeless form and picked at the seal on a packet of jammy dodgers.

He knew perfectly well that it made no sense to bring tea and biscuits for a dead person, but he felt that Dora would appreciate the gesture, nonetheless.

‘Cheers, Dora.’

He clinked his mug gently against her full one and dunked a biscuit.

‘It’s been a bit of a day, to be honest, Dora. I’ve smacked Rupert, sacked Melanie, and Marla still can’t stand the bloody sight of me. Two out of three ain’t bad, huh?’

He smiled, certain that Dora would have had plenty to say about the day’s events. He sat in companionable silence with her until he’d finished his tea.

‘I’ll take special care of you tomorrow. Only the best, I promise.’

He touched her cool fingers, adorned only with a single band of gold.

The symbol of Ivan’s eternal love.

Gabe picked up both mugs, one full and one almost empty, and left the room with a heavy heart. Tomorrow was going to be a long day in more ways than one, not least because the funeral parlour and the chapel needed to work seamlessly together. Marla had conducted all of her negotiations through either Jonny or Emily thus far, but the luxury of avoidance wouldn’t be available to her in the morning. They’d have to work shoulder to shoulder if they were to give Dora the send off that she deserved, and by hook or by crook, Gabe intended to make Marla understand that he wasn’t that man from the newspaper article.

The next morning dawned, sprinkling a fairytale glitter of frost across the village. Lights and kettles were flicked on, and early morning cuppas were raised in silent salute to Dora. Wife, neighbour and friend.

At the funeral parlour, Gabe lingered before closing Dora’s casket for the last time. Death had stolen her beady vivaciousness and replaced it with a soft serenity; her precious yellow dress was tucked safely under her arm.

‘Sleep well, old girl,’ he murmured as he carefully sealed the lid. He laid his hand against the polished yew for a few seconds of silence before heading outside to check on Dan.

At the florist, Ruth and her two teenage daughters had been at work since five o’clock that morning to finish all of the floral tributes on order. They barely noticed that their fingers were red with exertion and the pricks of thorns as they chewed their lips and concentrated on the flowers. Down the lane, Ivan, who had been out with his secateurs since sunrise, laboured slowly up to the chapel with his arms full of delicately scented lemon wintersweet and fragile, yellow hellebores to decorate the altar. Marla chastised him gently as she made him a sweet cup of tea, then drove him home again and ironed his good shirt. Whilst she was gone, Emily moved the vases of white lilies she’d artfully arranged and replaced them with Ivan’s love tokens, her cheeks wet with tears.

Jonny unloaded beer and wine from Marla’s car into the chapel kitchen, where quiches, cakes and plates of sandwiches were overflowing every available surface. It was a testimony to Dora’s popularity that so many of the villagers had turned up at the back door that morning with food clutched in their hands.

‘Dora would have loved all this fuss, wouldn’t she?’ Emily said to Jonny as she came through to the kitchen with a newly delivered trifle in her arms. She balanced it on her bump as she hunted for space to set it down.

Jonny puffed out.

‘She’d have had this lot organised in five minutes flat.’ He glanced around the overloaded kitchen and started to line up glasses on a decorator’s table that he’d unearthed in Ivan’s shed.

‘I’ll tell you what else she’d have loved, as well.’ He swivelled around with one hand on his hip and a sparkle in his eye. ‘That little bitch over there getting what was coming to her.’

He’d taken great delight in relaying to Emily earlier the gossip Gabe had confided in him, particularly the part about how he’d then seen Melanie leave the funeral parlour in floods of tears.

‘I wonder how Gabe’s going to cope without her now though.’ Emily said, then frowned as Marla came through the open back door rubbing her hands together for warmth.

‘How who’s going to cope without who?’ Marla asked, unwinding her pale blue merino scarf from around her neck and glancing from Jonny to Emily.

‘Gabe. He’s given Melanie the boot,’ Jonny replied, practically shimmying with excitement.

Marla’s hand stilled at her throat. ‘Really? Why?’

Jonny revelled in the opportunity to tell his story all over again, and spared no details when describing how shocked Gabe had been when he’d found out about the note from the fireworks.

‘And then she came out, sobbing! Practically on her knees,
begging
him for her job back,’ he finished with a flourish. ‘Good riddance, I say.’

‘Well, I can’t say that I’ll miss her,’ Marla said, careful to keep her surprise from her voice. Gabe’s staffing issues were his own affair, but up till now he’d always seemed to be Melanie’s number one fan. It wasn’t that long since he’d given the girl flowers and taken her for fancy dinners, for god’s sake. But then, she didn’t know why was she even remotely surprised. It was entirely consistent with his behaviour to turn his affections on and off like a tap.

She glanced up at the kitchen clock.

‘Come on guys, we’d better get out front. People will start arriving soon.’

Jonny eyed Emily’s bump with a frown as they filed through the vestry and out into the cool winter sunshine.

‘I wish you’d hurry up and have that bloody baby. I’m sick of lurking outside every time I want a fag.’

Emily smiled at him sweetly.

‘I’m sorry to inconvenience your legs, but my child says thank you.’

He shot her a sarcastic look as he wandered off towards the old graves at the back of the chapel gardens.

Tom sauntered up the High Street in his dark suit and joined their little huddle. He slid an arm around Emily’s shoulders and dropped a kiss on her cheek.

‘All set?’

‘I think so,’ Marla nodded as Jonny reappeared at her side. It struck her how sombre a tableau they made, a huddle of black against the stark white chapel.

They looked up in unison as Gabe appeared momentarily on the street outside the funeral parlour. He glanced their way with a tiny nod of acknowledgment, before disappearing again through the side gate.

‘Is it terribly bad form to find the undertaker sexy?’ Jonny murmured. ‘Sorry, Dora.’ He crossed himself as he cast his eyes to the skies in apology.

‘You won’t like him so much when he puts you out of a job next summer,’ Marla muttered with unnecessary acidity, mainly because very similar thoughts had invaded her own head at the sight of Gabe. It frustrated the hell out of her that the mad chemist in her gut refused to listen to the cool voice of reason in her head.

Today was going to be a long, long day.

By midday the chapel was packed to the rafters with mourners. Marla hovered outside the door and sent a discreet nod towards Tom, who stood sentry in the funeral-parlour doorway.

He disappeared inside, and moments later Ivan stepped out onto the pavement to lead his wife on her final journey. Dora’s casket followed, borne on the steadfast shoulders of Gabe, Tom, Jonny and Dan. A painful lump rose in Marla’s throat as she watched them match their pace to Ivan’s. They made a slow and dignified procession, and she had to acknowledge that they all looked magnificent with a yellow hellebore pinned to the lapel of their black jackets. Marla glanced down at the matching flower corsage around her wrist, the only splash of colour against her simple Jackie-O-style black dress.

Who knew that Ivan had such a romantic soul? Only Dora.

She looked up as Ivan approached the chapel doorway and reached out for his hands.

‘Are you alright?’ she asked.

He squeezed her fingers for a few seconds then stepped inside the chapel. She swallowed hard and met Gabe’s eyes without rancour as he drew alongside her. Today wasn’t the time for discord, a fact brought home by the strains of the wartime love song ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ that floated from the chapel speakers.

Emily and Marla had both shed a tear yesterday as they listened to the simple love song Ivan had requested, made all the more sentimental by the crackle and hum from the stylus of the old record player Jonny had hunted down for the occasion.