Undertaking Love (12 page)

Dan.

What had happened on her birthday had been a long time coming, an inevitable consequence of the Chinese-water-torture style erosion of their marriage. She had hit rock bottom, and Dan had been her soft landing. A soft landing that she’d paid a daily penance for ever since with the ever-present weight of guilt on her shoulders. She could, of course, tell Tom. But who would she really be doing it for? Did he have a right to know, or was it better to shoulder the guilt and spare him the pain? She’d turned the question over in her mind all day, every day, and each night she’d tussled with it in her dreams.

She skim read the doom and gloom headlines as she waited for the kettle to boil, and her eyes were pulled back again to the date. May 2nd.
May 2nd?
How had her head become so full of other stuff that she’d managed to stop watching the calendar more closely than a death row inmate? She grabbed her trying-to-conceive diary from the kitchen shelf and fumbled through the pages with shaky fingers. April 2nd, day one of cycle. April 16
^th
, ovulation due. And there, with a bold red ring around it, was April 30
^th
. The day her regular-as-clockwork period was due. Two days ago. She sank down onto the nearest chair. Elation soared through her heart like a songbird, followed by a great crashing tsunami of fear. Three minutes later, a trip to the bathroom delivered the life-changing news she’d previously longed for. A precociously bright line popped up with indecent haste in the window that up to now had remained so stubbornly empty month on month.

She was pregnant.

‘Champagne, please. Your best.’ Marla cringed a little at Rupert’s dismissive tone, and smiled at the unimpressed waitress.

‘Are we celebrating?’ She shuffled along the bench seat in the booth to give herself some breathing space from Rupert, who’d shunted himself in right next to her.

‘Tada!’ He whipped the freshly printed wedding supplement for the upcoming Sunday edition out of his briefcase and slapped it down on the table in front of them. ‘Look. Go on, centre spread.’

She smoothed it out on the restaurant table and studied the splash of wedding pictures from Alaric and Gelvira’s big day.
The Herald
photographer had managed to perfectly capture the essence of the day with his lens, the pictures bubbled over with fun and love. The accompanying piece on the chapel was undeniably fabulous PR, and would hopefully encourage the villagers to feel proud of the unique chapel in their midst.

She laughed at the shot of Bluey in the top hat, and then found herself unable to look away from Gabe in the background of the frame. It had been just over two weeks since the finger-sucking incident, and she’d gone to considerable lengths to avoid him ever since. She could only thank her lucky stars that Rupert had text to let her know that he’d be there in five minutes, or else who knows what he might have walked in on. She badly needed to cool her engines as far as Gabe was concerned. She was old enough to have learned the hard way that a physical reaction to someone meant next to nothing; being turned on by a hot body was never to be confused with real feelings. She couldn’t deny that the chemical reaction between herself and Gabriel fizzed like popping candy, but she also knew that too much candy would make a girl sick.

Marla accepted a glass of champagne from Rupert with a grateful smile, and clinked obediently when he held his own glass out with an expectant look.

‘It’s brilliant. Thank you, Rupert.’

‘Should piss on Gabriel Ryan’s bonfire, anyway,’ he smirked. Marla’s smile faltered. As much as she appreciated Rupert’s help, sometimes she wondered if he was more interested in saving the chapel or bringing Gabe down. He was right, though; the article would be a strong piece of supportive evidence to include in the dossier she was preparing to submit to the council on the matter. The petition might have been sidelined, but she was still intent on lobbying the council to make them see sense about the situation.

The feel of Rupert’s hand massaging her knee under the table brought her swiftly back to the present.

‘So, am I the best boyfriend you’ve ever had, or what?’

She laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘And so modest, too.’

‘Should I take that as a yes, then?’ Marla coughed on her champagne.
Jeez, it wasn’t a rhetorical question.
He actually wanted an answer. But then, it was one of those questions with only one possible answer anyway, wasn’t it?

‘Um … let me think.’ She smiled and played for time.
Was
he the best boyfriend she’d ever had? Actually, he might be. He wasn’t married to anyone else, for a start, which gave him a big advantage over the other two men who made up her significant romantic history to date. She enjoyed his company, and he could make her squirm with pleasure in bed – or at least he
had
been able to, before a certain dark-eyed Irish man had set up his x-rated camp temporarily in her head. Rupert was entertaining. He made her laugh. But the most important thing about him was that he could never break her heart, because it would never be his to break.

‘You know what, Rupert? I can hand on heart say that, yes, you are the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.’

He leaned in and kissed her for longer than she was entirely comfortable with in a restaurant, even if they were tucked away in a booth.

‘Happy?’ he whispered, when he finally allowed her up for air. She nodded with an affectionate smile. He looked like a schoolboy, eager to please. ‘I am. Thank you.’

His fingers slipped under the hemline of her skirt. Okay, maybe not so schoolboy, after all. ‘You’re welcome, Marla.’ He leaned back in and kissed her again, taking the chance to inch his fingers further up her thigh.

‘Rupert,’ she warned, and slid away from him a little more until she was wedged against the wooden wall of the booth. He scooted closer in response, his fingers scandalously near to her knickers. ‘Rupert, stop it,’ she hissed out of the side of her mouth with a surreptitious glance at the neighbouring booths.

‘Chill out. No one can see.’ Lust had thickened his voice to a growl as he tried to work a finger under the cotton of her underwear. Marla clamped her thighs together hard in an effort to cut off his blood supply and prove that she really meant it.

‘Tease,’ he laughed and tickled her ribs, which had the unfortunate effect of forcing her to release her death grip on his hand.

Marla cringed. God, he thought she was enjoying this, and the worst thing was that she couldn’t even blame him for the assumption. She’d found herself over-compensating ever since that night in the chapel kitchen with Gabe, and had been all but hanging from the chandeliers during sex in order to tip the scales back in Rupert’s favour. It didn’t help that it took all of her concentration not to imagine that it was Gabe rather than Rupert who reached for her in bed; so much so that she’d started to insist on sex with the lights on and her eyes open. As a consequence, Rupert now had her pegged as something of a sex maniac, and no doubt imagined that a spot of public groping would get her all steamed up. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

‘Rupert …’ she twisted her fingers into the back of his floppy hair and yanked it. Hard. ‘If you don’t get your hand out of my skirt right now, I’ll stab you with my steak knife.’

She felt him still momentarily as he glanced at her fingers curled around the silver handle of the knife on the table.

‘You are a naughty, naughty little minx,’ he croaked. ‘I’m going to have to punish you severely for this when we get home.’ He sank his teeth into her earlobe, but removed his hand from her skirt. Marla breathed out and eased her grip on the knife, not even sure herself how much she’d been joking.

Dan straightened his black tie and winked at his reflection in the rear window of the hearse.

Not too shabby, Danny boy. Not too shabby at all.

It was just a shame that Emily-from-the-chapel didn’t seem to agree with him. He’d only caught one fleeting glimpse of her since her birthday and she’d looked scared witless. What did she think he was going to do? Fall on his knees in front of her in the street and declare his undying love?

He knew the score. She was a married woman. He wasn’t going to broadcast her infidelity to anyone else, but something about her melancholy beauty had got under his skin in a way that didn’t sit easily with his usual love ’em and leave ’em attitude. He’d actually
liked
her, as well as wanting to get in her knickers. He knew he couldn’t expect anything to come of it, but all the same, he couldn’t quite shake her.

‘Dan, you almost ready?’

Gabe appeared at the back door dressed in equally sombre attire. His dark hair marginally more tamed than usual out of respect for Charlie Gibbons, a local veteran of both world wars. Come midday, Beckleberry High Street would be filled with mourners ready to walk the five minute journey behind the hearse to the local church, a fitting tribute to a man who deserved only the very best of send-offs.

‘What’s up, bud?’ Dan asked, tipping his head to one side.

Gabe sighed. He looked to Dan like a man who could do with a cigarette, but as a non-smoker Gabe would have to shoulder his stress without that convenient crutch to lean on.

‘I just need today to go without a hitch, you know? It’s our biggest funeral so far. I didn’t know Charlie for long, but long enough to know that he was one of the good guys.’

Dan nodded. Charlie had been a part of his childhood; the local hero who’d always laid the village poppy wreath on Remembrance Sunday. He’d spent much of the last decade propping up the bar in the pub, reminiscing about the past with his personalised Jameson’s glass in his hand. It would be one heck of an empty stool to fill.

Gabe glanced at his watch. Half an hour until the family were due to arrive.

‘Come on. We’d better get Charlie into the hearse.’

Over at the chapel, Marla searched around by the CD player in confusion.

‘Emily, where’s the CD gone with today’s music?’

She’d almost completed her third and final set of checks, her ritual safety-net half an hour before any wedding was due to start. The CD had been there on the two previous passes, but it was now nowhere to be seen.

Emily came through from the kitchen with the disc balanced between her fingers.

‘Don’t panic, it’s here. I was just giving it a last polish.’

She glanced outside as she slid it back into the machine.

‘It’s gorgeous out there today. Perfect wedding weather.’

Marla nodded. Everything was in place, even the sunshine, so why did she feel an uneasy sense of foreboding? She checked her watch and chewed her bottom lip. Midday. The guests would be arriving soon.

‘Dora definitely,
definitely
let them know next door that we have a wedding on today?’

Due to Marla’s reluctance to go within spitting distance of Gabe, they had ungraciously settled on a system of using Dora as a neutral go-between to ward off potential problems.

Emily nodded.

‘All covered. I asked her twice. Stop worrying Marla, we’re good to go.’

Dora wasn’t on duty at either the chapel or the funeral parlour that morning. Instead, she sat beneath the metal helmet of the ancient hairdryer at Vera’s salon, having her hair washed and set ready for her anniversary dinner with Ivan that evening. Come hell or high water, he always made a point of taking her out to celebrate each passing year, and this year they were trying out the new Italian in the village. She knew that Ivan was looking forward to a night off from her cooking as much as to a romantic date, but she didn’t mind really. At their time of life romance wasn’t high on either of their priority lists. They were just happy to have a warm hand to hold in bed, daily episodes of Countdown, and a nightly nip of whisky in their tea.

Dora smiled gently and flicked open a copy of the Woman’s Weekly, blissfully unaware that further on down the High Street, Gabriel’s receptionist Melanie had deliberately chosen not to pass on the message she’d asked her to give him about the wedding that was due to take place at 12.30.

‘Come on Charlie old boy, your public awaits you.’

Dan opened the funeral parlour gates and drove sedately around into the street, his precious cargo behind him. Charlie’s many friends and family fell silent as the hearse eased its way amongst them, and several veteran soldiers, their medals glinting in the warm sunshine, removed their hats and saluted their brother-in-arms. Gabe emerged out onto the street with Eleanor, Charlie’s widow, on his arm. She’d chosen to say a private farewell to her husband, and had just accepted a nip of Jameson’s as Dutch courage to help her through the ordeal of burying him.

Gabe took a respectful step away and the crowd bowed their heads as Eleanor placed her wedding hand flat against the glass, a final moment to draw strength from the man who’d shared her life for the last sixty years.

Just up the road in the pub, a posse of bright and raucous wedding guests drank up and streamed outside, in fine voice as they belted out the chorus of ‘going to the chapel’.

Seconds earlier, Marla had caught sight of the funeral procession in the street and flung herself out of the chapel doors, just in time to see the wedding party tottering towards her in a flurry of rainbow-coloured feather fascinators and mini skirts.

Inside, Emily and Johnny escorted the groom away from the windows in the nick of time with the promise of a fortifying brandy. A Mexican wave of silence rippled through the wedding guests as they came to a halt outside the chapel and caught sight of the sombre gathering already amassed further along the pavement. Each party looked dazed by the presence of the other – a gaggle of effervescent peacocks faced down by an austere flock of ravens. They turned in unison at the sound of a car’s engine, and watched in fascinated horror as the bride’s Rolls-Royce arrived to complete the tableau. Its white ribbons fluttered in the breeze as it came to rest nose-to-nose with the hearse.

Marla was going to literally kill Gabriel Ryan for this.

She met his eyes across the crowd, and even from this distance she could see her own fury reflected at her.