Undertaking Love (26 page)

‘That’s just it, Tom. You’re so kind, and lovely, and thoughtful, and me … I’m …’

Her fingers shook around the stem of her glass as she floundered for words to describe herself.

‘Don’t do this, Emily.’

The bleak defeat in her eyes terrified him.

‘Tom …’

He pushed his chair back. A scream of wood against stone.

‘Don’t say another word, Emily. Just wait one minute, okay?’

He took the stairs two at a time, high on adrenalin and fear.

Twenty seconds later he was back in the kitchen, the green letter in his hand.

Emily’s face crumpled as he held it up for her to see, a magician flourishing his cards to his audience.

He crossed to the cooker and lit the nearest gas ring.

She stood, trembled, but he held up a warning hand to still her and shook his head.

The flames caught the corner of the note, licked up the page towards his fingers until he couldn’t hold it any longer. He dropped it into the sink and turned the tap on full, then scooped out the mush of paper and hurled it on the floor.

Stamped on it.

Again. And again. And again.

He was unaware of the tears on his face until Emily’s tentative fingers touched his cheek. He was unaware of his own roar of anguish until he registered her gentle shush.

‘It’s gone,’ he said, finally. ‘It’s history.’

She nodded, her hand still on his cheek.

‘There’s nothing to gain by raking over the coals.’ He covered her hand with his own larger one. ‘We’re still standing. It’s all that matters.’

He laid his other hand on her belly. ‘You, me, and the baby.’

He was careful not to say
our
baby.

‘Morning, my gorgeous girlfriends!’

Jonny shimmied back into the chapel after a last-minute weekend in Mykonos, freshly bronzed with a bottle of Ouzo in his hand and undeniable glint in his eye. It died as soon as he caught sight of Marla and Emily’s coordinated miserable expressions.

‘Shall I go out and come back in again?’

He cast a wistful glance back towards the doorway.

‘You can if you like, but it won’t make any difference.’ Emily shrugged. ‘Coffee?’

Jonny put the Ouzo down and stared from Marla to Emily.

‘Who died?’

Emily pushed the Sunday Herald across the table, and his frown turned to a grin as he scanned the headlines.

‘Well, well, well!’ He let out a low whistle and laughed. ‘Who’s been a naughty undertaker, then?’ He skim read the rest and then looked up nonplussed. ‘Why the long faces? This is good news for us, surely?’

Emily placed a steaming mug down in front of him.

‘Except that everyone is going to think it’s part of our supposed hate campaign.’

‘So what?’ Jonny shrugged. ‘We’re completely innocent this time around, and by the looks of it, old Gabriel certainly isn’t.’ He winked and looked back at the paper with something akin to admiration. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

Shame slapped Marla’s cheeks scarlet as she turned away on the pretense of loading the dishwasher. Seconds before Jonny had walked in, she’d almost confided in Emily about her weekend with Gabe. Wow, she was glad now of the timely interruption. At least if no one else knew she’d been so weak, then she could try to forget it ever happened. Gabriel had better keep his mouth shut.

Oh God. Gabriel’s mouth.

Marla knew she was in real trouble, because the thought of the things he’d done to her with his mouth on Saturday still made her shiver with lust. She just had to face it. He must have had a good old laugh at her show of resistance, at her protestations that it had to be a one-night stand. She’d played right into his hands. Gabe must have thought it was
his
birthday, not hers.

Of course, none of this should matter to her. She was the one who had insisted on a grown up, civilised one night stand, so why did this feel so much like a betrayal?

It concerned her even more that her judgment had turned out to be so poor, just like her mother’s had so many times before now. She slammed the dishwasher shut with a harder than necessary swish and threw her shoulders back. She needed to draw a line in the sand. Gabriel Ryan had turned her over once with his charm and flattery.

He wouldn’t get the chance to do it again.

Gabe opened the biscuit cupboard in the funeral parlour kitchen and sighed with resignation. Empty. Not a jammy dodger in the building.

It wasn’t his unsatisfied sweet tooth that bothered him so much as tumbling so spectacularly from grace in Dora’s eyes. She’d never failed to see to it that his addiction was satiated. Her opinion mattered to him, and the fact that she’d so readily believed the rubbish being peddled by the local rag cut deep. Not that she was alone in her conclusions; the majority of the locals had been failing to quite meet his eye over the last couple of days, too. Gabe had no doubt at all that it would have a knock-on effect on his business. Reputation was everything in his line of work. Who was going to put their trust in the services of a disreputable, womanising young undertaker?

Rupert’s article had been a real hatchet job, a sensationalist exposé of a sleazy, sex-mad drug addict that Gabe would never recognise as himself.

Was that really what people around here saw when then they looked at him?

He had no idea how the hell photos from the strip club had even come to exist, and they certainly didn’t paint a true picture of what had happened that evening.

But then, who cared about truth in all of this?

What did it matter that innocent people had been dragged into this mess?

Gabe hadn’t seen his ex-wife Simone since a rainy Friday morning on the steps of a Dublin divorce court more than ten years ago, and yet she’d ended up with her face splashed across a Sunday paper right next to some stripper.

Bad news travelled fast.

He’d had
his
mother,
her
mother, and two of her older brothers on the phone from Dublin over the last couple of weeks. His mother had tried to insist he come home, and Simone’s family had all warned him in no uncertain terms to stay the hell away.

Gabe banged the kitchen cupboard shut. Rupert had been out for his blood, and he’d managed to bury the axe right in the back of his head.

He heard the front door open and looked down the hall to see Melanie dash in from the rain, her sopping umbrella held out in front of her in distaste.

‘Morning,’ he called, and she glanced up with a frown on her face. Dark shadows ringed her eyes, but Gabe bit down on the urge to ask if she’d had a heavy weekend. He’d learned over the months that Melanie always sidestepped questions about her home life, and he respected her enough not to pry.

She peeled off her coat and hung it on the coat stand to dry, then headed through to the kitchen with a crammed carrier bag in her hand.

‘Morning.’ She finally favoured him with a smile as she opened the biscuit cupboard.

‘No point. The cupboards are bare.’ Gabe muttered.

‘Yeah, I noticed. I thought you could probably use these.’

She unloaded at least half-a-dozen packets of biscuits onto the side. Gabe noticed with a pang that she seemed to have brought every possible variety apart from jammy dodgers. The sooner Dora decided to speak to him again the better.

‘What would I do without you?’ he said with a diplomatic smile.

Melanie was good at her job, and right now she was one of a handful of people in the village not treating him as if he were the Peter Stringfellow of the undertaking world. Dan had practically cried with laughter at the idea of Gabe as the village lothario and smacked him on the back with pride, but otherwise, only the people he actually paid to talk to him were bothering to be civil – with the notable exception of Dora. If she looked at him at all, it was with reproach.

‘What time is Dora due in?’

Melanie glanced at the clock.

‘About ten minutes.’

Gabe nodded.

‘Ask her to come and see me when she gets in, will you?’

He picked up his coffee and headed through to the mortuary. At least dead people wouldn’t shoot him daggers or mutter about him behind his back.

‘You wanted to see me, Gabriel?’

Gabe looked up at Dora as she hovered in the office doorway half an hour later. Her arms were folded across her apron-covered chest, and her mouth was set in a thin, pursed line.

‘Come and sit down for a minute, will you?’

Dora bristled with disapproval, but sat down opposite him all the same.

‘Dora, I have a problem.’

‘You’ll be wantin’ the doctor, Gabriel, not me.’

She used his full name in the same ominous way his mother had when he’d been in trouble as a kid. He opened the desk drawer.

‘Here. Look at these.’

He pushed a thin, dog-eared photo wallet across the table towards her. She glanced at it and sniffed, but resisted the urge to pick it up. Gabe knew her well enough to know that her outward restraint would be costing her dearly.

‘Please?’

Dora huffed and picked the packet up by one corner between her finger and thumb, as if she might be contaminated with Gabe’s sleaze by association. She looked through the wedding pictures slowly then slid them back onto the desk in frosty silence.

‘I was nineteen. Simone was seventeen. We were stupid and rebellious, and eloping on her eighteenth birthday seemed like the most romantic idea ever.’

Dora nodded begrudgingly for him to carry on when he paused.

‘It was a disaster, Dora. We were kids, and her da was up for killing me – and looking back now, I don’t blame him.’ He shook his head as he remembered the rage on Simone’s fathers face. ‘We didn’t love each other, it was just childish infatuation.’

Gabe glanced out of the window and sighed heavily. ‘We divorced a year later. Broke her mother’s heart to have a fallen daughter.’

Dora had given up on any pretense at nonchalance and stared at him agog.

‘So there I was, twenty, and already a divorcee. An undertaker, and a divorcee – a hard sell in any market, let me tell you. Simone and I decided back then that we wouldn’t speak about it again, so having it splashed across the front of a newspaper was –’ he grimaced as her brothers unveiled threats rang in his ears ‘– awkward, you know?’

Dora pulled her ‘you reap what you sow’ face.

‘Why are you telling me this, Gabriel?’

‘Because I miss your jammy dodgers?’

Gabe smiled and shook his head at Dora’s outraged face.

‘Okay, okay. I’m telling you because your opinion happens to matter to me, Dora. And because I’m sick of being the local pariah. People listen to you.’

Dora preened a little under Gabe’s flattery, but he’d meant it sincerely. She was one of the village stalwarts. A few supportive words in the local store would be enough turn the tide of opinion his way.

‘Those pictures, that woman in the strip club … it wasn’t what it looked like, I promise you.’ Dora looked skeptical, but he ploughed on regardless. ‘I hate those places. Ten seconds after that shot was taken she tipped a drink in my lap.’

‘No more than you deserved in a place like that, young man.’

She chastised him with her words, but the frost had melted from her tone as if warmed by a sunbeam.

After a few seconds thought, she rummaged in her shopping bag and slid a packet of jammy dodgers across the desk at him. He grinned as he ripped the packet open with his teeth, and put one in his mouth whole in acceptance of her unspoken apology.

‘You should call the police about that Rupert. It’s harassment, it is.’ She helped herself to a biscuit.

Gabe shook his head.

‘I’ll sort it out myself soon enough Dora, don’t worry about it. Besides, that wasn’t really what I wanted to talk to you about …’ he leaned in across the table and dropped his voice. ‘I need your help with something a bit more … well, personal.’

Dora’s nostrils flared with horror.

‘What sort of personal, Gabriel? You don’t want me to look at any of your weird bits do you?’

‘It’s not a health thing.’ Gabe laughed. ‘Well, not unless you count matters of the heart, anyway.’

Dora relaxed back into her chair.

‘Aaah.
That
sort of personal.’

She reached for another biscuit.

‘Go on then.’

‘It’s … well …’ Gabe faltered under Dora’s bated-breath attention. ‘It’s about Marla, actually.’

He watched Dora closely for signs after his revelation; she was fond of Marla and he expected her to be shocked. Protective, even.

Dora, however, just nodded without even the slightest flicker of surprise.

‘I’ve been around for a long time, lad, and I’ve got eyes in my head.’

Gabe grimaced.

‘Jesus, I feel like a schoolboy. Is it that obvious?’

Dora shook her head.

‘Only to a nosy old bat like me. So how bad is it?’

‘Oh, it’s as bad as it gets. I love her.’

Dora went slack-faced with alarm.

‘You love her? Steady on, lad. I mean …’ her eyes lingered on the wedding photos on the table.

Gabe couldn’t really blame her for questioning his feelings, given his newly revealed track record.

‘It’s nothing like that.’ He nodded towards the photos. ‘I had no clue what love was back then.’

He glanced over towards the chapel.

‘But I do now. Love is five foot six with wild red hair and crazy shoes, and I just want to look at her and never look away again.’

Dora’s sniffed and routed around in her apron pocket for a tissue.

‘It probably sounds stupid, but I knew it the moment I met her. BOOM. Just like that. She’s it for me. Marla’s the one.’

Gabe grinned. It was a heady relief to say it out loud.

‘Then just get your backside over there and tell her, lad.’

Gabe shook his head with a snort of derision. She made it sound so simple.

‘You know what she thinks of me, Dora. Especially after we...’

‘After you what?’ Dora leaned across the desk with narrowed eyes. She didn’t miss a trick.

Gabe fished around for a delicate way to phrase ‘after we had mind-blowing sex in her back garden for hours.’