Love Your Neighbour: A laugh-out-loud love from the author of One Day in December

Marla’s stomach flipped as his voice softened to a velvet boxing glove. ‘We’re not so different. I guess you could say that we’re both in the business of helping people move on to the next stage of their lives.’

Oh, oh. Danger. He was clever. She grudgingly conceded a point.

Forty: thirty.

‘“Till death do us part”, Marla … isn’t that what you’re so fond of saying over here? Well, when that sad day eventually comes, trust me, it won’t be you these people will turn to. It’ll be me.’

Deuce. And rather unsportingly, he didn’t give Marla a chance to get back into the game.

‘I’m not asking you to like me. But I am asking that you pay me the common courtesy of being civil.’

Advantage Gabriel Ryan. Marla felt like she was five years old. She could feel him limbering up for match point and she couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to stop him.

The reporter, who had been madly scribbling notes, stood up and flashed his camera in Gabe’s direction. Jonny, clearly less enamoured of the reporter now that the meeting had gone awry, reached over and ripped the nearest page out of the journalist’s pad, balled it up and shoved it into his own mouth with a sarcastic smirk.

‘You know, it would have been so much simpler to have just allowed us to open here without the fanfare,’ Gabe said from the front. ‘As it is, you’ve created a media story that’s nothing but free advertising for me and bad publicity for you. Way to go, Marla. Way to go.’

Game, set and match, Mr Gabriel Ryan.

Jonny slumped back and stared with satisfaction at his computer screen. The brainwave had hit him last night as they’d sat picking through the bones of the disastrous meeting over too warm chardonnay.

They should use the chapel’s website to take their petition nationwide.

Up until now they’d only targeted the locals for support, but what of their actual customers? After all, the majority of the weddings they held at the chapel were for outsiders. Maybe they were the people who could swell the petition numbers enough to make the local council sit up and take notice.

Cherry-red ‘Save our Chapel!’ and ‘Vote for Love!’ banners now covered the homepage. His next job was to drum up support on every wedding forum and celebrity wedding blog in the land. He’d set up an online petition for people to add their names to, and whilst he was on a roll he’d emailed several high-profile couples who’d been married at the chapel, hoping to rope them in.

After much deliberation, he’d decided not to mention his plan to Marla just yet. He felt shoddy about the way the meeting had ended last night; he’d let Gabe and Dan’s arrival throw him right off-kilter and he badly wanted to make amends. If he could pull this off and present it as a fait accompli, then Marla would know for certain that she still had his unwavering support.

Besides … much as he adored her, Marla could be terribly straight sometimes, whereas he was more of a ‘whatever gets the job done’ type of person. If that meant delivering the occasional low blow, then so be it. She was too classy to resort to underhand tactics, but as her self-appointed big brother and protector, he certainly wasn’t.

He clicked his computer to sleep and headed for his leopardskin-covered bed, safe in the knowledge that by hook or by crook, he intended to claw back the upper hand from Gabriel Ryan.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_5cbef7fe-5013-53b7-b8aa-b8bb2ee870c4)

Gabe shuffled through the disappointingly thin pile of CVs on the reception desk with a heavy sigh. The job advert he’d placed in The Herald had yielded eleven applications for the receptionist post, but on closer inspection only a clutch of them were even remotely suitable for interview. He’d briefly considered the interesting but wildly unsuitable Ms Scarlet Ribbons, a part-time stripper who’d handily enclosed an eye-catching photograph of herself rather than a CV. He could think of many things Ms Ribbons would no doubt excel at, but handling bereaved relatives wasn’t one of them.

In the end he’d whittled it down to the three most decent-sounding applicants and arranged the interviews over the course of this afternoon. A knot of pressure formed in his gut. He needed to get this right. Hiring and firing was yet another aspect of business that was a first for him, but he knew from experience that a great receptionist could be the lynchpin of such an organisation.

He glanced up as Dora appeared with a tray of tea and biscuits.

‘You’re an angel, Dora,’ he smiled and glanced at the clock. ‘Time for a quick one?’ He nodded towards the teapot and two cups, knowing that she’d banked on him asking exactly that. She made a show of looking at her duster for a second before pushing it into her apron pocket and sitting down at reception.

‘You look grand sitting there. I don’t suppose you’re any good at reception work?’ He grinned as he poured Dora a cup of tea and added two sugars, knowing her preference because they shared a cuppa most mornings these days.

‘Not me, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘All that sitting about. You know me, I like to be up and about.’ She was right there. Dora was one of life’s bustlers, a behind-the-scenes person who oiled life’s wheels for the front men. Not that it made her any less important. She was already proving herself indispensable, both in her professional capacity and as a warm and funny listening ear to his problems. Gabe had grown up in the bosom of a large Irish family where the women ruled the roost, and here in Beckleberry, Dora had slipped seamlessly into that role.

‘I’ll keep an eye on these three that are coming in this morning,’ she said. ‘Tell you what I make of them.’

Gabe nodded, mildly concerned for the job applicants. Dora’s approval had proved to be a hard-won commodity. ‘Thanks Dora. I’ve not done this before. I need to get it right.’

‘You will, Gabriel. I’ve faith in you.’

He glanced down for a second, fiercely reminded of home by Dora’s kindness. Reaching out, he picked up the plate of biscuits, grinning when she shook her head and patted her stout tummy the way she did every day.

‘Ah go on with you, you’re gorgeous. Have a biscuit.’

He glanced up at the clock ten minutes later as Dora left reception and then squinted through the driving rain outside. A whippet-thin woman in a long flasher mac was on her way over, hunched beneath a black umbrella. Gabe checked the appointment sheet. Five minutes early. Punctual. A good first sign.

He opened the door for her, and then pretended not to hear the choice collection of swear words she rattled off as she battled with her umbrella in the high wind. Droplets of rain bounced off her lacquered helmet of short, peroxide-blonde hair, and when she’d finally beaten the brolly into submission she turned to him with a cigarette-stained smile. She pumped his hand with surprising strength for such a slight woman.

‘Valerie McDonald,’ she barked, and declined his offer of a drink unless it was a neat double vodka. Gabe smiled, and dismissed her oddness as nerves. ‘So, Valerie. Maybe you could start by telling me what it is about the job that appeals to you.’

Valerie snorted and shot off at a pace.

‘I’ve spent my entire life flogging one thing or another, Mr Ryan. Houses. Photocopiers. Cars. You name it, I’ve sold it.’ She smiled, and Gabe decided it was a safe bet that she’d never sold toothpaste.

‘Coffins will be a damn sight easier to sell than sports cars, let me tell you. Not so many optional extras.’

Her nasal laugh had the same effect on Gabe as fingernails down a chalkboard. He ran a nervous hand over his stubble. This wasn’t going quite as he’d hoped. Valerie leaned towards him across the desk and lowered her voice, even though there was no one else in the room to keep her secrets from.

‘I’ll make sure the punters buy the expensive mahogany boxes rather than the plywood, if you get my drift.’ She tapped the side of her nose twice with an arch wink. ‘Bit of a captive audience around here. Plenty of old coffin dodgers in these villages. A shrewd move, if I may say so, Mr Ryan.’

Gabe decided he really wasn’t keen on Valerie McDonald. ‘That’s not why I …’

She drew her hand across her throat to shut him up. ‘It wasn’t a criticism. Au contraire. I’ve already developed a sales strategy for you, actually.’

‘You have?’

Valerie nodded. ‘I’ll need to move this desk closer to the window first though.’ She slapped the beechwood surface of the brand-new and carefully positioned reception desk. Gabe was almost afraid to ask why, but his silence was encouragement enough for Valerie.

‘If I’m by the windows, I can check out the family’s wheels when they pull up, see? Then when they come in, I’ll be able to pitch my sales patter at the right level. Merc equals solid oak casket. BMW more modern, maybe something in birch with Shaker handles? Dented Fiat Panda equals bargain-basement pine.’ She laughed, and nodded at her own wit. ‘It’s clever, isn’t it?’

Gabe had heard enough. Valerie McDonald might have a glittering career ahead of her in kitchen sales, but she certainly was not going to be his new receptionist.

‘Umm … actually, no. No, Valerie, it’s not clever. It’s rude, and it’s grossly insensitive, and it’s not going to happen to my customers.’

He walked over to the front door and held it open.

Valerie, for her part, looked genuinely shocked by his failure to be impressed, and it took her a moment to recover herself before she got up to leave. She turned back on the step, pointing her umbrella at him with a bitter sneer across her hard face.

‘I’ll give you six months. Twelve, at most. Business is business, no matter if it’s coffins or cars.’

Gabe closed the door behind her and leaned his back against it. She’d been truly hideous. But was there any truth in Valerie McDonald’s parting shot? Did he have enough of a business head to make a success of this? He knew he was bloody good at the nuts and bolts of his work, but he would be the first to admit he was no accountant. He didn’t have time to dwell on it though – a tap on the door behind him heralded the arrival of his second interview of the day. Please let Genevieve Lawrence be better than Valerie McDonald, he prayed, even though he didn’t especially believe in God. That was another fact that he preferred to keep to himself. People mostly assumed that undertakers have a direct line to the Almighty.

He turned around and found two huge, watery eyes staring back at him. He opened the door, allowing the woman on the step to float in on a cloud of ethereal underskirts. She promptly sparked up a joss stick on the reception desk to create ‘the right vibe’.

Gabe’s heart sank into his boots as she flicked her long black wig over her bony shoulders and heaved a large framed picture of a Red Indian chief out of a Lidl carrier bag that had, up until now, been concealed amongst her skirts.