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

‘You hum it, I’ll play it, dear,’ he muttered, and helped himself to a third glass of Merlot.

‘So,’ Jonny said with a theatrical flourish. He nodded pointedly at Ruth, village florist and gossip central, to start taking notes in the pad he’d thrust into her hands when she sat down. Taking a great slug of wine, she darted her eyes around the table, then picked up her pen and clicked the end a few times in a show of efficiency.

Satisfied that his every word would be recorded for posterity, Jonny cleared his throat and planted his hands on his snake hips.

‘Right, so. We all know why we’re here. The fucking Munsters are trying to set up shop next door to the chapel, and it’s our job to get shot of them. Like, pronto.’

He glanced around at the suddenly hushed group, who looked slightly shell-shocked by his rousing opening gambit.

Ruth raised a hesitant hand.

‘Er, Jonny? Do I have to write the “fucking” bit down?’

‘Christ almighty, Ruth!’ he exploded. ‘Just get the general gist down, this isn’t CSI fucking Shropshire!’

‘Why is he reciting the alphabet?’ shouted Dora, her hearing aid now whacked up to full.

‘He isn’t, Dora. It’s a cop show,’ Emily supplied.

‘Oh. Oooh, you wouldn’t half make a lovely Bergerac, Jonny.’

‘Drove a Jaguar, you know.’ Ivan nodded sagely.

‘“Bergerac”?’ Jonny seethed, askance. ‘Fucking “Bergerac”? Pure Captain Jack Harkness or no one, thank you very much Dora.’ If he could have donned a military overcoat and heavy boots to ram his point home, he would have.

‘Captain Hairnet? Never heard of him,’ Dora muttered, a gleam in her eye as she ran her hand over her freshly set hair.

‘What did he drive, Jonny?’ Ivan said, squinting at the wine bottle to see if there was any left. ‘Might jog my memory.’

‘A goddamn bloody space ship!’ Jonny all but shouted, sending Dora’s hand straight to her ear to adjust her hearing aid again.

Ivan nodded. ‘I know who you mean, now.’ He leaned across to stage whisper to Dora. ‘The one with the big ears, darling.’

Dora’s face cleared into a smile that displayed her neat rows of false teeth to perfection. She looked at Jonny and tapped the side of her nose. ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’

The mutinous expression on Jonny’s face as he felt for his cigarettes made Marla drop her head into her hands, and Bluey flop his massive head onto her knees under the table in silent solidarity. This was hopeless. Gabriel Ryan was going to open up his funeral parlour regardless, and there was precious little they, or anyone else, could do to stop him.

‘What we need is a plan of attack,’ Jonny said, recovering himself and flapping a hand at Ruth to put her wine glass back on the table.

‘Write that down. I’m thinking we should start with a petition. After all, lots of local businesses around here benefit from the chapel. Look at you, for instance, Ruth. You’ve never been so busy.’

Ruth looked up from her pad with a vigorous nod.

‘It’s true, Marla. The chapel’s brought in so much new work. I mean, I do almost as many weddings these days as I do, er … funerals …’ She tailed off, having inadvertently highlighted the fact that she could only benefit from Gabe’s arrival. She was dying to meet the man himself. The villagers had talked him up into a cross between Heathcliff and the devil incarnate, and if that beast of a motorbike she’d seen parked outside his place was anything to go by then they might not be too wide of the mark. Thoroughly overexcited, she knocked back the rest of her wine.

‘We could follow it up with a public meeting in the chapel,’ Emily suggested.

She tucked a stray strand of her neat, jet-black bob behind her ear and glanced up the table towards Marla. She desperately wanted to help, not just because Marla was her closest friend, but because the chapel was her lifeline. The idea of losing it horrified her. Tom was away so much that she’d be unbearably lonely without work, and truth be told, it was becoming her bolt-hole even when Tom was at home.

A fact that she wasn’t quite ready to dwell on.

‘Thank. You. Emily,’ Jonny said, banging his fist down on the table between each word in gratitude for a rational suggestion. ‘Stellar idea.’

Marla’s grateful smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. The locals could be a fickle bunch. It had taken them a good year to accept the chapel into their midst, especially since the majority of weddings they held were not for local couples. The chapel’s kitsch appeal and Jonny’s colourful style as a celebrant ensured that it attracted more than its fair share of the weird and wonderful, usually rolling into town with a wedding party of even more weird and wonderful guests. It was never dull, and Marla loved it.

She gave herself a stern telling off for being so defeatist and vowed to try harder.

Besides, Jonny was right. Local businesses did benefit. The chapel had given the local tourist trade a massive shot in the arm, but would it be enough for them to actively come out and support her now?

Ivan raised his hand.

‘Think you should know, old boy. That Irish chappie has asked my Dora to clean a couple of times a week. Seems a decent sort, actually. Ate Dora’s shortbread, and it’s bloody awful.’

He nodded knowingly around at the others, clearly not feeling a jot of disloyalty towards Marla, nor to his wife for the slight to her cooking skills.

Jonny shot daggers at Dora.

‘Well, I hope you’ve told him to stick his job where the sun doesn’t shine.’

‘She starts Monday week,’ Ivan supplied merrily as he drained his glass in one gulp.

‘I don’t friggin’ believe this!’ Jonny howled. ‘Is there anyone here who isn’t planning to jump ship?’ An uncomfortable silence settled over the table. Ivan scrubbed a hand over his tufty grey hair and twiddled with his bow tie.

‘He’s asked me to look after his garden. Bit of maintenance, like. Told him I might as well, seeing as I do yours and it’s only next door.’

Marla, who’d stayed quiet throughout the meeting, finally spoke up.

‘Look guys, it’s okay, really.’ She turned to Ruth. ‘Ruth, of course you should do their flowers.’

Ruth smiled gratefully and wrote it down in case anyone forgot Marla had said it.

‘Ivan, Dora, it’s absolutely fine about the cleaning, and the gardening. If you don’t do it, someone else will.’

‘We can be your moles,’ Dora offered, with a gleam in her eye.

‘Hallelujah. We’re saved,’ Jonny muttered sourly.

Marla admonished him with a gentle frown and patted the older woman’s hand.

‘Hey, we’ve made an encouraging start, haven’t we?’

She stood up and started to gather the plates. ‘A petition and a public meeting seems like a good way to get the ball rolling.’ She was tired suddenly and ready to have her home back to herself. ‘Let’s call it a night, okay?’

Emily carried the plates through as everyone else pulled on their coats and shuffled out in varying states of sobriety. Marla loitered on the doorstep whilst Bluey went for his constitutional evening stroll around the tiny garden. He was far too big a dog for Marla’s cottage, but he was inherently lazy and content to be the unlikely master of his mini-manor. When she came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, Marla found Emily bent double, rooting through the freezer. She emerged with a triumphant smile and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s.

‘Still hungry?’ Marla asked.

‘Not really, but isn’t ice-cream essential for American girly chats around the kitchen table?’