Page 8 of Wedding Crasher

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 Tomwasat 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 businessesdidbenefit. 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 thereanyonehere 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, ofcourseyou should do their flowers.’

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

‘Ivan, Dora, it’s absolutelyfineabout 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?’

‘You’ve watched too many re-runs ofThe Golden Girls,’ Marla laughed as she placed a bottle of wine next to the ice-cream on the table. Emily’s eyes moved from the wine to the ice-cream with a heavy sigh.

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