Undertaking Love

Chapter 4

Gabe nodded in greeting towards Marla. ‘Don’t mind us. We’ll just sit at the back.’

He relaxed into a seat in the back row and smiled genially around at everyone, as if he’d just entered his local pub rather than a meeting held with the sole intention of running him out of town.

‘Yeah. And heckle loudly,’ Dan muttered as he slid into the seat next to Gabe with a mutinous expression on his face. He couldn’t stand the way Gabe was being treated by the villagers, and he fully intended on letting the small-minded nimbys have it with both barrels at some point this evening.

At the front of the chapel, Marla alerted Jonny in hushed tones to the fact that the two sex-gods on the back row were in fact the opposition party, crushing his hopes of dragging them into the vestry later on to drink the crate of left-over chardonnay.

Marla took her seat and nodded in encouragement as Jonny moved to the lectern and cleared his throat, though she privately felt this was almost certainly a wasted evening that could have been better spent treating Emily to dinner at the pub.

‘Right then ...’ Jonny held up his hands to shut down the low-level chatter around the room, then wiped them on his thighs as if they were sweaty. ‘We’re here tonight to discuss the effect that the proposed funeral home next door will have on our local community.’

Marla’s toes curled and her eyes hit the floor. Gabe infuriated the hell out of her. Why on earth had he come here tonight? She wished with all of her heart that he’d stayed away, because his presence in the room changed everything. Even Jonny had been rendered polite by uncharacteristic nerves. Gabe raised his hand.

‘Just for the sake of clarity, I should say at this point that it’s approved, not proposed.’

Dan snickered next to him, but fell silent again as Emily turned around and caught his eye. Ruth the florist, who’d once again been press-ganged into the role of reluctant minute taker, struck out ‘proposed’ and wrote ‘approved’ above it in dark letters instead.

Jonny’s lip curled at Gabe’s direct attempt to undermine him. Marla saw his confidence click back into place as he threw his chin up and rolled his broad shoulders. She held her breath for the onslaught.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you all know why we’re here.’ Jonny planted his hands on his hips as his cat-like eyes flashed. ‘If we don’t do something sharpish to stop the Addams Family from opening up their frickin’ freak show next door, then this village will be going to hell in a handcart. Capisce?’

He looked out at his wide-eyed audience.  ‘Brides and bodies are a bad combination, you hear me people? This stops now, before Lord Voldemort over there casts his dark mark above our village!’ He thrust his arm skywards and looked towards the rafters, and every neck in the place craned back as if they fully expected him to have cast an actual spell with an invisible wand.

Gabe laughed out loud and threw his hands up in the air, whilst Dan’s chair scraped loudly against the flagstones as he shot to his feet in temper. ‘What the fuck is going on here, people? A witch hunt?’

Gabe stood and laid a hand on Dan’s arm. ‘Let the people speak, Dan. I want to hear what they have to say.’

Jonny faltered as they both sat down again. Such a blatant display of rampant testosterone was something he’d normally pay good money to see.

‘I'll tell you what they have to say,’ Jonny said, swishing his arm over the crowds to indicate their collusion in his speech. ‘They say that you have no place here. They say that they don't need you.’