Page 14 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

Lily

A Kardashian-esque voice drawled down the phone. ‘Hey, babe. It’s Coriana, from The Gown magazine. Is this afternoon still a good time?’

Oh shit. The magazine feature she’d ambitiously booked the day she’d set up her LLC.

It had slipped her mind entirely after the magical rainstorm debacle.

And the resurrection of Derrick and Fran.

And the looming demise of Candice, who’d pulled up her medical records on her phone and had been walking Lily through them in great detail.

My queendom for a slow news day , thought Lily, whose pulse had been doing double time since the disastrous marriage proposal.

She was more than a little concerned that the stress of moving to a new town and opening a business had caused her to break from reality, and that right now she was actually in a highly medicated state in a padded room.

Lily swallowed, glancing around at the absolute state of things that was her shop.

What had been hours before a charming, sunlit haven brimming with bud vases and cute apothecary cabinets filled with greeting cards and wedding favours was now a gloomy, moody affair.

Even the sun was trying to avoid playing on the shimmery disco ball she’d hung in front of the leadlight door.

She’d done her best to put the shop to rights after the rainstorm, but nothing was sticking.

The mottled black stubbornly stippled the brightly painted walls and darkened the floorboards.

The flowers in their vases slumped like teenagers, and the sample cake pop that Lily had nibbled on when she’d needed a quick pick-me-up, well, the less said about that, the better.

(Death. It had tasted like death.) And her Polaroid camera kept spitting out images that looked creepily corpse-like.

Not to mention the presence of Candice, who was definitely putting a damper on things with how she was using Lily’s newly Gothic stationery table to list out all the people who might want her dead.

(It was a disturbingly long list that made Lily a touch anxious about having offered the poor woman a safe haven.)

But business longevity was all about visibility. And she was determined to make this business work, just like Mom had made her consultancy work for all these years. Lily might be the eternal bridesmaid, but Eternal Elegance would not endure the same fate.

‘Um, hi?’ Coriana drawled. ‘Anyone home?’

‘This afternoon is perfect!’ she chirped, hoping Coriana couldn’t hear her grinding her teeth over the line.

‘Amazing!’ said Coriana, with the tone of someone checking their fingernails. ‘I’ll bring my camera – we’ll get your name up in lights. This could be your big break.’

‘Can’t wait!’

Hanging up the phone, Lily surveyed the shop around her.

Could she make this work? Surely she could make this work.

She was a pro at putting a positive spin on any situation.

Like the time she’d stood up for a college friend who’d been mocked about her retro hairstyles by insisting that scrunchies were the hot new fashion, and committing to the bit until they damn well were.

Or how she’d mostly convinced Candice that knowing the date of your impending death was good, actually, because it encouraged you to tick a few things off your bucket list.

There was clearly more to this whole situation than a simple rainstorm – anyone could see that.

(Although hopefully they were wrapped up enough in their own day-to-day business that they wouldn’t.) But she couldn’t just sit around and wait for these magical shenanigans to pass – she had weddings to plan, and not all of them aligned with the aesthetics of the switcheroo.

There was the Christmas in July wedding she’d spent hours on the phone with local fir tree farmers for, and the bootscootin’ rodeo nuptials that promised to be very cowboy-forward and very straw-filled.

And the hippie wedding that Venus was supposed to be coming in on Friday to discuss.

She had to figure this out – and fix it. And, just like the broken zipper on her friend Emmaline’s wedding gown last year, she would. But first, she had to make the place look presentable by 3 p.m. She could do this. She could make this happen.

Well, once she got rid of Candice.

Lily grabbed a feather duster and made a show of dusting the wall clock (a vintage starburst design that since the switcheroo had become less star and more burst). Candice, even with her heightened blood alcohol level, got the hint.

‘Oh, is that the time?’ Candice dabbed her eyes with a napkin and straightened her pickleball skirt. ‘I have an appointment with my personal trainer.’ Her mascara-smudged eyes widened. ‘You don’t think he’s behind the Save the Date cards, do you?’

‘I doubt anyone you’re paying money to wants you dead,’ Lily assured her.

Grabbing her mini bottle of prosecco (Lily wasn’t going to object), Candice skedaddled, leaving Lily to embark upon some hasty tidying before Coriana’s imminent arrival.

Cranking a vinyl record on the record player – wait, was Elvis meant to sound quite that …

spooky? – she went over to the armoire that housed the different paint samples and decals she collected for the inspo packages she put together for her couples (or throuples).

She hesitantly cracked a few of the paint lids, sighing with relief when she saw they were untainted by the magical rain.

Adjusting her paint-flecked shirt and tying a shawl around her hair, Lily raced about covering up the most egregious marks on the walls. As she’d found before with her pink paint travails, painting over the black blobs didn’t work, but painting around them did.

Lily tapped the handle of the paintbrush to her mouth, thinking. The dots almost looked like sunflower florets, or perhaps the spots on a cheetah. That one over here could be a heart. She could make a mural out of them – something bright and cheerful.

She’d managed a few sunflowers and a bird when the door opened. Mort stood there, looking quite cocky for someone whose business had had a magical change of heart only hours ago. He was dressed in his usual black formalwear – the man could rock a suit – and Lily felt astonishingly underdressed.

‘Transitioning into an art gallery already, I see,’ he said.

‘Could you help?’ begged Lily. ‘I have a reporter coming to do a feature on the place at three, so time is of the essence.’

‘You didn’t … postpone? You do realise this is the perfect opportunity to get out of talking to someone.’

Lily raised an eyebrow. For someone who apparently disliked people so much, Mort didn’t seem shy about dropping into the shop to chitchat. Was this whole grumpy persona a facade? Or did he perhaps enjoy Lily’s company?

‘How do I know it won’t still be like this tomorrow or next week?’ She added some petals to the flower she was working on. ‘We could be switcherooed for years .’

‘At least you’d have a good excuse to ask for a lease extension – the property delivered wasn’t the property promised.’

‘I bet the Chamber of Commerce would love that rationale.’

‘I’d find it quite compelling,’ said Mort.

‘Here.’ Lily went over to her paint stash, browsing for the most garish colours she could find, which was most of them. ‘How do you feel about Fucking Fuchsia? ’

‘But I barely know her,’ Mort said. Ah, there was that wit. Lily supposed you needed it when you were in a line of work like his.

Lily chuckled. ‘What about … YELL-ow ?’

Shaking his head, Mort popped on a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses to read the tiny print. The glasses were quite becoming – not that Lily was looking.

‘There must be something less shouty,’ said Mort. ‘I’ll go with Rhymes with Orange .’

He took the paintbrush Lily offered him and gingerly dipped it into the tin. The look on his face when he saw the tangelo hue on the brush amused Lily to no end; she’d never seen anyone so distraught over a paint colour.

Crossing the fingers of his right hand, Mort daubed orange over a dark blot on the wall with his left.

‘A lefty, huh?’ noted Lily.

‘Demon child,’ agreed Mort. ‘It’s why I was dumped on a doorstep.’

Lily messed up the stem she was working on. ‘Wait, really?’

‘I doubt it. How would anyone have known my preferred hand at the age of eight weeks?’

‘The bigger question is how did they carry you to the doorsteps if they were only eight weeks old?’

‘Very good question. I think they were winged babies. Putti, like in all those Renaissance paintings.’

‘Let me know if you have their details.’ Lily added a pink flower around one of the dark blots. ‘Winged babies are highly sought after for themed weddings. People will pay extra if the grannies can pinch their cheeks.’

Mort was quiet for a moment as he painted something that sort of resembled a fruit. ‘I know it’s weird. Being a doorstep baby. But Gramps has always been great. Was it a slightly off-kilter upbringing? Sure. But whose isn’t?’

Lily thought about that as she added petals to her flower.

Her upbringing had been … well, she’d always considered it normal because there’d always been plenty of hugs and food on the table and new clothes to wear, but was it, really?

Was it normal to move every year because your mom’s consulting work was always a short-term thing?

Was it normal to flee every romantic relationship because if Mom wouldn’t settle for what she always belatedly called ‘just some guy’, then why should you?

Was it normal that the shop and apartment that Lily was repainting right now represented the first time that she’d felt stable in her life?

Mort understood her silence. ‘ You had a normal childhood, I see.’

Lily’s flower was wonky. ‘I suppose so. But we all come out the other end with our own quirks and foibles.’

‘Quirks and Foibles. Sounds like a good name for an esoteric shop.’