Page 19 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

Mort

Mort hid a smile as Lily effortlessly scaled the wire fence in her stripped-back shoes. He had to hand it to her: the girl had gumption. Especially since there was a gate a few feet further down the fence. Mort let himself through this, chuckling as Lily stomped her foot at him.

‘What?’ he said. ‘I’m thinking about buying myself a pair of those shoes and want to know that they’re up for the task.’

If Lily had been anyone else, say Angela or Tink or Dot, she would’ve thrown one of those shoes at him. But being Lily, she grinned good-naturedly and pulled out her phone.

‘ Five stars ,’ she recited as she typed. ‘ Great for fence-climbing and … ’

‘… Running towards alpacas,’ Mort finished, as one of the fluffy creatures trotted up to him. He wrapped his arms around its neck, giving it a kiss on its fawn-coloured head.

Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘Did you just … demonstrate affection? Should I check you for a fever?’

Mort scratched the alpaca’s forehead. ‘This is Lulu. The patchy-coloured one is Whiffle. They’re part of Aunt Dot’s herd.’

‘As in Movies Dot? She has an alpaca herd?’

‘Herd is kind of overstating it. There are only five of them at the moment. But it seems like there are more when they’re at peak fluffiness.

Once a year they get shorn down, and their wool gets spun into the skeins you see at The Crotchety Crocheter.

Begonia Alleyway, two down from ours,’ he added for good measure.

‘I’ll have to visit,’ promised Lily. ‘Although the one time I tried crocheting I almost smashed my phone because the woman on the YouTube tutorial kept saying “and just pull it through the loop, easy as that!” and it was not, in fact, easy as that.’

‘I didn’t know you were so full of rage,’ said Mort. ‘I like the complexity.’

‘Inside me are two wolves,’ said Lily. ‘The sunny one, and the one who rages against poorly described YouTube crochet videos.’

Mort bit back a laugh. Lily wasn’t just funny, she was smart .

Part of him was looking forward to her meeting Gramps, although he knew, just knew that Gramps was going to ask a whole lot of questions about matching funeral plots and his and hers caskets.

Which was precisely why Mort was always so cautious about dipping his toe into the dating waters: even if things worked out perfectly, the prospect of death coloured everything.

Every minute you spent with someone was a countdown until they weren’t there anymore.

And yet. Here he was with Lily, who was here for a year tops – because that was the duration of the Chamber of Commerce grant.

Unless she applied to extend her lease (at market rate), but was she going to, really?

When she’d opened up shop next to a funeral home with the same name, had become embroiled in a magical switcheroo, and was constantly being double-texted by Candice, who was convinced there was a fatwa on her head?

‘Lead the way,’ said Lily, breaking into his thoughts with that luminous grin.

‘Over here,’ said Mort, turning on his phone torch and leading Lily over to a fenced-off section of the field where a handful of crumbling stones poked up from amongst the colourful wildflowers.

‘Oh wow,’ said Lily, as she stooped to read the age-faded names and dates on the stones. ‘I thought those were rocks or something. They’re gravestones? The goths will love this. It’s perfect.’

Something odd was happening inside Mort’s chest as Lily snapped photos of the gravestones and the stunning wildflowers – phlox, bluebonnets, black tulips – that grew in a rainbow river all throughout the field. His heart attack risk was definitely increasing.

‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching up on her tiptoes to graze a kiss across his cheek. ‘I can’t wait to take this back to them.’

Swallowing, Mort nodded. Lily was so free with her emotions. Wasn’t she terrified of getting hurt? Of getting it wrong?

The two alpacas trotted up, nosing at Lily’s hair and making her giggle. ‘They have the funniest little faces! They’re so expressive and yet … so vacant.’

‘They’re the best.’ Mort gave Lulu a scratch on the head and exhaled. ‘Are you ready to go meet Gramps?’

Lily snapped a photo of the wildflowers against the sunset. ‘Am I ever.’

‘Wow, it’s exactly what I imagined,’ said Lily, as they pulled up to Mort’s childhood home, which did have a touch of the ghoulish to it, especially now that Gramps was finding it ever harder to get through the chores and maintenance that the huge Victorian house required.

The home was all peaks and gables and towers, with spiky embellishments and garden beds that prickled with dark mondo grass, irises and foxgloves.

The cast-iron outdoor furniture was pillowed with black velvet cushions that had seen their fair share of the area’s salty breezes, and the hedges that formed mazes and labyrinths were shaggy and overgrown.

Bunnies peeped out from them, shyly regarding Mort and Lily as the duo climbed out of the hearse and picked their way up the wonky flagstones, Mort lugging Gramps’s groceries like a packhorse.

‘Everything I know about you is starting to make so much sense,’ whispered Lily. She bent to pluck a dandelion clock from a thick patch of weeds, then puffed on it, sending dandelion seeds flying. ‘What?’ she asked, seeing the aghast look on Mort’s face.

‘That’s how you get more weeds,’ he pointed out.

Lily cocked her head. ‘I thought the robust dandelion field was on purpose. A statement about rebirth or something.’

‘If everyone would stop dying, I’d have more spare time to help out with Gramps’s lawn. Come on.’

The porch steps sagged from decades of comings and goings, and Mort held out a bag-laden arm for Lily just in case she became a slip-and-fall statistic.

Lily took him up on the offer with a grin, and Mort, who could feel his face flushing, was grateful that the porch light had blown.

(He made a note to replace it once his flush had faded.)

Gramps opened the door before Mort even had a chance to knock. Thankfully – because Mort didn’t have much in the way of a free hand.

‘He’s so tiny,’ whispered Lily in delight. ‘Like a shrunk-down Uncle Fester.’

Fair, thought Mort: Gramps had always been diminutive, and his hair hadn’t been seen for years. His eyebrows, on the other hand, were another matter.

‘Oh, but it’s good to see you, Mort!’ Gramps wrapped Mort in one of his usual effusive hugs, which landed roughly at hip height given the height difference. Grocery bags swung all over. ‘And who’s this? Your girl? Did you get a girl, Mort?’

Mort spluttered, although he should have anticipated this, honestly.

Gramps had always shown untold interest in Mort’s private life – well, everyone’s private lives, really.

You had to, when at any moment you might have to start helping a bereaved bang out an obituary to send to the Mirage Daily Mirror .

But though Mort had finally stepped up to the funeral home plate, there was still the question of beyond that.

Would the business stay in the family if there was no more family?

The question had kept Mort up since he’d taken over running things.

It wasn’t just people that could die – businesses, landmarks, legacies could, too.

Lily, sensing that Mort was off in his own world, stepped forward, giving Gramps a taste of his own medicine with a giant hug of her own. ‘I’m Lily. Mort has told me all about you.’

‘ All about me, huh?’ chuckled Gramps, looping his arm through Lily’s. ‘Did he tell you about the giant perch I caught when I went fishing with a shoelace by the lake as a joke? Ooh, and the sandcastle I made on the beach one day that was so good the locals thought it was made by Banksy?’

‘That never happened.’ Mort dropped the bags of groceries on the kitchen counters, which were made from black Formica rimmed with striped chrome.

He eyed the single bowl and single spoon drying by the sink and felt a pang.

When was the last time Gramps had had company that wasn’t Mort?

‘Lily has moved into the shop next door.’

‘A business called Eternal Elegance,’ said Lily. ‘Wedding Edition.’

‘Great name.’ The ancient floorboards creaked as Gramps led Mort and Lily into the living room, where his current jigsaw-puzzle-in-progress took up most of the massive coffee table in the middle of the room.

(Gramps had been a jigsaw puzzle fiend for as long as Mort had known him.) ‘I love a business that dabbles in finality. Watch that missing floorboard there.’

Lily side-stepped it, then took a seat on one of the sprawling black chesterfield couches in the living room, laughing as she sank so far into it that Mort had to help her back out again.

Once he’d rescued her, Mort perched on the opposite end of the couch.

With the black-and-white photos of the funeral home through the ages surrounding him, he felt like he was back in high school, introducing Gramps to a date who’d inevitably ask to see the back of the hearse, beg to tour the downstairs preparation room at the funeral home, and then report back to their friends about what a freak Mort was.

Only now, things felt … sad. It was no longer Gramps watching Mort grow into his life. Now it was Mort watching Gramps wind down from his. He swallowed. He needed to call Angela about Whispering Waters. Or about a place that wasn’t a giant ramshackle home.

‘What are you working on here?’ Lily was trying to figure out the theme of the jigsaw puzzle.

‘The Spanish Steps in Rome. Glorious place, if you haven’t been.

Near the Villa Medici and the Spanish Embassy.

’ Gramps popped a piece into a section of the puzzle marked by pink and yellow planters, then headed over to a black rattan bar cart.

He hefted a bottle of whiskey in Mort’s direction, a bottle of port in Lily’s, then as both nodded, poured a shot of each into twin cloudy tumblers.

‘The widow Nesbitt – Hyacinth, remember, Mort? She always brought you liquorice? – gave me my first jigsaw puzzle years back as thanks for the work I did on her husband’s funeral, and I got into the habit of puzzling.

It got to the point that everyone would give me a puzzle when all was said and done. ’

‘Wow,’ said Lily. ‘That’s really sweet. I get a lot of cake.’

‘Cake’s not a bad perk.’ Gramps recapped the whiskey bottle. ‘I put my heart and soul into that business, you know. Proudest day of my life when Mort agreed to take it over. I just knew he’d do a brilliant job. Keep our five-star rating on that, what’s it called? Yowl? Yawp?’

Gramps passed Mort the whiskey, which Mort promptly downed.

Yep, everything was going just fine. It was perfectly normal to have bouquets of hot pink zinnias delivered for a wake, or for mourners to call up asking about whether Mort had a DJ on his roster, or better yet, a live band.

And the growing stack of Polaroid selfies taken with the deceased was nothing to worry about at all.

‘He’s doing a great job at it,’ agreed Lily.

‘Although I did hear you had an energetic one the other day.’

Mort felt like a deer in the headlights.

As pressing as the issue was, he couldn’t bring himself to ask about the switcheroo.

He couldn’t disappoint Gramps, not now. Gramps finally, finally had a chance to relax after all these years.

He didn’t need to know about the strange spell that had bizarrely merged the two businesses.

Not unless things got worse, anyway. And maybe they wouldn’t.

Maybe it would all resolve itself. (Even so, Mort had been stocking up on mixed spices in an effort to try to help things along.)

‘Um, that was just … some overflow from …’ he began, shooting Lily a please save me look.

‘One of my clients,’ said Lily quickly. ‘They get a bit frisky on the prosecco samples, and before you know it, they’re dancing down the street.’

Mort breathed a sigh of relief.

Gramps chuckled. ‘Ah, weddings. There’s a reason I stuck with funerals. No surprises. Isn’t that right, Mort?’

‘Absolutely.’ Mort set down his glass on a coaster. ‘So, how about you two set to work on that jigsaw puzzle, and I’ll get your groceries put away. And I’ll deal with that porch light.’

‘Deal,’ said Lily. ‘Although I should warn you, Gramps, I never do the edge pieces first.’

‘An agent of chaos, I see.’ Gramps grinned. ‘But you get to do the sky.’

Lily flicked her hair and pretended to crack her knuckles. ‘Ready to watch the master at work?’

Mort paused in the doorway to watch just that, but all he saw was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen glowing in the soft light of the half-dark Venetian chandelier overhead.