Page 8 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director

Lily couldn’t imagine being so sanguine about multiple deaths. She’d spent the previous night staring at the pink chiffon canopy over her bed, wondering how it felt to have your partner die beside you. And at the good part of the movie, no less.

Thankfully Lily, who’d never dated anyone for more than three months, would presumably never be in that situation. (Unless something went terribly wrong.)

‘At least it was a nice way to go, I suppose. An anniversary night, in their finest clothes, with a great movie playing …’

‘Yes, other than the carking-it bit, it was a perfect night.’ Mort was testing Lily’s extensive fountain pen collection on the sample guest book she’d set out on a table dolled up with crockery ideas and elaborately folded napkins in every colour of the rainbow.

Lily raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow, you really were aptly named, aren’t you. Mr Morbid over here.’

Mort doodled some curlicues with a black marbled pen with a stylised bird on the top. ‘I was a baby. I doubt my infant personality was established enough for nominative determinism.’

‘Ah. So you’re morbid because you’re named Mort. You grew into it.’

‘Nice of you to admit it.’

Lily didn’t humour him with a laugh, but she did have to fight it. For all of his gloomy, grumpy appearance, Mort was … rather hilarious. Lily found him easy to chat with, and their humour shared a particular cadence.

Outside, the standard low-level hubbub from tourists strolling around, eating gelato and taking selfies with the greyhound statues outside the funeral parlour, had grown into more of a ruckus.

Lily turned, squinting into the mid-morning sun to see what was going on.

Mort peered through a set of pink feathered opera glasses from Lily’s prop wall.

‘Is The Hot Pot doing its custard croissants again? The queue does make it this far up the hill sometimes.’

‘They were sold out by the time I got my coffee three hours ago.’ Lily was a bit sore about that, but at least she’d got her stamp from Dierdre (a cute block cut of an alien cat riding in a teacup).

And a promise of a chocolate torsade tomorrow.

‘Look, it’s that couple from the cinema.

The slimy guy – Nate – and the poor girl with him. ’

Mort joined Lily by the front window, setting down his opera glasses and raising a hand to his eyes to block the sun.

The brunette from last night was pretending to browse the shelves of The Naked Bookshop as she hissed insults at her cheating boyfriend, who was spending a good half of the argument dodging flying paperbacks, and the other half checking his phone.

Frankly, Lily thought the girl was doing a good job of modulating her voice – she reached shouting volume only a couple of times per minute.

‘I remember them,’ said Mort, sounding not particularly overjoyed by the fact. ‘They were seated in the front row. He has some sort of high-flying job and kept making business calls and texts. If I played a smaller instrument I would’ve thrown it at him.’

‘You should’ve trundled the piano over his foot.

’ Lily jabbed an accusing finger towards Nate, who was jumping up and down in agony after the corner of a hardcover had hit his toe just so.

His girlfriend had a good throwing arm. ‘He does not, in fact, have a high-flying job. He’s a sleazeball.

That whole time, he was on the phone to another girl. ’

‘No.’ Mort looked shocked. Well, not that shocked.

‘Yep.’

‘What a shithead.’

‘A shithead who wants it all.’ Lily folded her arms as she watched Nate turn his attention to the most romantic spot in the whole village: The Grand Gazebo. His eyes lit up as he contemplated a possible out from the current couple’s tiff. ‘Cue the love bombing.’

Mort pointed out a cube-shaped bump in Nate’s back pocket. ‘I think he’s going a step further than that.’

‘Oh, please let that be a dad wallet and not what I think it is.’ Lily grimaced.

She’d seen this before, when her friend Christine’s boyfriend had half-heartedly proposed as a way to get her to come with him to Nashville, where he’d been offered a job.

How was he supposed to do his laundry on his own?

Christine had accepted, because what else were you meant to do when someone got down on one knee?

What else could you do when you were that far along in a relationship?

Lily only ever heard from Christine via social media now.

(Christine was all about the heart and prayer-hands emojis.) But she had scrubbed her social media of all evidence of Lachlan, and was posting a lot of thirsty selfies from Honky Tonk Highway these days, so hopefully she’d made the smart decision eventually.

Mort raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying you don’t want it to be a ring? Doesn’t your whole business rely on young people making misguided, expensive choices?’

‘I wouldn’t take those jobs. Unless the theme was really good.’

‘Any standouts so far?’

‘The Succession -themed one with the Kendall Roy rap was pretty good.’

‘What the fuck?’

Lily lightly whacked Mort’s hand as punishment for his guile. ‘Okay, I made that up. But you’d attend, right?’

‘I would arrive with the world’s most expensive waffle maker as a gift if it meant seeing that.’

‘I’ll add that to my registry recommendations. Should we step outside for a better look?’

‘I think it’s very important that we have a good vantage point. For posterity. After you.’

Mort swung the door open, gesturing for Lily to go ahead of him.

‘Should we stick with the patio?’ whispered Lily. ‘Or get closer? Like David Attenborough reporting on the secret lives of meerkats?’

‘I appreciate the anthropological angle, but you should be ready and waiting to offer your services,’ said Mort, with a light touch at Lily’s lower back. Lily bit her lip as she tried to ignore the flicker of attraction that sparkled through her.

‘I hadn’t taken you for such a gossip.’ They strolled surreptitiously along the promenade, pretending to admire the purple and pink phlox that spilled over the size of the planters lining its edges. (All right, so the phlox was worth admiring.)

‘Death is my sphere of interest.’ Mort’s dark eyes twinkled. ‘And that includes social death.’

‘Babe, over here.’ Nate grabbed his girlfriend’s hand, dragging her over to the wisteria-draped gazebo, shoving various selfie-snappers out of the way.

(Lily felt for them – the spot was so picturesque that she’d already had to upgrade her cloud storage plan, and she’d barely lived here a full day.) Then he pulled her up the bright Spanish-tiled steps, until they were poised like the figurines atop a wedding cake.

No, not like that, Lily. Think of a different simile, one that doesn’t lead to this poor girl getting engaged to this jerk.

The poor brunette looked more uncomfortable than Lily had after she’d licked the stamps and envelopes for a thousand save the dates to go out for a friend’s wedding last year. By the end she’d been hallucinating from eating far more adhesive than the FDA recommended.

‘My Veronica loves being the centre of attention,’ Nate assured a gang of teenagers in fluffy outfits sharing an enormous bottle of Fanta between them.

Veronica smiled hesitantly.

‘He’s doing it publicly, to coerce her into it,’ whispered Lily to Mort.

‘Bullying someone into loving you really doesn’t seem like the way to do it.’

Drawn like a seagull to a carton of French fries, a photographer emerged from between two planters.

(Presumably he’d been sleeping there, because he had leaf refuse on his head.) Catching Nate’s eye, he screwed a disposable bulb into his old-school camera, then ducked his head beneath the tent that covered his tripod.

‘Whenever you’re ready, boss!’ he called, sounding exactly like a gangster out of a 1930s movie.

‘Almost,’ said Nate. He clapped his hands, and the husky tones of an accordion coloured the air. The player of said accordion strutted forward, a rose clenched between his teeth.

‘Oh wow, this is a whole pre-planned thing.’ Lily was aghast.

‘You can buy a proposal package at the Chamber of Commerce,’ said Mort, deadpan.

‘I’m … honestly not sure if you’re joking.’

Mort winked.

Lily flushed. Oh, but he was doing a number on her.

Fortunately there was plenty going on to give her an excuse to look away. As if the strains of an itinerant accordion player weren’t enough, the promenade was suddenly abuzz with the combination of flip-flops slapping and high heels clacking as a group of young people hurried up in excitement.

‘Hey, Nate-Nate!’ A girl with legs so long that surely there were stilts involved waggled manicured fingers at the stricken brunette. ‘Veronica! Over here!’

‘We’re all here!’ Two bros with baseball caps propped defiantly high on their heads – was there a Ratatouille rat in there holding them on? – chugged beers as they waited for the moment. ‘We’re missing some sick surf for this, dude. She’d better say … ow .’

Stilts had grabbed a handful of the bro’s forearm hair and twisted.

Veronica narrowed her eyes. She was struggling to hold the flowers and chocolates that the slimy Nate had abruptly dumped in her arms from a roller-skating Grubhub delivery guy (roller skates were a permissible form of wheeled transportation along the promenade). ‘Say what, exactly?’

‘Oh shit, she’s figured it out.’ Lily grabbed Mort’s arm in alarm … then dropped it, hoping he’d been too distracted by the scene before them to notice the impromptu groping. ‘Don’t do it, Veronica. Stay strong.’

Veronica had the stricken look of an armadillo pinioned in the high beams of a lifted truck. Lily half expected her to roll up into a ball and go bouncing off to safety.

Nate dropped to one knee, then bestowed a blazingly white grin upon the crowd. Whoops and cheers rose up from the surfers as Nate whipped a box out from his pocket. Alas, not a dad wallet.