Page 1 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Died and Gone to Heaven
Lily
Gosh, this place was romantic.
Not that Lily had romance on the brain. She’d set that part of herself aside somewhere between the warning klaxon of her mom’s disastrous post-divorce relationships and the approximately seven hundred weddings Lily had attended last year as a maid of honour. A job she’d finally – after a viral Instagram moment and much prodding from her friends and her Uncle Roger (a CPA) – agreed to monetise in the form of her new wedding planning business.
There was no denying that Mirage-by-the-Sea, a fairy-tale destination a few hours north of San Diego, was the ideal spot to hang out her hot-pink shingle. Beloved by influencers of the West Coast, it regularly trended on social media under the hashtags #quaint and #bougainvillea and #cottagecoregoals. Home to a pedestrian-only promenade that wound around storybook cottages and quirky businesses propped up by intergenerational wealth rather than actual business plans, it was the sort of place that should’ve stopped existing sometime back in the Seventies, before the hyper-capitalism of the Eighties took over. And yet, thanks to state grants and a large cash infusion from an anonymous lottery winner, the dream paraded on.
Lily had visited several times as a child with her mom and whomever her mom had been dating at the time, and had fond memories of it: eating giant scoops of gelato up on the grassy hills as the wind whipped her hair into her face; sitting cross-legged on a picnic blanket in the amphitheatre as a swing band played; reading battered books from the antique shop with the huge gumball machine that, in the childhood jackpot Lily would never forget, dispensed multiple gumballs at once.
The town had many charms, but not least was the initiative from the Chamber of Commerce that enticed quirky new businesses by offering them a massive discount on their rent should they take over an empty shopfront. Lily’s friend Annika, who was constantly sharing pictures of unfairly cheap houses in Sardinia and Sweden and extremely beautiful but terrifyingly rural parts of the US, had sent the post about it to Lily along with several heart-eye emojis.
Lily, a few glasses of wine and several Instagram pages deep into the beginnings of a quarter-life crisis, had immediately applied.
Business Type? Wedding planner.
Business Name? Eternal Elegance.
Years of Experience? None. No wait. When had the first of her friends got married? Because her expertise started then, with the first of her many unpaid (and unappreciated) internships.
That had been a mere month ago. And now, here she was, hot-pink, keyring-decorated duffel bag at her feet, ready to bestow matrimonial bliss upon the sleepy village.
Lily hoisted her duffel bag over her shoulder, carrying it from the parking area behind the shops and down Moonkissed Alley, a plant-filled cobblestone laneway dotted with tiny shops (Made-to-order taffy! Absurdly expensive wine! Artisanal windchimes!) and cosy rocking chairs covered with plush macramé-edgedcushions and rhinestone-dotted folk art. The laneway opened out to a larger promenade, home to a winding array of larger two-storey shops with thatched roofs and arched windows and individual patios draped with wisteria and astonishingly vivid flower baskets. You could follow the promenade downhill (to arrive at the Hot Pot, the internet-famous tea and coffee house), or up (to arrive at Rerunning Up That Hill, the local second-run theatre, which made most of its money off its monthly fun runs). From the top of the hill you could see the spread of homes reaching towards the ocean, with its foggy fingers and sharp winds and happily splashing sea lions.
And for the next year – for that was how long the discounted lease ran – it was home. Lily hugged her duffel, drinking in the perfection of it all as she waited for her realtor, Angela, to arrive with the key.
Her new space was even more beautiful than in the post Annika had shared, and in the photos she’d spent hours browsing online. Art, it seemed, had failed to imitate life, but in the best possible way. The shop was a whitewashed building with gingerbreading all over and clematis climbing up every wall and pillar in a fragrant explosion of pinks and purples.
Just imagine all the cake tastings and stationery craft sessions she could host here! All the happy couples smiling mushily over their carefully selected bonbonniere and boutonniere! All the photo albums and guest books they’d leave hugging under their arms, filled with some of the most important, magical memories of their lives!
Lily took a deep breath, bespelled by the shop and her new upstairs apartment, which had its own plant-filled terrace and hanging array of hummingbird feeders – all of which were busy with the flitting of the tiny green-breasted birds. Sheer chiffoncurtains draped the floor-to-ceiling windows, hiding the living space behind the multi-paned glass.
It was perfect.
Well, except for one thing.
The red flag that was the eye-gouging reality of the building next door.
‘What’s with the circus tent?’ she asked, as Angela – a striking dark-eyed woman whose three-quarter black culottes perfectly matched her severe bob – breezed up, giant handbag and giant earrings swinging.
Neither the online listing nor Lily’s endless ground-level digital wandering in Google Street View had shown the massive yellow and red striped tent over the building next door. It looked as though a jumping castle had fled a particularly abusive set of jumpers and had taken a leap of faith, resulting in it being upended upon Lily’s neighbour. Unless, she fretted, the building always looked like that.
‘Just a fumigation tent,’ said Angela airily. ‘They should be done in a day or so.’
‘Just as long as I’m not working alongside a troupe of clowns.’
Angela, who was digging about in her enormous bag for Lily’s keys, snorted. ‘Definitely not clowns. More like … the opposite of clowns.’
Lily nodded, hoping Angela was telling the truth.
‘Aha!’ Angela flourished a pink key with a strip of cloth attached. She gestured to the wrought-iron frame hanging above an art deco sconce light. ‘All it needs is your sign, and you’re ready to go. Are you ready to do the honours?’
Lily had never been more ready for anything in her life. This cute building was about to be hers! Well, sort of hers – it still belonged to whoever actually owned it. But it was Lily’s for all intents and purposes, and those intents and purposes were tohelp bring people together in a manner as over the top as she could possibly manage. And also a little bit to avoid her newly coupled-up friends and the awkwardness of being the single solo person at the table. Not that she was being invited to many dinner parties these days. The whole dinner invitation thing started to drop off when you weren’t part of a couple.
(‘It’s the odd number of seats that throws me off,’ her friend Kennedy had explained. ‘Things just work in pairs. No one has seven bowls or nine portions of dessert. And then you start to wonder … why are they single, you know?’ Lily had left that party early, although not before eating an extra slice of cake and stowing a bottle of wine in her handbag.)
After unlocking the door – which was white and with a charming slot for letters, something that Lily had always longed for in a building – Angela gestured for Lily to lead the way.
