Page 102 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
Mort’s heart seemed to skip a beat. Deathly? Lily was on herdeathbed? And Mort was here, at apartyof all things.
‘It’s bad. She said bubonic. You don’t want to go over there.’
Mort could feel the sweat starting to bead against his suit collar. He pulled out his phone, pretending to read a solemn text message.
‘I wish I could stay, but … death calls.’
‘Ugh, you can’t even stay for the Celebrity Fontheads game?’ Tink brandished a series of paper headbangs with typeface names on them. Wow, Lily really went all in on this stuff. ‘Death is always calling. It’s the worst.’
‘It really is,’ agreed Mort.
‘Who is it this time?’
‘Mrs … Helvetica,’ said Mort evasively.
Tink folded her arms. ‘Helvetica, huh. Is this a bonus murder mystery party element cooked up by the absent Lily?’
‘Happy birthday, Tink. Gotta go.’
Hurrying out the door, Mort grabbed a scooter from the side of the promenade and rode it at top speed back towards Eternal Elegance (Wedding Edition). Helmet be damned. Safety be damned. If he cracked open his skull or bruised his tailbone, so be it. What was the point of anything without Lily, delightful, silly, sunshiny Lily in his life?
Mort rounded the familiar curves and twists of the promenade, almost taking out a corgi-toting couple setting up a tripod for the internet likes, and actually taking out a garden bed of ornamental thyme. Sorry, bees. Well, not really. Pollination was the last thing on Mort’s mind right now. Oh no, now that brought to mindMy Girl, the movie that had traumatised a generation of kids.
Lily wasdying. She needed him. She wasn’t just his neighbour. She was his business partner. His … partner. His other half. His joy in this bizarre, confused world. And whatever happened – and goodness, so muchhad happened– he wanted to laugh through it all with her. Because that’s what they did. They chuckled over smashed wedding plates and corpse brides and confetti debacles and vow disasters. Because sometimes it was funny when a bunch of people got it into their heads that shovelling dirt on someone was a good idea. Or when the photographer insisted on waxy black-and-white photos with a corpse-like vibe. Or when the photo booth … well … all sorts of things happened in a photo booth.
He dumped the scooter by a planter filled with poppies and pomegranates and hurried up the colourful pathway to Lily’s shop. The Polaroids of Lily’s most recent clients smiled out at him from the photo board near the bay window. Mort did a double take. Hang on. Hadn’t there only beenfourweddings? Who was that fifth couple?
He leaned in, then clocked who it was right away. It was thetwo of them, first in the apparently perpetually resident photo booth at the funeral home, and then at Venus’s wedding during the disastrous crow flight. Mort wondered when Lily had pinned the pictures up – right after they’d been taken? Or perhaps one of the other times, one of hopefully the many other times, that she’d been thinking of him. Of them.
‘Lily!’ he shouted, fists banging at the stained-glass door like a restrained Stanley Kowalski. ‘Let me in!’
Silence.
Mort tried again, to no avail. He stood back, trying to see whether there was movement upstairs, but the massive mediaeval shutters hid all evidence. He squinted – was there a light coming out from one of them? All of the worst possible scenarios ran through Mort’s head like an aeroplane safety film. Maybe Lily was trapped upstairs. Perhaps she was so sick that she was unable to get out of bed. Or worse, she’d fallen out of bed and couldn’t get back up.
Then, Mort caught sight of two familiar glowing mismatched eyes. Esmeralda, up on his balcony. Regarding him haughtily, she nimbly leapt from his balcony to Lily’s, then sat there, quite impressed with herself, licking a paw.
Mort sighed.
‘This is what it’s going to take, isn’t it, Esme?’
Mort let himself into the funeral home, trying not to think of the last time Lily had been here. Of her easy laugh. Her astonishing facility for jigsaw puzzles. The lean length of her thigh …
Not now. Hurrying upstairs to his living quarters, Mort shoved open the balcony doors, letting the evening’s breeze rush at his face. He stepped up to the wrought-iron perimeter, which had for months now been entwined with the balcony for Lily’s place, the funeral home’s black skull and bat motifmelding seamlessly with the pink roses and gerberas of the wedding planner. Two lengths of the twisted iron ran between the twin balcony areas. Mort’s breath caught as he thought about the danger involved in climbing from one to the other. Esmeralda had made it look so easy, but cats had a preternatural ability to land on their feet. Not only that, but they had a bonus eight lives in the event that they misjudged a jump. Mort did not have this (possibly apocryphal) benefit to his name.
Mort jammed the toe of his Oxford into the railing, then pushed himself upwards, balancing his other foot on the top of the railing. He felt like the world’s most uncoordinated Batman.
Now what?
Forwards. The only way out was forwards. Well, and down, but he wasn’t going to think about that.
Mort leaned forward, stretching out a hand to catch at the railing on Lily’s balcony. Ouch, a rose thorn. Wincing, he walked his hand to one side, reaching forward with the other.
Now he just had his feet to deal with.
But as much as he tried to will himself to pull a foot forward, his body simply wouldn’t do it.Do you want to fall to your death, you dingdong?it was saying. In between internal screams.
He was stuck. Horribly stuck. In a position that did not look unlike the Hungry Caterpillar. Horrific flashbacks of childhood Twister games ran through his head. (People haddiedplaying Twister. And many more had thrown out their backs.)
