Page 24 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘I’m sure it’s just a prank,’ Lily reassured Candice. ‘A very detailed, very committed prank. Or a typo!’
‘That’s probably it,’ said Mort, although Tink didn’t make typos – she was extremely exacting in her work. ‘Predicting a death down to the specific day is quite a feat. Unless …’
Mort swallowed. A few additional options had struck him.
‘Unless what?’ Candice cocked her head warily.
‘You’re not considering … you know?’
Candice spluttered. ‘Absolutely not!’
‘And there’s no one else who might …’
Candice whacked him with the invitation. The swan’s beak gave him a papercut. ‘I’m happily single! If I end up murdered,it’ll be a freak accident. Or a road rage incident. Or maybe my habit of picking up hitchhikers backfiring on me.’
Hmm, given the fatality statistics associated with all of those, the Save the Date might not actually be far off.
‘You might want to switch to a safer habit,’ agreed Mort. ‘Like riding a motorcycle. Or hard drugs. At least until October.’
Candice perused the Save the Date again. ‘Do we know how this happened? Or why? And who I should sue?’
‘Hey, Candice!’ A pickleball player (Mort presumed, based on the flared skirt and the dayglo shoes) hurried up, a bag of oranges slung over her shoulder. ‘I just wanted to let you know I’ve cleared my calendar for October. Looking forward to catching up!’
Poor Candice stood there stricken.
Lily put a hand on Candice’s arm. ‘I have wine inside. Lots of it. Shall we?’
Love is the Genuine Article
Lily
Candice was three glasses of wine deep and contemplating whether an ex-boyfriend or an ex-pickleball partner might have put out a hit on her when the phone on Lily’s desk rang. She scrabbled around for it, grimacing as she saw that the cute yellow rotary phone had been switcherooed into a plastic push-button affair that looked like the love child of an ash tray and a nautilus. She tentatively picked up, hoping she wouldn’t be electrocuted by the ghost of the 1980s.
A Kardashian-esque voice drawled down the phone. ‘Hey, babe. It’s Coriana, fromThe Gownmagazine. 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 herto 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.
