Page 36 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Do your shoe conversion thing,’ said Mort. ‘I know you have it in you.’
Well, Lily had made her wish. She might as well see it through.
There’s Mortal Life than Love
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 themat 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 wassmart. Part of him was looking forward to her meeting Gramps, although he knew, justknewthat 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 leadingLily 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’sexactlywhat I imagined,’ said Lily, as they pulled up to Mort’s childhood home, whichdidhave 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 hadseen 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 getmoreweeds,’ he pointed out.
