Undertaking Love Page 0,31
on track.’
Marla joined Emily by the doors and together they surveyed the transformed chapel with a laugh.
‘It’s hideous.’
Emily nodded. ‘I know. Perfect, huh?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘At least there’s no danger of the funeral parlour upsetting these guests.’ Emily said, leaning back to glance out of the shrouded chapel window at their neighbours. ‘Looks like it’s all quiet over there, anyway.’
‘Let’s just hope it stays that way.’ Marla muttered.
She’d mailed a second copy of their bookings list to Gabe in the hope that he’d honour his original promise to do his best not to disrupt them, but after the fiasco with the window last week there could be no guarantees.
‘Jonny, you better get your gear on soon. The photographer from The Herald’s coming by early to take some atmospheric shots.’
Rupert had been as good as his word and arranged for the wedding to be covered by the paper. He really was a powerful ally to have on side.
‘Will you help me with my make up?’
Jonny batted his lashes at Emily.
‘Like you need it. You’ve got more eyeliner than I do already.’
Marla laughed and headed up to the office, glad of its plain white walls and stark cleanliness after the lurid scenes downstairs. The only thing that stood out on the bleached room was her black lace dress hanging behind the door and her blood-red skyscraper heels ready for the ceremony.
She hadn’t been able to stay mad at Jonny for long. Although he’d overstepped the mark by a long way with the campaign, she knew that his actions had come from a place of loyalty and affection. The way it had spiraled out of control had terrified the living daylights out of him. Over the last week she’d helped him to conduct a huge clean-up operation online, which was rather like trying to unpick the stitches of a very long scarf one by one. Finally they’d re-launched the chapel website with a huge banner thanking people for their support and officially closing the campaign. She could only cross her fingers and hope like hell that it was enough to put the whole affair to bed.
The fact that she wanted the funeral parlour closed down remained unchanged, but she wasn’t prepared to play dirty to get it.
‘I now pronounce you husband and wife,’ Jonny declared, then threw back his hood and hurled his fake scythe to the floor to join in the thunderous applause.
The ghoulish congregation were packing the chapel almost to its spooky rafters, and from her standpoint at the side of the room, Marla had a clear view of the pure love in Alaric’s heavily kohled eyes as he pulled his new wife into his arms. The Herald photographer whizzed from position to position in the background, keen to capture the wedding from every angle. She could see why: it would certainly make an eye-catching splash. The whole production had been like Gone with the Wind crossed with The Addams Family – it throbbed with a vein of true love that challenged Marla’s mistrust of marriage in a way that few of the more conventional weddings she had organised ever had.
Much as she loved the chapel, she’d fallen out of love with the institution of marriage a long time ago. Her parents had provided her with a close-up view of the reality of marriage throughout her childhood; at best, it was a soap opera with an ever-changing cast of principal players. She’d had several step-parents whom she’d never even met, because their appointment had been so brief. If she’d taken one lesson away from her parents’ example, it was that marriage was only ever to be regarded as a temporary arrangement. ‘’Till death us do part’ was nothing more than a fairytale, and she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was all grown up and marriage was for other people.
Outside on the chapel lawns, ghoul-faced guests posed by the fake rusty railings and blood-splattered mock headstones that Jonny had organised to create the perfect ‘fright night’ backdrop for the photos.
‘You haven’t got a coffin, have you?’
Marla shook her head at the guy who lay on top of one of the fake graves. ‘Sorry, no.’
‘I bet they would,’ Alaric said, eyeing the funeral parlour.
A whoop went up around the crowd.
‘I’ll ask them! They can’t turn a bride down on her wedding day.’ Gelvira hitched up her scarlet velvet skirts and ran out across the pavement, hotly followed by her new husband and a motley trail of ghouls and ghosts.
Marla watched in horror, well aware that