Love Your Neighbour: A laugh-out-loud love from the author of One Day in December. Kat French

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СКАЧАТЬ and private smile between them that melted her heart. She knew from snippets that Dora had revealed over the years that Ivan had been the love of her life from the very first day she’d met him as a starry-eyed teenager. Behind their banter and their light-hearted jokes lay solid gold love; theirs was a marriage to aspire to.

      Emily sighed and glanced at her watch. Tom had promised to try and make it, but given the shaky state of their relationship she’d have been more surprised by his presence than his absence.

      Half an hour later it was apparent that no one else was going to turn up. The only people to come through the door since Dora and Ivan had been Kevin, the village plumber and occasional Elvis impersonator at the chapel, and Ruth the florist, who needed to stay abreast of the village gossip in order to keep her customers happy and spending their pennies.

      Jonny made his way up to the lectern with a resigned look on his suntanned face.

      ‘Right, then. Let’s make a start, shall we?’

      ‘Hang on! I think there’s someone coming!’ Ruth called out, and an expectant hush fell over the small crowd as they stared at the doors with bated breath.

      It swung open, and a dramatic gasp rippled around the room as Gabe and Dan strode in.

      Marla shot to her feet in panic as Jonny’s eyes popped out on stalks. He had yet to meet either of the men in the flesh, and his tongue was practically hanging out.

      Gabe nodded in greeting towards Marla. ‘Don’t mind us. We’ll just sit at the back.’

      He relaxed into a seat in the back row and smiled genially around at everyone, as if he’d just entered his local pub rather than a meeting held with the sole intention of running him out of town.

      ‘Yeah. And heckle loudly,’ Dan muttered as he slid into the seat next to Gabe with a mutinous expression on his face. He couldn’t stand the way Gabe was being treated by the villagers, and he fully intended on letting the small-minded nimbys have it with both barrels at some point this evening.

      At the front of the chapel, Marla alerted Jonny in hushed tones to the fact that the two sex-gods on the back row were in fact the opposition party, crushing his hopes of dragging them into the vestry later on to drink the crate of left-over chardonnay.

      Marla took her seat and nodded in encouragement as Jonny moved to the lectern and cleared his throat, though she privately felt this was almost certainly a wasted evening that could have been better spent treating Emily to dinner at the pub.

      ‘Right then …’ Jonny held up his hands to shut down the low-level chatter around the room, then wiped them on his thighs as if they were sweaty. ‘We’re here tonight to discuss the effect that the proposed funeral home next door will have on our local community.’

      Marla’s toes curled and her eyes hit the floor. Gabe infuriated the hell out of her. Why on earth had he come here tonight? She wished with all of her heart that he’d stayed away, because his presence in the room changed everything. Even Jonny had been rendered polite by uncharacteristic nerves. Gabe raised his hand.

      ‘Just for the sake of clarity, I should say at this point that it’s approved, not proposed.’

      Dan snickered next to him, but fell silent again as Emily turned around and caught his eye. Ruth the florist, who’d once again been press-ganged into the role of reluctant minute taker, struck out ‘proposed’ and wrote ‘approved’ above it in dark letters instead.

      Jonny’s lip curled at Gabe’s direct attempt to undermine him. Marla saw his confidence click back into place as he threw his chin up and rolled his broad shoulders. She held her breath for the onslaught.

      ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you all know why we’re here.’ Jonny planted his hands on his hips as his cat-like eyes flashed. ‘If we don’t do something sharpish to stop the Addams Family from opening up their frickin’ freak show next door, then this village will be going to hell in a handcart. Capisce?’

      He looked out at his wide-eyed audience. ‘Brides and bodies are a bad combination, you hear me people? This stops now, before Lord Voldemort over there casts his dark mark above our village!’ He thrust his arm skywards and looked towards the rafters, and every neck in the place craned back as if they fully expected him to have cast an actual spell with an invisible wand.

      Gabe laughed out loud and threw his hands up in the air, whilst Dan’s chair scraped loudly against the flagstones as he shot to his feet in temper. ‘What the fuck is going on here, people? A witch hunt?’

      Gabe stood and laid a hand on Dan’s arm. ‘Let the people speak, Dan. I want to hear what they have to say.’

      Jonny faltered as they both sat down again. Such a blatant display of rampant testosterone was something he’d normally pay good money to see.

      ‘I’ll tell you what they have to say,’ Jonny said, swishing his arm over the crowd to indicate their collusion in his speech. ‘They say that you have no place here. They say that they don’t need you.’

      ‘And do you agree with them?’ Gabe said softly, his eyes fixed on Jonny. Marla glanced between the two men in the few silent seconds that followed and saw straight away what Gabriel Ryan was up to, and, judging by Jonny’s pink cheeks, he’d succeeded. He was melting in front of her eyes.

      ‘Because it strikes me that you’re a respected man here in the community. Your opinion matters to these people,’ Gabe went on, and Marla watched her campaign leader preen like a lion getting his mane stroked. His ego, more like. She cleared her throat and caught his eye with a deep frown.

      ‘I most certainly do agree with them,’ Jonny blustered, flapping his arm half-heartedly rather than swishing it this time. He licked his lips and pushed his hand through his hair. ‘You, Gabriel, are a very, very, bad man …’ He sounded as breathless as a heroine about to pass out. Marla groaned as someone at the back heckled ‘get a room’, and Jonny fanned himself with his speech, clearly at a loss for what to say next other than ‘yes, let’s get a room.’

      ‘Marla, would, er, you like to say something?’ he croaked eventually, and stepped down from the lectern without waiting for her reply.

      She shot him daggers as she walked past him. This hadn’t been part of their carefully worked-out plan. He was supposed to be the front man of the operation. She was thrown even further off her stride when the reporter stood up and flashed his camera in her face.

      ‘First of all, thank you everyone for coming tonight, we really do appreciate your support.’

      She ignored Dan’s loud snort, but even from the other end of the chapel she didn’t miss the swift dig in the ribs that it earned him from Gabe.

      ‘As you all know, the “proposed” funeral parlour,’ she paused to shoot Gabe a ‘don’t you dare interrupt me’ look, ‘creates a huge problem for us here at the chapel.’

      Gabe lifted a warning brow but let her continue without interruption.

      ‘If they are allowed to open, there is every likelihood that we will be put out of business within twelve months.’

      She looked around at the people in the room, and was gratified to see the troubled expression that crossed their faces.

      ‘We bring СКАЧАТЬ