Undertaking Love

Chapter Thirty-Nine




A collective shriek went up around the group assembled on the grass, and several of the younger men sprang into action and dashed to see what was happening.

Marla, who had been about to drive herself and her mother to the cemetery, stared in horror at the orange glow inside the front window of the parlour.

‘I’ll call the fire brigade,’ she yelled over the racket and ducked back into the chapel to grab her mobile.

By the time she ran back outside again several minutes later the glow had grown into a blaze, and the crowd had at least doubled, if not tripled.

The flames had really taken hold in the reception area, and as the wail of sirens came down the high street the front window of the funeral parlour exploded outwards with an ear splitting crack.

Within minutes, Firefighters spilled out of an engine from all sides. They set up a cordon to keep the crowds safe, as others unreeled hosepipes at lightning speed.

‘Poor Gabriel,’ Cecilia muttered as she clutched onto Marla’s arm.

All around her, Marla could hear snippets of conversation from the over-excited crowd.

‘He’ll be ruined,’ said one.

‘I’ll bet it was arson!’ speculated another.

‘Insurance job. Funeral was the perfect cover,’ a sly voice chimed in.

Marla’s head swum with all of the theories.

Why was it human nature to automatically assume the worst of people?

‘I can smell pork!’ someone yelled, excitedly. ‘It’ll be the stiffs in there cooking!’

Marla swung around to face a gang of teenage boys that had gathered behind her.

‘Don’t be so bloody disrespectful!’ she spat, but all the same, the words struck fear into her heart.

Were there bodies in there? It was too horrific to contemplate.

‘I’m going back into the chapel,’ she murmured to her mother. ‘Someone should try to get hold of Gabe.’

Back inside the quiet confines of the chapel, the enormity of the situation hit her. All of those people outside were right. Gabe would be ruined, and people would jump to conclusions. Jesus, she’d wanted him gone, but not like this.

She sat down at her desk in the office. Thankfully it looked as if the fire service were winning their battle to tame the fire; it was less inferno-like now and more of a drenched, smoking mess.

She dialled Emily’s mobile number as she stared out of the window, but after a couple of rings it clicked through to answer phone. Crap.

‘Emily, it’s Marla. Listen. There’s been a fire at the funeral parlour. The fire service is here now, but it’s bad, Em. It’s really bad. Tell Gabe to get back here straight …’ She trailed off, dumbstruck as one of the firemen stumbled from the funeral parlour with a burned and blackened form in his arms.

A very limp female form. Long black hair trailed over the fireman’s arm as he carried her to the ambulance that had joined the scene.

Melanie.

Sweet Jesus.

‘Just tell him to get back here, Emily. Quickly.’



‘That’s about all for tonight, Mr Ryan. We’ll be in touch in the morning.’

Gabe shook DCI Pearson’s hand and watched him hurry away down the street towards his car. It was a little after 7 p.m. on what had turned out to be one of the longest days of his life.

Behind him the funeral parlour smouldered, still officially off limits until the fire officer declared it safe.

He didn’t have the stomach to go inside anyway.

Not tonight, anyhow. Nor tomorrow. Maybe never again.

It was a miracle that the morgue had been empty. Although actually, it wasn’t divine intervention that had saved him. His empty mortuary had a lot more to do with the fall-out from Rupert’s scathing attack in The Sunday Herald. How ironic that it should turn out to be Gabe’s saving grace; not that he would rush to shake Rupert’s hand any time soon. He dropped down and sat on the edge of the curb with his head in his hands.

‘Beer?’

Dan sauntered across from the chapel and handed him an already open bottle. Gabe downed it in one, and Dan handed him his own.

‘What did the dibble have to say?’

Dan glanced behind them at the shadowy funeral parlour and winced.

‘Nothing they could say, really.’ Gabe shrugged. ‘Melanie’s confessed to starting the fire, so it’s an open and shut case for them.’

Dan puffed out hard and shook his head.

‘I always thought she was a bit weird, but even I didn’t have her pegged as a full-on Glenn Close. Psycho or what?’

Gabe tried and failed to find the words to articulate his shock at the extremities of Melanie’s behaviour.

‘She could have died,’ he muttered, as much to himself as to Dan.

He couldn’t get his head around how desperate Melanie must have been to do something like this.

‘She picked the right place to do it then,’ Dan quipped, but even he couldn’t expect to raise a laugh out of Gabe tonight. He dropped a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

‘You were insured though, right, buddy?’

Gabe nodded with a heavy sigh.

‘That’s alright then.’ Dan clapped him on the back. ‘This is as straightforward as it gets. You’ll be back in business in no time, mate.’

Gabe downed the last of the second beer and didn’t answer.

Dan was right, but he wasn’t sure he had the heart for it anymore.

It had been bedlam when he’d arrived back here this afternoon, but he’d taken one look at his burned out business and made it clear that Dora’s wake was to remain top priority for everyone else. His world might have collapsed around his ears, but it was bricks and mortar. Ivan’s loss was far greater. He nodded bleakly towards the chapel.

‘How’s it gone over there this afternoon?’

‘Ah, the usual. Lots of golden oldies who’ve had a skinful of sherry. Most of them have gone home now with a plate of leftovers balanced on the handlebars of their mobility scooters.’

Gabe knew Dan well enough to know that wisecracks were part of his DNA. They were his coping mechanism; this was the closest he came to being serious.

‘Is Marla still there?’

Dan nodded.

Gabe pulled himself up from the curb, the two beer bottles in one hand.

‘Get rid of these, bud.’ He handed the empties to Dan. ‘There’s something I need to do.’



Marla kicked off her heels and poured herself a well-earned brandy from one of the many half-empty bottles in the kitchen. She’d just closed the door on the last of the mourners, and Emily and Tom had taken a rather worse for wear Ivan home with them for the evening. At times it had felt as if the day would never end, and the lure of a strong drink and a quiet five minutes was irresistible. She’d just flopped down into a chair when she heard the chapel door open again.

‘Marla?’

She closed her eyes and wished for strength as Gabe’s voice echoed around the chapel. Being around him was always such hard work, and she was so tired.

‘In the kitchen,’ she called out, not bothering to get up.

He appeared around the doorway, and the weary look on his face mirrored her own feelings so closely that she couldn’t be annoyed by his interruption any more. She waved an arm towards the empty seats around her in invitation.

‘Come on in.’

He collapsed into the chair next to her. One glance at his troubled expression was enough to make her reach for the brandy bottle and an extra glass.

She poured him a drinker’s measure and slid it across the table towards him.

‘You’re the second person to think I need a drink today,’ he said as he wrapped his fingers around the glass.

Marla breathed in deeply, and a heady mix of smoke and Gabe assailed her nostrils.

‘I’m not surprised. You have every right to get drunk after the day you’ve had.’

She touched her glass lightly against his then swallowed a good glug of brandy. The heat stung the back of her throat, and, feeling fortified, she met his eyes.

‘Is it as bad as it looks over there?’

Gabe humphed.

‘Worse.’

He knocked back half of his brandy.

Marla grimaced.

‘Was there anybody in there? Any bodies, I mean?’

She had to ask. The macabre question had been on her mind ever since the crass comments made by the crowds earlier.

‘No. Thanks to your ex-boyfriend, business had gone extremely quiet.’

Gabe’s mouth twisted into a line of distaste and he drained his glass. The mention of Rupert frayed Marla’s already tattered nerves.

She handed Gabe the brandy bottle and watched him pour himself a refill.

She looked away, blindsided by the need to make it better for him.

It had been a day of high emotion and drama, and her feelings for Gabe were a jumbled mess. On the one hand, he was damaging her business, and she still harboured a hulking great iceberg of hurt and resentment over the exposé in the newspaper. There was no denying the evidence, and he’d certainly failed to mention that he had been married.

But then in the next breath he’d turn around and do something so intrinsically decent that he’d make her question her judgment all over again.

He was good. He was bad. He was a threat.

He was a comfort. He was beautiful. He scared her stupid.

She reached for the bottle and poured herself another stiff drink.

‘Did Melanie start the fire?’

Rumours had been thrown around wildly ever since the fireman had stumbled out with her in his arms. Jonny had practically opened a book to take bets this afternoon after a couple of tequilas, until Marla had put her stone-cold-sober foot down and stopped him.

Gabe nodded.

‘I had no idea what was going on with her. I still don’t.’ He stared into the bottom of his brandy glass. ‘The hospital is keeping her in tonight, and she’ll be formally charged in the morning.’

Marla cast around for something charitable to say about the girl but found nothing. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not as sorry as I am. I must have missed so many warning signs.’ He shook his head with a bewildered look. ‘I take it you know that she’d been sleeping with Rupert?’

‘Rupert?’ Marla squeaked, wide eyed with shock. ‘When?’

Gabe shrugged. ‘No idea. Same time as you, I think.’ He drank deeply and then looked at her with an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry. I assumed that was why you’d split up.’

Marla shook her head, still trying to wrap her head around the idea of Rupert and Melanie. In many ways they made a perfect match. ‘No. I just realised that I didn’t want to marry him after all.’

‘Sensible decision. He’s a dick.’

Marla laughed shakily. ‘Jonny broke his nose.’

‘I know. I think I broke it again yesterday.’

‘Did you really?’

‘He deserved it.’

Marla couldn’t disagree.

‘So what will you do now?’ she asked eventually, not even sure she wanted him to answer. There was a broken, melancholy air around Gabe tonight that filled her with a fear she didn’t understand.

He ran a hand through his dusty hair.

‘I’ve had a gut-full of this place.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m done.’

Her palms went clammy as she stared at him.

‘But you must have been insured? You can rebuild.’

There were dark circles under his eyes and smears of soot mingling with the five-o’clock shadow along his jaw. ‘Yeah, I could rebuild.’ A cynical laugh rattled in his throat. ‘But why would I? Nobody wants the funeral parlour here, Marla. It’s been one f*cking nightmare after another since the day I arrived.’

Marla stared into the amber swirls of her brandy. She couldn’t argue with him, and what’s more, she knew that she’d been a big contributor to his difficulties. The knowledge that their campaign had been justified didn’t make her feel any less shabby in the face of Gabe’s despair.

‘I tried, and I failed. I’m no coward, but this is one battle I’m just not destined to win. You can have your street back.’

Marla was stricken by his U-turn. She felt no glory in the victory. ‘What will you do?’ Her voice shook with the effort of holding herself together.

‘I don’t know. I have nothing to stay here for anymore.’

He locked eyes with her and she swallowed hard.

‘You don’t?’ She regretted the whispered words as soon as they’d left her lips.

‘Do I?’

She didn’t want him to leave, but she couldn’t ask him to stay. ‘Gabe, don’t.’

‘Don’t what Marla? Don’t tell you I love you?’

Marla’s heart swooped around in her chest like a caged bird.

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why not? It’s the truth and you know it, Marla. I love you. I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you.’

Marla slid her glass onto the table, not trusting her hands to hold it any longer. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Gabe... you don’t know what you’re saying. It’s been a long day.’

‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I love you.’

‘Stop it, Gabe. Please, just stop.’

He dragger his chair closer until his knees touched hers.

‘Deny it all you like, but you feel it too. I see you, Marla.’ He reached for her hands. ‘Your mouth says one thing, but your eyes beg me not to listen.’

‘No!’ Marla could feel her well-organised world ripping apart at the seams, and hot tears splashed down her cheeks as she battled to yank the edges back together again. She stumbled to her feet and turned away to grip the cool steel edge of the sink.

Gabe was behind her in seconds, so close that his breath warmed the exposed skin on the back of her neck.

‘Tell me you didn’t feel it when we made love in your garden. In your shower.’ He braced his hands either side of her on the counter. ‘In your bed, for f*ck’s sake, Marla.’

The raw catch in his voice squeezed her heart, and she rounded on him in fury and frustration. ‘I didn’t feel it. There, is that what you want? It was sex, Gabe, not love. Grow up...’

He shook his head, and his eyes glittered with hurt every bit as intense as hers.

‘You’re wrong Marla, and you damn well know it.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not.’

‘Prove it.’

He kissed her. Hard. Marla couldn’t fight him; his nearness wiped away any last vestige of her will power. His kiss was desperate and furious as he hauled her body against his own, and for a few treacherous seconds she let herself hold him.

His mouth softened instantly over hers, achingly sweet – she could taste his love. Honey-coated promises of things that could never be, of roses around doorways and dark-eyed babies with gypsy curls.

Emotions battered her from all sides as his hands moved to cradle her face.

Lust so strong she wanted to rip her clothes off and drag him down onto the kitchen floor; frustration so jagged she wanted to smash every bottle on the drainer behind her; and a protective rush more powerful than any lioness as her fingers slid into his sooty hair and held him close.

Soothed him.

Loved him.

When he lifted his head, the look in his eyes told her that he knew.

He’d dragged the truth from her, in actions if not words.

‘I’m not the enemy any more, Marla. You don’t have to hate me.’

It was the worst thing he could have possibly said. His words mainlined right into the visceral vein of fear that ran through Marla’s core.

She needed those barriers between them.

She needed a reason to hate him.

She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand as she fought to get her breathing back under control, and pushed against his chest to put some space between them. He waited for her to speak, his whole body braced for impact, like a passenger on a jet free falling out of the sky.

‘You’re right. I don’t have to hate you anymore. But I don’t love you, Gabe, and I never will.’