KAT FRENCH
Love Your Neighbour

Dedication

For my brilliant, funny sister, for terrible plot advice and excellent encouragement. xx

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Five Years Later ~ Everyone Loves A Good Wedding …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other books by Kat French

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Marla squinted at her new neighbours from the upstairs office window and fumbled around on the desk behind her for her glasses.

‘Holy crap, Emily … Emily, quick!’

‘Where’s the fire?’ Emily appeared around the doorway, puffed-out from sprinting the length of the aisle and up the steep, rickety chapel staircase.

‘Oh, it’s worse than that. Come and see this.’

Emily joined Marla, and the two women stood shoulder to shoulder at the window, gazing out in silent, duplicate horror. Before them were two nervous-looking workmen balancing on stepladders, inching brand new shop signs above their heads as a huge, bald guy yelled instructions at them from across the street. He was flinging his arms around him like a possessed windmill, and his hairy beer belly was sliding in and out from underneath the hem of a tea-stained T-shirt that had clearly not seen an iron in the last decade.

Marla slid her glasses up her nose and cracked the window open a little, all the better to eavesdrop. Not that they needed much extra help, because the bald guy was bellowing at the top of his Irish lungs.

‘Up a bit. Not that much!’ He hopped from foot to foot and clutched his bowling ball of a head in exasperation. ‘Down a bit! Feck it, man, it’s practically vertical!’

Marla squinted to read the freshly painted signs and then turned away and pressed her hands against her flushed cheeks in panic. This had to be a joke. Had someone called that TV show where they turn your worst nightmare into reality, and then expect you to laugh when they reveal it was all a big set-up?

‘Umm … that doesn’t look much like a cupcake bakery …’ Emily ventured.

‘You don’t say.’

‘It’s … er, it’s a funeral directors, I think, isn’t it?’

Marla closed her eyes as Emily voiced her worst fears. Her heart banged around behind her ribs like a panicked bird trying to escape, and she laid a hand over it as she tried to steady her breathing.

‘Cupcakes. It was supposed to be cupcakes, Emily. Not dead bodies.’

Emily grimaced. ‘Maybe there’s some mistake?’

Marla’s head spun with the implications of going from the sublime to the ridiculous in terms of her new neighbours. None of them were good. Wedding limos fighting for space in the street outside with hearses. Brides bumping into widows. Wreaths instead of bouquets. And how many happy couples would run the risk of ending up with a party of sobbing relatives huddled in the back of their wedding photos for all eternity?

‘It better be a mistake, or we’re ruined.’

Marla had shed blood, sweat and tears over the last three years to turn Beckleberry Little White Wedding Chapel into a national smash hit, and the idea of it suddenly being under threat made her shiver with fear. And anger.

‘I’m going over there.’

‘Excuse me! Er … Hello …’

Marla marched up to Guinness Guts, who had finally allowed the workmen to hang their signs and shambled his bulk back across the road.

‘Are you in charge here?’

He screwed up his chubby nose and shrugged a non-committal shoulder before reaching for the mug of tea that he’d balanced on the narrow window ledge.

‘Some might say that, darlin’. Depends entirely upon who’s doin’ the askin’.’

‘I’m Marla Jacobs – from the wedding chapel? You know, that wedding chapel.’ She jabbed a finger towards her beloved premises. ‘The one right there.’

‘Aaah. The new neighbours.’ He glanced down at her empty hands. ‘No cup of sugar, then?’

Marla narrowed her eyes. Was he joking?

‘Where is the cupcake bakery?’ she asked, enunciating each word with care.

His bushy eyebrows twitched as he looked at her. Then he shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me for directions, darlin’. I’ve only been here five minutes.’

The man was either winding her up, or he was an idiot. Possibly both.

‘No, no, no … Mr?’

Marla glared and waited for him to supply his name. The smirk on his face told her he knew so too, yet he wasn’t complying. She clenched her teeth and ignored his rudeness with considerable difficulty.

‘Look. There must be some mistake.’ She smiled, despite the fact that she actually wanted to knock the grin right off his face. ‘These premises,’ she waved her arm towards the shop currently bearing his ruler-straight new signs. ‘These premises have been sold to a cupcake bakery. You know … for cupcakes? Cakes? For birthdays. And weddings. And all sorts of other happy events.’ She emphasised the happy in the hope that he would finally cotton on to the thumping great problem. The blank expression on his face told her otherwise. Maybe diplomacy was overrated, after all.

‘Happy events. Not sad. And certainly not events for dead people,’ she hissed, her fists clenched into tight balls on her hips.

A look of understanding dawned across Guinness Guts’ face. Or, damn the revolting toad to hell, was it amusement? His piggy eyes travelled slowly from her purple skyscraper Louboutins all the way up to her auburn waves.

‘Look, Red. I’ve no clue about any of this stuff. You’ll be wanting Gabriel when he gets here tomorrow. He’s the organ grinder. I’m just the monkey.’

He made a frankly alarming attempt at something Marla could only guess was supposed to be a monkey impression, then slurped his tea and reached for a half-eaten packet of chocolate digestives.

Marla fought down the urge to grab the biscuits, hurl them to the ground and grind them into the pavement beneath her shoe as she cast her eyes to the skies and drew in a measured breath. Guinness Guts. Monkey Man. Revolting Toad. Whoever this man was, talking to him any more today was obviously a pointless exercise.

‘Right. Fine.’ She huffed, throwing her shoulders back. ‘Well, you can tell Gabriel to expect me bright and early tomorrow morning. And FYI, we don’t need any organ grinders around here. We already have a perfectly good organist in the village, thank you very much.’

Guinness Guts nodded and tugged on an imaginary forelock. ‘Gotcha. Not required. But hey, listen …’ He jerked his head towards the shop window with a grin that revealed biscuit crumbs stuck between his teeth. ‘We make good neighbours, you know. Very quiet.’

Marla shot him a withering look and stormed back to the chapel. Emily, who had been watching from the brick porch, flattened herself against the wall to let her friend steam by. Inside, Marla sank onto the nearest spindle-backed chair and scrubbed hard at her temples.

‘This cannot be happening, Em. If they open up there, we could be ruined. No. Scratch that. We will be ruined.’

Emily sat down across the aisle from Marla. Pin tucks of anxiety folded across her forehead as she twisted her rings around on her slender wedding finger. She couldn’t think of a single useful counter argument – as new neighbours went, a funeral parlour was just about as bad as it got for a wedding chapel. She clutched at the only available straw. ‘Maybe this Gabriel guy will be a bit more approachable tomorrow.’

Marla snorted. ‘You reckon? If he’s anything like his henchman, then I seriously doubt it.’ Her heart was hurting, as if someone had grabbed hold of it and given it a Chinese burn. The chapel wasn’t just her business. It was her everything. She might not believe in marriage for herself, but she sure as heck believed in it for other people, especially those who chose her quirky American-style wedding chapel as the venue for their big day. She’d poured her heart and soul into the business from the first moment she’d laid eyes on the vacant little chapel. The ‘for sale’ sign had stopped her in her tracks, and she’d known without doubt that Beckleberry was the perfect village for her business and her big fresh start. And she’d been right, up to now at least. It had proved the perfect distraction from her own shambolic love-life, and she was far too business savvy to allow her personal feelings towards marriage to stop her from turning the empty, unloved little building into one of the most in-demand wedding venues in the UK. She glanced up at the clock. 12.30 p.m. Past the yardarm. Thank God.

‘I need a stiff drink. Does Dora still stash brandy in the kitchen drawer?’

Emily nodded, then stood up and held out her hand. ‘Come on. I’ll make us some coffee with a nip of the hard stuff and we can make ourselves a plan.’

They both jumped as the back door of the chapel banged open.

‘Did someone mention a plan? Faaaabulous! For what? When? Tell me everything.’

Jonny’s made-for-the-West-End voice rang out around the chapel as he unclipped the lead from around the neck of Bluey, Marla’s impractically huge and lovable Great Dane.

Decked out in a black shirt that clung lovingly to each perfectly sculpted ab, Jonny looked every inch the gay icon he was – in their sedate corner of Shropshire, anyway. He also happened to be the best wedding celebrant and creative director Marla could ever have dared wish for. She’d known the moment that he arrived for his job interview in full Elvis garb that he was the ideal man for the job, but she hadn’t realised at the time that he’d also come to be one of her closest friends too. They were each other’s perfect foil; she loved him for his exuberance and joie de vivre, whilst he adored her understated sense of humour and determination. He’d moved his life lock, stock and barrel from Brighton to sleepy Beckleberry on the strength of Marla’s job offer, leaving behind a string of broken hearts and empty karaoke spots in his wake. In truth he’d been ready for the move, because he’d reached a stage in his life when the footloose-and-fancy-free lifestyle had run its course and left him wanting a little substance with his sex.

Emily decided to go for shock tactics and shepherded him to the window to judge the scale of their problem for himself.

‘A plan to get rid of this bunch of jokers,’ she whispered, gripping his muscled arm so hard that her knuckles popped out white against her skin.

Jonny gasped in horror as he took in their new neighbours’ sombre signs, while Bluey loped over to sit beside his beloved mistress. Marla leaned her head against his and counted backwards from ten while she waited for the inevitable explosion. Jonny was nothing if not predictable, and liked nothing better than a good strop. He was the only person she knew who was desperate for a slot on Jeremy Kyle.

‘A fucking Funeral Directors?? Next door to us? Errr, helloooo?’ Jonny snapped his fingers in the air, diva style. ‘I don’t fucking think so!’

Marla sighed as he strutted off towards the front doors. Much as she’d like to unleash Jonny on Guinness Guts, he would probably only make the situation worse.

‘Hang on, hang on. I’ve already tried that. There’s nobody in charge over there until tomorrow.’

‘Hmmph.’ Jonny’s broad shoulders slumped. ‘Well, when they do get here, they’ll wish they hadn’t bothered, because I’m going to kill them with my bare hands.’ He made a throttling gesture with his hands, his eyebrows lost somewhere in his hairline.

Marla threw her shoulders back and painted on a determined smile. She was the boss, and her troops needed rallying. ‘Come on, guys. Let’s go and put the kettle on and get cracking on that plan.’

When the going gets tough, the tough put the kettle on. Marla might have spent her formative years in America, but after almost a decade in England, tea was a tradition she had well and truly taken to heart. Weddings permitting, the small staff of the chapel took a well-earned break most afternoons to drink tea and swap gossip. They’d been rather looking forward to adding cupcakes to that ritual, too.

Somehow, tea with a side order of formaldehyde didn’t hold quite the same appeal.

Gabriel Ryan stilled the growling engine of his Kawasaki Z1300, restoring the sleepy early morning peace to Beckleberry High Street. The pavements still glittered with the dawn frost of early spring, and his breath hung on the icy air as he slid his helmet off. He sat stock still for a couple of seconds and drank in the sight of his perfectly hung shop signs for the first time.

Gabriel Ryan, Funeral Director. One thought consumed all of the others in his head. Mine. It’s my name over the door.

Time to grow up, Gabe.

His father’s last words had become his mantra over the last few months. If he’d ever needed to feel the warmth of his beloved Da’s approval, it was now. He kicked the bike stand down and fished around in the pocket of his battered leather jacket for the front door key. To his own front door. This was it. Elated and scared witless all at the same time, he felt for his mobile as it buzzed against his chest. He didn’t need to glance at the screen to know who would be on the other end of the line.

‘Hey, Rory.’ He slipped the key into the lock and turned it.

‘You there yet, little brother?’

At forty-five, Gabe’s eldest brother Rory’s voice sounded heart-wrenchingly similar to their Da’s. He’d appointed himself patriarch of the family after their father’s heart attack last summer – a role he took very seriously.

‘Sure am. Just arrived.’

Gabe cast a last glance up at his name as he passed underneath the sign and stepped inside.

‘And?’

He looked around at the haphazard clutter of stepladders and paint pots that littered the reception area.

‘And, yeah. It’s looking pretty good.’

‘Only Phil the Drill said it’s an almighty mess.’

Phil the Drill has a big mouth, Gabe thought, but refrained from saying it, because he knew that Rory meant well, and would no doubt relay everything he said back to their mother and three other brothers. He brushed off Rory’s concerns.

‘It’s nothing I can’t handle.’

Besides, it wasn’t a lie. He’d handle any amount of mess rather than go home and take his place in the family firm. He loved the bones of his family, but being back there had just been too hard on his heart since last summer. His dad was everywhere, and for Gabe, the only way to deal with his grief was to be somewhere else.

‘How’s Ma?’

Rory’s rich laugh rumbled down the line. ‘Same as ever. Bossy. Interfering. But she misses you.’

Guilt stabbed through him. ‘Tell her I’ll call her later.’

‘Don’t forget, okay?’

‘Course not.’

‘And Gabe …’

‘Yes?’

‘Good luck, little brother.’

Gabe clicked the phone shut and rested his helmet down by the door. He’d drifted from funeral home to funeral home since his father’s death, unable to settle but unwilling to go back to Ireland. His heart might belong in Dublin, but he was going to make this place his home now.

It had all happened quite by accident really. He supposed some might have called it fate if they were given to believing in such things. Firstly, he’d turned thirty. His family had, of course, wanted to throw the customary huge bash at the club in Dublin, and Gabe had known perfectly well that once he was there they’d use every trick in the book to make him stay in Ireland and leave his days in England behind. He’d refused their pleas and opted to stay in Shropshire with his best mate Dan, making plans for a weekend where the sole intention was to drink until they couldn’t stand up anymore.

A weekend which, in turn, was devastated beyond repair by the untimely death of Dan’s gregarious, life-loving grandmother. Gabe’s funeral director instinct had kicked in hard as he’d leaned over to gently close Lizzie Robertson’s eyes for the last time. He’d poured out generous measures of scotch for her family, and made the calls they were too shell-shocked to handle themselves.

Much later, over midnight brandies, it had struck him exactly how far away the closest undertakers were. Dan’s family had waited a good few hours before anyone could reach them from Shrewsbury, the nearest market town to sleepy Beckleberry. Much longer than any family needed to wait at a time like that. And so the seed had been sown. A seed that grew with frightening speed, like a magic beanstalk leading Gabe towards his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But I don’t have any premises, and I can’t afford it anyway, he’d reasoned, and he’d smiled with relief that there was a bona fide reason to let himself wriggle off the hook. Which was all very well, until his brothers finally wised-up to the fact that he really wasn’t coming home and bought him out of the family undertaking business as a birthday gift.

Still, he’d laughed when Dan shoved property details into his hands for some place that had just come back onto the market due to a deal falling through with a cupcake company. Cupcakes? How could a company hope to survive just selling cupcakes? No wonder the deal had fallen through. It would be way too small, but he’d viewed the premises anyway to shut Dan up. Cupcakes didn’t take up as much space as dead bodies.

Wrong again.

Gabe wasn’t much given to mystical flights of fancy, but had he been pushed, he’d probably have agreed that it seemed as if the planets had aligned obligingly just for him. He had the money. He had the experience. And now he had the perfect premises. ‘Go big or go home’ had been Dan’s sage advice over a pint in his prospective new local. And because going home wasn’t an option, Gabe had climbed the beanstalk and signed on the dotted line before he could let himself back out of it.

‘Time to grow up, Gabe.’

He picked his way between the stepladders and criss-crossed extension cables and let himself through to the back. In the kitchen, his eyes fell on the bright yellow note gaffer-taped to the bubble wrap around the newly delivered fridge.

‘The Yank bird from across the way is on the warpath. Watch yer back, kid.’

Gabe read it over twice more, still none the wiser about the note’s possible meaning. What Yank bird? And why the hell would she be on the warpath already?

He glanced out of the window, half expecting to see someone storming his way, but no warring harridans appeared to be beating a path to his door at this early hour. No doubt all would become apparent when Phil the Drill arrived. Late, of course. But what Phil lacked in time-keeping skills, he more than made up for in fitting skills. He’d worked for the family undertakers in Ireland for over twenty-five years and knew their business inside out. He’d been happy to bring his boys on a jolly across the Irish Sea on the promise of decent money, good digs and as much beer as they could drink.

Impatient for his first caffeine shot of the day, Gabe rummaged around and managed to unearth the kettle from behind a pile of half-eaten packets of biscuits.

A blur of red caught his eye outside as he sat down with the steaming mug cradled in his hands. He rocked back on his chair legs to watch the girl outside as she struggled to find something in the bottom of the huge bag she was balancing on her knee. Why did girls always carry such huge handbags? Her hair whipped around her cheeks, heavy red waves that irritated her enough to make her brush them roughly away from her mouth. She found what she was searching for, straightened up and disappeared around the back of the weird chapel place next door.

Interesting. He added ‘attractive redhead working next door’, to the growing file of positive aspects to his new venture. He grinned as the caffeine seeped steadily into his system. Phil the Drill was wrong. Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it in his bones.

CHAPTER TWO

Crap, crap and triple crap. Gabriel Ryan was divine. ‘Are you selling lucky heather?’

Marla knew she sounded surly, but come on. Really?

What else could he expect when he turned up on her doorstep uninvited, all rumpled with come-to-bed eyes? The man might hold the future of her business in the palm of his hand, but right at that very moment the only question on Marla’s mind was how on earth the sexiest man on the planet could possibly be an undertaker.

His gypsy-black hair would probably be given to curls if he let it grow, but as it was it had just reached that optimum run-your-fingers-through sexy length without veering too far into goth territory. Truth be told, there was something ever so slightly grungy about him. But cool, louche, stubbly grunge, rather than the patchouli-soaked rocker-in-need-of-a-bath kind.

He was smokin’ hot, and Marla didn’t have a fire extinguisher. Pity he was a funeral director. Eeew. Not to mention the fact that he was in danger of killing her business stone dead. The double reality check was enough to make his halo slip down to his throat, and Marla was only sad it wasn’t tight enough to pose a full-on choking hazard. Gabriel Ryan might be easy on the eye, but as far as she was concerned, he was trouble in all the wrong ways.

His face cracked open into a big, easy smile as he lounged against the doorframe and held out a chipped, empty mug.

‘Not heather, but any chance I could borrow a cup of sugar please?’

The ‘cup of sugar’ line again. He wasn’t even original. Marla leaned ever-so-slightly forward and gazed into the empty, chipped mug for a long moment before raising her eyes back up to his.

‘You must be Gabriel.’

He pushed his spare hand through his hair and assaulted her with that slow smile again.

Jeez, he had perfect teeth.

Marla was American.

Teeth mattered.

‘Guilty as charged. But please, it’s just Gabe.’

‘Gabe.’

His name felt treacherously good on her lips. A shiver ran down her backbone as he held her gaze for a second longer than strictly necessary. Invisible to the naked eye, a gossamer spider web of attraction spun around them, and undetectable to the human ear, Mother Nature’s wicked laugh tinkled off the chapel’s stained-glass windows.

Marla swallowed hard. It was her move, but somehow it didn’t feel safe to invite him over the threshold. He was like a vampire trying to glamour her into submission, and right at that moment he was doing a pretty good job of it. She gave herself a mental slap and swung the door wide. ‘Come on through.’

He stepped past her into the chapel, and as she closed the door she couldn’t help but take a sly sniff of him.

Not a whiff of patchouli or dead bodies.

Phew.

In fact, he smelled really rather delicious, all lemony-spice shower gel and fresh coffee. Marla loved coffee. And lemons.

She led him into the small back kitchen and gestured for him to take a seat at the buttercup-yellow formica table. As she flicked the kettle on, she turned to him sceptically. ‘Do you really need sugar?’

He grinned again. He needed to stop doing that. It was distracting.

‘Not especially. But I could murder a coffee.’

Marla made no move to take his bashed-up mug from him, but instead took down two pretty duck-egg blue cups from the cupboard and heaped coffee into them. They needed to talk. It might as well be civilised, over coffee. And at least here she had the advantage of being on home turf.

‘Sugar?’ She held the jar up.

He shook his head and laughed. ‘Never touch the stuff.’

Why oh why did he have to have a beautiful voice to match his beautiful face? His soft Irish lilt was full of gravel, as if the man had actually swallowed a bucket full of blarney stones. She placed the cups down on the table before dropping into the seat opposite him.

‘I’m Marla.’

‘Marla. That’s unusual.’

Oh God. Her name sounded bone-meltingly good with his Irish lilt. He rolled the R in the middle, as if he were playing with it in his mouth, and deciding whether or not to let it escape.

He raised his cup in salute. ‘To new neighbours.’

And there it was.

The perfect inroad into the most delicate of conversations. Marla sipped her coffee and eyed him over the rim, suddenly unsure how to begin now show time had arrived.

He lowered his cup and watched her steadily. ‘So … a little bird told me you wanted to see me.’

Marla coughed at the description of Guinness Guts as a ‘little bird’, but at least he appeared to have passed on her message. It was no good; she couldn’t put it off any longer.

‘Look, this is awkward, so I’ll just come right out and say it. I’m afraid you can’t move in next door.’

She breathed out hard and registered the way his eyebrows inched upwards. He nodded and took a long, contemplative sip of his coffee. ‘I know my line of business sometimes makes people a bit squeamish, but honestly, there’s no need to worry. I’ll make sure we don’t cause you any bother.’

Did he really think that that was all there was to this? That she was simply being squeamish? Unfortunately for Marla, he chose that moment to smile at her again and temporarily robbed her of the ability to speak.

‘Look. I promise you won’t be suddenly seeing dead bodies all the time or anything. Scout’s honour.’

He was trying to make light of it. The need to clarify the situation burned in Marla’s gut until she finally regained power over her vocal cords.

‘Gabe, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. This,’ she spread her hands to encompass the building around them, ‘this is a wedding chapel. It’s a happy place.’

Trouble seeped slowly into his dark eyes, but he held his tongue and let her speak.

‘It’s a place where people come to celebrate love, and life, and to enjoy the best day of their lives, you understand?’

He nodded, and for a second he looked as if he really might. Maybe there was hope, after all. Marla crossed her fingers underneath the table and waited.

‘Okay.’

Okay? Even in her wildest dreams, Marla hadn’t expected him to give in that easily.

‘Okay. I can see that our businesses are very different, but I’m also pretty sure we can work something out. A little give and take, you know?’

Damn it. Either he hadn’t listened, or he was being deliberately evasive.

‘Give and take? Give and take?’ She couldn’t hold her voice steady as it helter-skeltered up several octaves. ‘Gabe, people won’t book to get married here if they see a dirty great hearse parked up in the street or a wailing family outside.’

His brows knitted together at her harsh words. Gabe, in turn, watched pink spots burn on Marla’s cheeks.

‘Look, that probably sounded heartless, and honestly, I’m really not, but I … I just won’t let this happen.’

His expression was unreadable as he stared at her across the table. She went for broke.

‘The bottom line, Gabe, is this. Your business will kill my business.’

Gabe steepled his fingers in front of him, and any trace of merriment died in his eyes when he looked up.

‘Then we have ourselves a problem.’

Marla’s stomach flipped over.

‘Because here’s the thing, Marla.’

His voice was soft enough for her to have to lean in close in order to hear him.

‘People come to me to celebrate love too, it’s just at the other end of life’s spectrum. It might not be happy, or frothy, but my services are just as important as yours. More so, probably.’

Distaste dripped from his every word, and pure steel underscored his deceptively soft tone.

‘You’ve made it very clear that I’m not your ideal neighbour, and trust me, I’ll make every effort to minimise the impact I have on you.’

He shook his head with a look of derision and scraped his chair back. He crossed the tiny kitchen in a couple of paces, before turning in the doorway to deliver his parting shot.

‘But make no mistake. Whether you like it or not, in a few weeks’ time I absolutely will be opening for business next door.’

Emily slid down the bathroom wall, slumping to the floor, her back pressed against the radiator to ease the all-too-familiar ache. She hurled the unopened pregnancy test across the room. At least the tell-tale scarlet streak on the loo roll had saved her the bother of wasting eight pounds this month – not that she’d expected much else, given that she and Tom had barely seen each other, let alone made love.

What had started out as a crazy, exciting plan to make a baby had steadily turned into a monthly cycle of failure and heartache, that, month on month, was ripping the heart right out of their marriage.

Seventeen months, to be precise. Eighteen, including this one.

They hadn’t expected to score a home run on their first month, of course not. Hoped maybe, but not expected. Nonetheless, Emily had passed that first month daydreaming of ways to tell Tom their happy news. Would she buy him a card? Spell out ‘daddy’ in alphabetti spaghetti? No, Tom hated tinned spaghetti. And anyway, he’d want them to do the test together, wouldn’t he?

In the end, they’d perched side by side on the edge of the bath and passed the upside-down stick between them as if it might singe the skin off their fingers.

‘You look. No, you! Please, you do it, I can’t …’

In their defence, they had every reason to feel hopeful. Hugh Hefner himself would have been impressed with the way they’d dedicated themselves to their task over the month, but all they wound up with for their trouble was numb bums from the old ceramic bath and a stubbornly empty window where there should have been a blue line. Month two followed pretty much the same pattern. Month three involved a little less sex and a decent bottle of Rioja to drown their sorrows. Month four … well, suffice to say it had been one long downhill slide from there to here, eighteen months later on the bathroom floor.

Emily was just glad Tom was away on business. Again. At least this way there was no one around to have to paint a brave face on for. She could quite easily spend the entire evening curled up against the radiator. In the end she cried herself to sleep, and only the lure of a very large glass of Shiraz held enough incentive to make her drag herself downstairs some time just before midnight.

Three hundred miles away, Tom dropped down onto the bullet-hard mattress in his drab Brussels hotel room and kicked off his shoes. It had been a long day of ball-ache meetings, and he was hot and hassled. He needed to relax.

Guilt gnawed through his gut as he glanced at his BlackBerry on the bedside table. His hand even hovered over it for a second before he bottled it and reached for the TV remote instead. Emily would’ve called if there was good news to report, and he just couldn’t muster up a long-distance supportive shoulder. This trying-to-conceive business, or the TTC club, as it was chattily called on the many message boards Em had signed up to, wasn’t at all like those rose-tinted rom-com movies she adored. Oh no. This was more like some fright night, bloodthirsty Halloween movie being shown on nightmarish monthly repeat, and Tom was sick to the back teeth of the lot of it. He’d had a bellyful of Emily’s brave attempts to raise a smile for his benefit with grey tear tracks on her cheeks, and he could practically recite his own predictable ‘maybe next month’ speech in his sleep.

How in hell had it got this bad?

God knows he loved her, and before all of this baby crap he’d known exactly how to show her, too.

‘Let’s make a baby.’

He wished he’d never uttered those immortal bloody words as he’d cradled her in his arms in bed, still buried deep inside her, knowing he wanted nothing else for the rest of his life.

Since then, somewhere along the way, sex had become less about impulsive lust, and more of an insert tab A into slot B, and then hope like hell that something sticks. And now, to make things worse, if things could possibly be any worse, Emily had started to mutter about going to the bloody doctor to get tests.

He sighed hard and dragged his weekend bag closer.

A fresh wave of guilt washed over him as he shoved his hand underneath the carefully folded shirts, feeling for the dog-eared porn mag beneath the baseboard. He tried to block out the thought of what Emily would think of him for wasting precious semen.

But then, she wasn’t in her fertile window anyway, so what did it matter?

The bleakness of being more familiar with his wife’s menstrual cycle than he was with the football fixtures wasn’t lost on him. He pushed the whole sorry mess to the back of his mind and unbuckled his belt. He flicked the magazine open to his favourite page. At least he could rely on Candy from Arizona not to take her temperature before spreading her legs.

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