Five Wakes and a Wedding
Undertaker Nina Sherwood is full of good advice. For example, never wear lip gloss when you’re scattering ashes. Nina is your average 30-year-old with a steady job, a nice home – and dead bodies in her basement. As an undertaker, she often prefers the company of the dead to the living – they’re obliging, good listeners and take secrets to the grave. Nina is on a one-woman mission to persuade her peers that passing on is just another part of life. But the residents of Primrose Hill are adamant that a funeral parlour is the last thing they need… and they will stop at nothing to close down her dearly beloved shop. When Nina’s ‘big break’ funeral turns out to be a prank, it seems like it’s the final nail in the coffin for her new business. That is, until a (tall, dark and) mysterious investor shows up out of the blue, and she decides to take a leap of faith. Because, after all, it’s her funeral… The perfect antidote to all those books about weddings, this book will make you laugh until you cry, perfect for fans of Zara Stoneley’s Bridesmaids, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Good Place.
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Five Wakes and a Wedding
KAREN ROSS
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Karen Ross 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock
Bells © Shutterstock.com
Karen Ross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008354350
Version: 2019-06-18
For Francesca
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Funeral Number One
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Funeral Number Two
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Funeral Number Three
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Funeral Number Four
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Funeral Number Five
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Acknowledgements
Nine Book Club Questions and a Suggestion
About the Author
About the Publisher
‘Nina! One of the fridges is making a weird noise.’ Gloria’s voice is a welcome distraction from my latest attempt at flower arranging. At least, until I realise what I’ve just heard.
Shit.
I abandon the cornflowers, delphiniums and rust-coloured foliage, dash through to the back room, and hurtle down the stairs that lead to the basement storage area. With every step I take, a measured ‘beep, beeep, beeeep’ – like the sound of hospital machinery hooked up to someone in a coma – grows louder.
‘Something must have tripped the alarm! What did you do to the fridge?’ I ask as Gloria comes into sight.
‘Nothing.’
Gloria is unruffled by my accusatory tone. She’s my housemate.
‘I was looking for the cleaning spray,’ she says. ‘To take the whitewash off the window.’
The fridge’s mournful signal of distress continues.
‘Maybe buying my equipment on eBay wasn’t such a good idea,’ I manage. ‘But at least there’s nothing in it yet.’
As if to prove it, I open the door to the beeping fridge.
The noise stops and is immediately replaced by the sound of a wooden object being hit – repeatedly – by a hammer. ‘That must be Edo!’
Gloria hears the relief in my voice. She manoeuvres herself around the fridge, squeezes my shoulder and says, ‘C’mon. Let’s go see.’
My hand is still on the fridge door. Tentatively, I close it.
Beep
Beeep.
Beeeep.
The damn thing isn’t even cold enough to keep an ice lolly from melting.
Whereas I am shivering with anticipation.
This is going to be an amazing day and I’m not going to let a dodgy fridge spoil a single moment. I shrug, and reopen the door to silence the skull-piercing sound. I’ll deal with it later. For now, I follow Gloria back the way I’ve just come.
Presuming we’re not being burgled and it really is Edo, the rhythmic hammering means he’s been as good as his word. He’s made me a shop sign and it seems he’s fixing it in place. He’s been hugely secretive about the design – ‘Nina, I’m an artist! It’ll be awesome!’ – and I’m finally going to get to see what he’s done.
Except Gloria can’t get out of the door.
She’s inched it open, only to find herself nose to nose with a hulking white Transit van parked extremely illegally and mostly on the pavement.
It’s Edo’s van and I realise he’s standing on the roof of it to put up the sign above the door. A good idea because it’s a lot cheaper than scaffolding. And as it’s before eight o’clock, when the Primrose Hill traffic wardens begin their daily rounds of terror, he’ll get away with it.
