Five Wakes And A Wedding by Karen Ross
Hello Ellesea!
Thanks for taking part in the Five Wakes and a Wedding blog
tour, and here’s my guest post
***
Write what you
know, they tell you. And one thing I know more than I ever wanted to
is about what happens when the roof leaks.
At the time, I
was living in a basement flat. So I wasn’t getting rained on, but
my upstairs neighbours were, which made the leaking roof my problem
as well as theirs. The repairs turned out to be hideously expensive
and the experience was stressful, to put it mildly.
But when you’re
a novelist, nothing is wasted. And in my new book, Five Wakes and
a Wedding, I was able to give my protagonist, funeral director
Nina Sherwood, the problem of a dodgy roof.
This was a bit
unkind, because Nina already has problems. She’s opened her
funeral parlour – Happy Endings – in a well-heeled London suburb
where the locals seem to hate her from the moment they discover the
new shop on the high street will force them to confront death on a
daily basis.
Nina’s starting
to feel she’s made a terrible mistake. Until finally someone does
come into her shop:
I’m on my fourth cup of coffee, which
means I need to run to the loo again, but before I can leave my desk,
the door opens and a woman comes in.
She’s five foot nothing, dressed head
to toe in a bright orange ensemble of blouse, skirt, tights and
clumpy boots. Her outfit clashes magnificently with her thick,
shoulder-length hair, dyed in that unfortunate yet ubiquitous shade
Gloria and I always refer to as menopause red, topped by a purple
fedora that adds several inches to her height.
‘Good morning,’ she says. ‘I’m
Sybille Newman. Your neighbour.’
The shop next door to mine is The
Primrose Poppadum – ‘Modern Organic Indian Classics, Free from
Dairy, MSG, Wheat & Egg’ according to its sign – and Sybille
Newman doesn’t fit my image of a restaurateur. Then again, I’m
probably not her idea of an undertaker.
‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I say
cautiously.
‘So you’re the owner, are you?’
Sybille Newman has a cut-glass accent and she sounds cross.
‘Yes, I’m Nina Sherwood. Today’s my
first day and—’
‘Never mind that. I’ve come about the
roof.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The roof. My husband and I live above
the dreadful Indian restaurant.’ Sybille gestures towards The
Primrose Poppadum with a flash of her Guantanamo orange fingernails.
‘Make sure you never go there – I’ve seen them arriving with
carrier bags full of stuff from Asda. Organic my foot! We’re trying
to get them shut down because of the dreadful smells. My husband has
a respiratory disorder and they’re making it so much worse. But
that’s not the point. The roof is leaking and we need a new one.’
She looks expectantly at me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say.
‘But I don’t understand why your roof is any of my business.’
‘It’s a single structure that covers
both properties.’ Sybille Newman frowns at me as if I’m being
deliberately obtuse. ‘Ned and I have lived here for twenty-three
years, and even when the betting shop was downstairs, back in the
nineties, there was trouble with the roof.’ She leans on my
reception desk and adds, ‘We’ve had it replaced twice, but now
there’s water leaking into our living room again every time it
rains. We’ve got a good jobbing builder who’s been patching it
up, but we shouldn’t have to be doing that at our own expense. Not
when it’s supposed to be a shared cost. I wouldn’t be at all
surprised if the purlin’s rotted. And there’s a ticking noise
coming from the rafters that keeps us awake every night. Woodworm
probably. Or beetles.’ Sybille smiles slyly. She seems almost
pleased at the prospect. ‘So I’ll get some roofers round to
supply estimates and let you have copies.’
‘Okay.’ I presume she wants me to
pass them on to my managing agent.
‘And you need to complain to the
council about the restaurant smell. Not that they’ll do anything
about it.’
There’s something about the way she
says this that makes me think Sybille Newman enjoys being a victim,
that she’s the sort of woman who is happy only when she’s got
something to complain about. I’ve already got a feeling that no
matter how hard I try to be a good neighbour, nothing I do will be
ever good enough.
Sybille Newman
turns out to be an important character as the story progresses. As
for that roof . . . it is destined to cause a great deal of grief
before it finally gets fixed. (And as for me, I solved own my
roofing issues by way of a change of address!)
Five Wakes and a Wedding has been described as romantic comedy
noir, mixing light and shade. From the lovely feedback I’ve
received so far, it will definitely make you laugh – and it’s
made a few readers cry, although I think they’d forgiven me by the
time they got to the end. If you decide to take a look, I’d love
to know what you think: karen@karenross.online
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…
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.
As a former journalist, broadcaster and advertising copywriter,
Karen Ross has followed a fairly traditional path into writing
fiction. Five Wakes and a Wedding is her fourth book, and like its
predecessors, the novel has two common threads: the setting is
London’s Primrose Hill – Karen’s own neighbourhood – and one
of the characters is a dog . . . this time he’s called Chopper and
he’s almost the same size as a Shetland Pony
Karen has been
self-employed for many years, and continues to work as a marketing
consultant, in the absence of an offer to manage Tottenham Hotspur.
By way of credentials, her other ‘job’ is trading profitably on
the world’s first football stockmarket, a platform called Football
Index, where you buy and sell players with real money.
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