A Groom With a View (13 page)

He carried on, saying something about the flowers he and Callie had chosen and something about the plans Iain was making for his stag night. I closed my eyes and lay back in the hot water. He wasn’t going to mention Bethany, and I couldn’t summon up the courage to, either. I suddenly felt very, very tired and the excitement of the past few days had evaporated along with the last whiff of jasmine.

“Oh, and I bought you a present,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll go and find it.”

I heard the door of our wardrobe open and close, then a few drawers opening and closing too, and then Nick came back.

“Look!” he said proudly. “I ordered it online. Mum found the website, she’s gone a bit online-shopping crazy.”

He held up a black cotton T-shirt. In large, squirly foil letters across the front was printed ‘Mrs Pickford’.

I’d been wondering when to talk to Nick about what Guido had said about work, and now I was faced with another conversation I really didn’t want to have. Mrs Pickford was Erica, not me. I was Pippa Martin, and I had no intention of changing that, no matter what it would say on my passport.

I pulled the plug out of the bath and wrapped myself in my towel.

“I’d better unpack and get to work,” I said. “I told Guido I’d try and be in by lunchtime.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Numbers

Hi Imogen

I hope you’re well. You’ll be relieved to hear that we have finalised our guest list at last, and the invitations have been sent out. As it’s been such short notice, we’re expecting a relatively high attrition rate, so I expect there will be about 150 guests. As soon as we have RSVPs I’ll be able to confirm the exact numbers. Obviously this will affect the menu to some extent, but we’d like to go ahead with the tasting on Friday anyway, as discussed with Hugh.

Hope that’s all okay, and thanks again for your patience. Look forward to seeing you then.

Nick

“Well, this is very nice, isn’t it?” said Erica, as the taxi’s headlights illuminated the stone façade of Brocklebury Manor. “What an attractive building. When was it built?”

Nick launched into a potted history of the place, which I realised he must know off by heart by now. I had to admit that it did look gorgeous – the huge hall was dwarfed by a giant Christmas tree, festooned with twinkling white lights and tasteful gold and silver decorations, not at all like the tatty multicoloured ones that Nick and I have on our tree at home. There was a gorgeous smell of pine needles and mulled wine hanging in the air.

Imogen greeted us at the not-a-reception-desk.

“Hello, Nick, hello, Pippa, how lovely to see you again. You do look well, have you been somewhere hot? And you must be Mrs Pickford, how nice to meet you.” She kissed us and shook Erica’s hand. “Now, if you’d like to come through to the dining room, Hugh is waiting to meet you.”

Hugh Jameson was hard to miss. He made the solid dining chair he sat in look like something out of a doll’s house, and when he stood up to greet us he towered over Nick, who’s six foot two, and I almost had to reach up to shake his hand. Restaurant kitchens aren’t renowned for their spaciousness, and I decided that Hugh must have serious talent to make up for what was a quite significant physical disadvantage. I remembered Nick’s joke about him being called Huge Amazon, and caught his eye and realised he’d remembered it too. We only just managed not to giggle.

“Now,” said Imogen, “You’ve got your work cut out here, Hugh, because Pippa’s a chef too and she’s extremely hard to please! I’ll get a bottle of champagne sent out for you and leave you all to it.”

“Where is it you work then, Pippa?” Hugh asked as we sat down.

I told him about Guido and Thatchell’s and the television shows, and then said, “But Imogen mentioned that you used to work for Marcus Wareing. Amazing! Is he as scary as he seems on telly?”

But just as Hugh opened his mouth to tell me, Erica said, “Now, Pippa, you know it’s rude to talk shop,” as if I was about six years old. I felt myself flushing with annoyance, Hugh shut up and there was a bit of an awkward silence while the champagne was opened.

“Er. . . This is a sparkling wine from the Loire region,” Hugh said. “It’s a very popular choice with our wedding couples but of course there are many other options on the list at a range of price points, if you’d like to have a look.”

Nick said, “Do you have any with silver labels, rather than gold?”

“Nick!” I said, “Shouldn’t we be tasting the wine, not doing a design crit on the label?”

Poor Hugh. I could see him thinking that this was going to be a long afternoon.

“I have three menus to show you,” he said, “Of course we’re completely flexible and can accommodate just about anything, within reason, but these are just a few of the choices that have proved popular at the weddings we’ve hosted recently.”

He handed us each a little sheaf of printed cards.

“This looks fab,” I said. “I really like the selection of canapés on this one, and I love the idea of serving venison. And cheese toasties at midnight sound great. But then so does this one, with the monkfish. It all looks gorgeous, it’s going to be so hard to decide! I’m so glad you don’t do boring, horrible menus like something out of the seventies, with melon then supremes of chicken. I’m really looking forward to it.”

Hugh said something about how it was an honour as well as a challenge to be catering for a fellow cook, and I glowed a bit with pride, especially as he was way out of my league professionally.

Nick said, “I could have some personalised sticky labels printed to go with the design of the invitations. I’d have to do them slightly larger, so they’d cover the gold labels, or we could just soak them off, I suppose. It wouldn’t take long.”

A look of alarm crossed Hugh’s face at the idea of his hard-pressed waiting staff spending hours peeling labels off wine bottles, but he said diplomatically that he was sure the front-of-house manager would be happy to discuss whatever thoughts Nick had about serving the wine.

Then Erica said, “Now, there are a few people who have dietary preferences that we’ll have to bear in mind. I’ve made a little list.” She took a sheet of A4 paper, covered in dense print, out of her bag and smoothed it out. “My niece Deirdre has a severe nut allergy, so that rules out anything with chocolate, as well as the cherry tomato and pesto canapés and the lavender and almond-crusted lamb. My niece Alison and her husband recently converted to Islam, and understandably they object to anything containing pork being prepared at the same time as their meals. So we won’t be able to serve the Iberico ham croquettes or the monkfish, because I see that is wrapped in pancetta. But that wouldn’t be an option anyway, because my brother David has never been able to eat fish. Andrew and his wife Barbara dislike foreign food, and will only eat well-done meat, so I must ask that if we do serve venison, it’s cooked through. Although Patricia has a moral objection to eating game anyway, she feels it’s elitist and I’m inclined to agree. And of course we have quite a few children attending, and I always believe it’s wiser to keep things simple for them. It’s so important that the little ones eat a good meal at all-day events or they can get a bit fractious. And of course I’m a vegan and prefer to eat locally produced, organic food, but apart from that I’m not fussy at all.”

I gazed at her in horror. Was the menu at my wedding going to be dictated entirely by the innumerable cousins and their horrible offspring? If parents were worried about their kids slipping into hypoglycaemic comas because they were too fussy to eat perfectly normal food, why the hell couldn’t they just stop off at MacDonald’s on the way or bring bags of crisps in their handbags? Erica’s idea of locally produced food seemed to include tinned tomato soup from our corner shop. And Alison was one of the few of Nick’s cousins who I had actually met, when we’d been to her wedding just a few months ago, and they’d served a hog roast, so I took this Damascene conversion story with a pinch of salt.

As if reading my mind, Erica went on, “And of course, as a healthcare professional, I have grave concerns about the level of salt in modern diets, so I think it’s important that we keep that to a minimum across all the dishes, and don’t serve it on the tables unless it’s a low-sodium alternative.”

I drank some champagne and said mutinously, “But salt in cooking is important. I’d never serve food to a diner that wasn’t properly seasoned and the low-sodium stuff just tastes of chlorine. Don’t you agree, Hugh?”

Erica said, “It’s just a question of educating one’s palate. I find fresh herbs and lemon juice are all the seasoning I need.”

No you bloody don’t, I thought, you put mountains of raw chilli on every single thing I cook.

In spite of his height, Hugh seemed to have shrunk slightly in his chair. “We’ve won many awards for our food here at Brocklebury,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean it always has to be fancy. We can keep things very simple if you’d prefer, and we can cater for just about any dietary restriction, although it does increase the cost if we’re preparing lots of special dishes. I would recommend that, purely for practical purposes, we keep the number of off-menu choices to a minimum and focus on choosing a meal that all your guests will be able to enjoy.”

I said, “But I really liked the sound of the monkfish.”

Erica said, “Monkfish is extremely vulnerable to overfishing. I would have thought that as a chef, Pippa, you would pay more attention to choosing sustainable ingredients.”

Nick looked up from his iPad and said, “You know me, I’ll eat anything, so long as it’s not parsnips. So don’t worry about me. Look, I’ve done a rough design for the wine labels.”

I said, “Okay, fine. Venison then. But I’m not having it well done.”

Erica said, “Pippa agrees with me that the most important thing about a wedding is the bringing together of friends and family, and the sharing of a joyful day. I know you aren’t going to be selfish or unreasonable about this, and anyway you’ll be far too excited to eat much on the day, as well as watching your weight for the honeymoon.”

Hugh said, “Excuse me a moment, I’m just going to see how things are going in the kitchen,” and legged it.

I didn’t speak to Nick or Erica all the way home. I bought a copy of
Heat
at the station and read it from cover to cover, silently fuming. Nick asked if he could borrow my phone because his iPad battery was flat, and spent the journey tapping away on it. Erica closed her eyes and breathed deeply, apparently catching up on her evening meditation.

When we got home I went to bed, and opened Nick’s blog on my phone. I’d guessed right – he had been composing a post on the train, and as guilty as it made me feel, I couldn’t not see what he’d said.

So here it is, followers – the great menu reveal! It’s quite tricky because there are loads of fussy eaters in my family, which I hadn’t had a clue about until Mum told me – just as well, otherwise we would have had a load of starving guests! But because Pippa’s so creative with food, she’s suggested a menu that I reckon should go down well with all of them, and I’m sure will be delicious too. I’ll mostly be getting pissed and feeling too sick with nerves about my speech to eat, anyway! (Speaking of which, I’ve had a brilliant idea for the wine – I’m going to get some custom-designed labels printed that will fit with our colour and font choices. I’ve posted an initial layout below, and I’m really pleased with it.) But back to the food. What do you reckon to this?

Canapés:

Raw vegetable crudités with olive oil and lemon dressing

Smoked tofu in filo pastry

Home-made beetroot crisps with fresh herbs and chilli

Starters:

Tomato soup

or

Fresh melon balls

Main course:

Supreme of chicken with steamed potatoes, carrots and peas

or

Soy bean roast with steamed potatoes, carrots and peas

Dessert:

>Meringues with berry coulis

or

Fresh fruit salad

Late-night nibbles:

Mixed bean and vegetable chilli tortillas

That sounds like it’s going keep everyone happy, doesn’t it?

As had become my habit, I scrolled quickly through the comments, looking for one name. There it was, about the seven posts down. “Sounds totes mezzin! Wish I could be there. YHM, btw ;) B xx.”

That night, I had a dream that I was walking down the aisle on my wedding day, holding Dad’s arm. My hands were clutched tightly around my bouquet, but when I looked down at it, I realised I was holding a bunch of carrots, and I had no clothes on, only my strappy silver shoes. And when I looked up towards the table where the registrar was waiting, I realised that Bethany had got there first, and she was waiting in my place next to Nick. I tried to make Dad hurry up, to get to the end of the seemingly endless aisle so I could tell the registrar that there’d been a mistake, and I was here, but there seemed to be a forest of thorns in my way, and when I tried to push through them they pierced my naked skin agonisingly.

My eyes snapped open and I realised Spanx was lying on my chest, kneading me with his needle-sharp claws.

“Hello, you,” I mumbled sleepily. “That’s no way to wake your humans up on a Saturday morning, is it? Is it?” Spanx narrowed his eyes at me and cranked up the volume of his purrs. I gave him a scratch behind the ears. “And where’s Nick? What’s he doing up so early? And more to the point, where’s my morning coffee in bed?”

Spanx didn’t know, but there was a look of steely determination in his amber eyes that told me I wasn’t going to be allowed to get up for a good long time, not while I was required for duty as heated cat furniture. We rolled over and I pulled his warm furry back against my tummy and covered us both with the duvet. Spanx purred even louder, and I strained to listen for any sounds from the rest of the flat. Then I heard Nick’s voice.

“Here you go, Mum, green tea and a bowl of that worthy granola stuff you like, with oat milk.”

“Thank you, darling,” Erica said. “Now, what’s on the agenda for today?”

“Well, I thought I’d get cracking with designing the menu and order of service cards, as soon as Pippa wakes up,” he said.

“And there are the table centrepieces to do,” said Erica. “That helpful man I rang at the garden centre in Hendon had so much good advice on how to grow snowdrops in pots, I thought I might get the Tube up there later and buy some bulbs, and we can order the pots online and get them planted up before Christmas.”

“Speaking of which,” Nick said, “I need to go into town and do a bit of shopping. I’m not looking forward to braving Bond Street but it’s got to be done. And while I’m there I thought I might have a look at that shop you found that does the antique silver cake stands.”

“That’s marvellous,” Erica said. “And if I do have a spare second, I might as well pop into Selfridges and have a look at hats. Justine still hasn’t confirmed what she’s going to be wearing so I think I shall probably stick to taupe, that’s safest, isn’t it?”

“I can’t really advise on the hat front, Mum,” said Nick. “Maybe drop Callie a line if you’re not sure? But that reminds me, I need to pick up the ushers’ ties at some point. If I don’t have time this weekend I’ll make a plan to get to Saville Row at some point next week. Typical that there’s only one shop in bloody London that does the right shade of grey!”