A Groom With a View (25 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When Erica packed her bags to go back to Africa, I sneaked a cheque into her luggage to pay her back for everything she’d spent on the wedding. I would have thought that the post out in Liberia would be poor to non-existent, but evidently it’s better than I expected, because a couple of weeks later the cheque arrived back through our letterbox in a padded envelope with a jar of brick-red sludge and a note.

Dear Pippa

Thank you for this gesture. I can completely understand why you felt you had to make it, but I must decline it. Please use the money to buy yourself something you will enjoy, or treat yourself and Nick to a special holiday. You deserve it, and you also deserve an apology from me.

So here it is: I’m sorry for the way I behaved all those years ago, and for not welcoming you into our family as I should have. You make Nick very happy, and his happiness and yours is the most important thing in the world to me.

I’m also enclosing a jar of Liberian pepper sauce. This is the extra-hot blend. The woman in the shop told me she puts it on her mother-in-law’s food when she visits. Let me know what you think of it.

Love

Erica

A couple of days later, I emailed her to let her know that the sauce was delicious, and that I’d sent the money by electronic transfer as a donation to Vision for Liberia. I was extremely tempted to end the email, “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.” But I didn’t. She’d extended the hand of friendship, and I wanted her to know I’d taken it.

That week, I told Guido I wasn’t going to accept the job in Dubai. He said he was sorry but not surprised, and advertised the job in
Caterer and Hotelkeeper
. Loads of people applied, but Hugh Jameson got the gig. I saw him when he came to the office to sign the contract, and he told me he’d had it up to here with the unreasonable demands of fussy wedding parties at Brocklebury Manor.

Then he went absolutely scarlet and said, “Present company excepted, of course.” But we both knew he was just being polite.

Preparations for the opening of Falconi Dubai are going well, Eloise says, but the last time I met her for lunch, she told me Guido has had other things on his mind. She’s not quite sure when it started, but now Guido and Tamar are officially an item. There was even a picture of them together in the
Daily Mail
sidebar of shame the other day, with her apparently ‘flaunting her baby bump’ and much speculation about whether Guido was the father. The same day, there was a photo of Florence, ‘Falconi’s scorned ex’, in Regent’s Park with her personal trainer, alongside some gratuitously catty remarks about her muffin top and speculation that she’s going to be releasing a workout DVD.

Coulson Creative didn’t win the pitch for the Zweep business, in spite of Nick’s awesome design work. It was terrible news for Iain. He’s had to sell the Shoreditch penthouse, and he and Katharine have moved into a rented house in Stoke Newington.

Katharine’s baby is due in June. She and I have become much closer – although Callie is still my best friend, I don’t mind any more that Phoebe is hers. When we met the other day for coffee, Katharine asked me if I’d be a godmother. I reminded her that I’m crap with babies, and she gave me a secret little smile and said, “You won’t be crap with mine.”

Her pregnancy has done a weird thing to Iain. Whenever Nick suggests meeting up for a drink, he says no, because he wants to get home early. He’s even talking about jacking the agency in once Katharine goes back to work, and being a full-time father. Katharine says she’s never been so happy in all her life. Nick and I think maybe it’s possible for people to change.

Callie has been made a partner at the law firm where she works, so Khan Clarke Gardner is now Khan Clarke Travis. Phoebe’s mum and dad have separated, but it’s all been as amicable as it could have been, under the circumstances. Vernon has moved to a fourth-floor flat in a building with no lift, and apparently he says carrying shopping up the stairs is playing havoc with his back. He asked Phoebe if she could take him to the supermarket and help him carry it, but instead Phoebe gave him a fifteen percent discount code for Ocado.

The Westbourne Thespians are doing
Oliver!
this summer, and Mum’s been having singing lessons for her role as Mrs Bedwin. I may not have got my cooking talent from her, but I definitely blame her for my total lack of musical ability, so the show looks like being a classic of its kind. Apparently the opening night is a sell-out already. Mum also told me that she and Dad had accepted an invitation to tea with the Alcocks, their arch-rivals in the best-kept garden competition. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” she said darkly. This struck me as good advice, so I sent Bethany a friend request on Facebook, and she accepted.

It’s a strange thing, but after spending an hour or so obsessively looking through her photo albums and scrutinising her status updates, I began to feel quite differently about Bethany. She was no less tousled, blonde and cool, but she was also a normal girl. A girl whose slightly crooked front teeth showed when she smiled. A girl whose new boots got soaked when she stepped in a puddle on the way to work, and leaked. A girl who got Cersei in the ‘Which
Game of Thrones
character are you?’ quiz, same as me. I don’t know if we’ll ever meet in real life, but I have a feeling that if we do, we might not be enemies after all.

The other day, I was watching
MasterChef South Africa
on the Food Network, and there was a dining scene with a big group of guests eating barbequed fillet steak under the stars. The camera zoomed in on one of them, just as he was cramming a huge forkful of meat into his mouth. It was Gabriel. I expected to feel swamped with mortification at the sight of him, but I didn’t – I just laughed.

And Nick and I?

We got married last week. I put on my beautiful dress and my wedding shoes, and we walked down to Southwark Register Office and said our vows with Callie and Phoebe as witnesses. Afterwards we all went to the Hope and Anchor for a few pints, and then Nick and I went home and ate takeaway pizza in bed with Spanx and his friend, The Amazing Archibald’s stuffed bunny. Spanx and the bunny are inseparable – he carries it around with him in his mouth, which is extremely cute and also means our underwear mostly stays in the drawer where it belongs.

I’ve been making the pilot episode of
Pippa’s Plates
with Zack and the guys at Platinum. Working with kids was downright terrifying at first, but I’m liking it more and more, and they seem to like me. The other day I was showing a group of six-year-olds how to make pizza dough, and there was one little boy with dark hair and a dimple in his cheek, and in a certain light it was easy to imagine how a child of Nick’s might look, one day. When I told Zack I’d got married, he was thrilled, and announced that I’ll be billed as Pippa Pickford. Apparently it’s more memorable than Pippa Martin. Nick is trying very hard not to gloat about this.

All in all, we couldn’t be happier. But there’s one thing we can’t quite agree on. Erica doesn’t know yet that we’re married, and one of us is going to have to tell her.

Acknowledgements

When I started writing
A Groom with a View
, I’d just spent a weekend away with seventeen women I am incredibly fortunate to have as friends. We were celebrating the anniversary of the second Tuesday in November 2003, when a group of us first met up to drink wine, gossip and talk about books.

Since then, we’ve been through marriages, divorces, births, deaths and innumerable traumas ranging from horrific mothers-in-law to what to serve the vegan who’s coming for dinner. My book club friends have enriched my life so much: they are all beautiful, brilliant and inspiring, and I’m honoured to be part of their circle of fabulousness.

So I hope they will forgive me for shamelessly scavenging their lives to use in this book. I hope the snippets I’ve sneaked in make my readers laugh even a fraction as much as I have over the years.

Special thanks to the eagle-eyed Catherine Baigent, who proofread this book to within an inch of its life and improved it so much. Any remaining errors are definitely mine.

My wonderful agent Peta Nightingale has been unstintingly generous with her knowledge, wisdom and commercial nous since I first embarked on the terrifying journey of publication. Without her and her colleagues at LAW, this book would never have been written, and certainly not read. Thank you.

I am over the moon with the gorgeous cover of
A Groom with a View
. Thanks to Tash Webber for her stunning design work.

Finally, always, thanks to my partner Hopi, light of my life, who makes me happy every day and tells me to get a grip when I need one. I love you.