A Groom With a View (3 page)

“Pippa, steady on. Are you sure you’re not overthinking this? It’s just a day, it’s just a way of celebrating us being together with the people we love. You said even Callie thinks we should make a big thing out of it.”

No, she didn’t, I wanted to say. She said I’d turn into a bridezilla wedding obsessive, because everyone does. But then I thought, Nick has a point. It’s about us, and us means him as well as me, and what if a massive wedding is what he wants? How selfish would it be of me to stop him from having one?

“So what do
you
think?” I asked. “What would you like to do?”

“Well, of course I haven’t thought about it much.” Nick was looking down at his plate again. “I wanted to discuss it with you first.”

“Bollocks!” I said. “You so have thought about it. And what have you thought?”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I have had a few ideas. I thought maybe we should have it near home, you know, where we first got together. Maybe in the New Forest somewhere. There was that wedding in
Inspired Bride
that was near there, at a stately home. It looked cool. I know you’re mad busy at work, Pip, I don’t want you to stress about it. I don’t want to be one of those men who sits on his arse and lets his fiancée do all the work, and says, ‘I don’t mind,’ when she asks about flowers and. . . er. . . stuff. I want to be involved, I want to be as much a part of it as you. That’s what I thought.”

He looked excited and a bit embarrassed, and the dimple in his cheek was disappearing then appearing again. I felt a rush of love for him.

“Callie would be pleased if we got married there,” I said. “And Mum and Dad would be too, I suppose. I haven’t spoken to them yet.” I realised I’d been avoiding telling people, avoiding anything that would make it all seem too real. “I’ll call Mum. I’ll call her this week and arrange to go round and we can tell them, and why don’t you ring that place. . . what was it called again? And see when they’ve got a free Saturday, because I bet they get booked ages in advance. It might be months away, probably a year.”

“Brocklebury Manor,” said Nick. “Actually, Pip, I emailed them today. You know, just to see what they said. And they’ve had a cancellation in February. It gives us almost four months to plan everything.”

“This is utterly ridiculous,” I complained to Nick as we made our way through the seemingly endless corridors leading to Iain and Katharine’s penthouse apartment in a converted corset factory in East London. “I mean, having a wedding photo reveal party is bad enough, but insisting that everyone wears the same outfit they wore to the wedding is just beyond bonkers. I look like a total prat in this hat.”

“I know, Pippa,” Nick adjusted the carnation in his buttonhole. “But apparently Katharine cried when she realised she wasn’t going to get to wear her wedding dress again, and then she had the idea of asking everyone else to wear their wedding kit so she could. Iain’s none too pleased about it either.”

I could imagine that, just as I could imagine Iain having had very little say in the matter. I’ve always known that Katharine’s girly demeanour conceals a will of iron.

We tapped the polished steel knocker and Iain opened the front door a second later, red in the face beneath his top hat.

“Glad you could come,” he said, a bit sullenly, knocking my own hat askew as he tried to kiss me, and clapping Nick on the back. “Come and have a drink. Katharine’s made those cinnamon mojitos you liked so much, or there’s fizz, and we got the caterers who did the wedding to recreate the canapés. Grub’s through in the dining room.”

I caught Nick’s eye and tried not to giggle, but he was looking surprisingly serious. Perhaps it was the memory of the cinnamon mojitos.

Walking into Iain and Katharine’s living room felt totally surreal. Looking like aliens who’d just landed in the setting of face-brick walls, tank of tropical fish and exposed steel girders were about twenty of their erstwhile wedding guests, the women in floaty frocks and big hats, and the men in morning suits. Katharine herself was holding court at the centre of the group in her sequinned flapper-style wedding dress, complete with veil, bead-encrusted headband and even a bouquet.

“It was just the most special day of my life,” she burbled, sipping champagne. “And we’ve been so excited about getting the photographs back and reliving it all. So when Iain suggested that we ask a few of our closest friends to share the moment with us – well, what could I say?”

A glance at Iain’s stony face told me that he’d suggested nothing of the kind.

“Thanks, mate.” Nick took a cocktail and passed me a glass of champagne from Iain’s outstretched tray. “Look, I know this is probably not the best time, but I wanted to tell you. . . To ask you. . . Pippa and I are engaged. Would you mind. . .?”

Iain enveloped us both in a bear hug, spilling quite a bit of cinnamon mojito down my front.

“Finally!” he said. “I thought you two would never get around to it. Congratulations. I’d be honoured to be your best man.” And, bless him, he actually had to blow his nose on his pocket square.

“Just remember, word to the wise,” he went on, lowering his voice, “It’s just one day. It’s very, very easy to get carried away, if you see what I mean? Especially the ladies.”

Before I could object to this ridiculously sexist observation, he’d called Katharine over to join our little group. “Darling, Nick and Pippa have fabulous news! They’re finally getting around to tying the knot, in. . . when did you say it was?”

“February,” said Nick.

“Oooh, fabulous!” Katharine made ‘Mwah, mwah’ noises at us. “Congratulations! And more than a year to go – that’s plenty of time to get everything organised absolutely perfectly.”

“Actually,” I said, “We were thinking more of this coming February. Like, the one after December and January?”

Katharine’s excited face fell into a look of horror. “
This
February?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “We want to keep it all quite simple really, and Nick’s seen a potential venue that’s had a cancellation, and. . .”

“Right,” Katharine said. “Congratulations! Personally I think you’re quite mad to try and arrange a wedding in three and a half months, but I expect it can be done. . . Come with me.”

She took my arm in a vice-like grip and marched me off to their bedroom. I cast a ‘rescue me’ glance over my shoulder at Nick, but he was listening intently to what Iain was saying.

“I love weddings. Love them! In fact I’m thinking of doing some wedding planning for friends in my spare time and maybe making a career out of it later on, when we have children. So I’d be thrilled to have you as my guinea pig,” Katharine said, with what I suppose was meant to come out as a sisterly giggle, but sounded more like a demented cackle to me.

“Katharine, that’s absolutely lovely of you,” I said feebly. “But really, we want to keep things very low-key. It’s sweet of you to. . .”

“Don’t mention it. I would like nothing better than to help. Being part of another person’s special day is a pleasure, it’s a privilege! Now, the first thing you need is my master USB stick.”

She powered up her laptop and inserted a removable storage device. “This baby holds all the secrets to your perfect day,” she said. “For a year I took it everywhere with me. Everywhere! If I saw a shop window display that captured my imagination, I’d take a photo and save it on here in the ‘Inspiration’ folder. All my quotes are here, under ‘Finance’. And of course everything feeds into the master spreadsheet, which has pages for the week-by-week and day-by-day countdown, with automatic reminders set to be sent to Iain’s, his brother’s, my maid of honour’s and of course my own phone.”

“That’s very, er, impressive,” I said.

“Impressive? Pippa, it’s
essential
. Absolutely essential, if you don’t want your big day to disintegrate into chaos. Now, let’s have a look at my contacts file – that’s the first thing you’ll need because a lot of these people will have been booked up for several months already. You may find yourself having to resort to my B- or even C-list suppliers, but of course even they were thoroughly vetted and you never know, for a February wedding, so long as it’s not actually the fourteenth, some of the A-list might even be free.”

I tried hard not to tune her out. This was important stuff, presumably, if Nick and I were to be saved from wedding disaster.

“It’s all alphabetised,” she said. “Accessories, bouquets, cakes, dance instructors, evening entertainment, fireworks, groom’s outfits, horse-drawn carriages. . .”

“Wow,” I said, interrupting because she looked all set to continue through the remainder of the alphabet. “And where did you find your dress, in the end? It’s beautiful.”

“That’s the fun part.” she clasped her hands. “The dresses! I had to password-protect this folder so Iain couldn’t hack into it and access my secrets.” She scrolled through image after image of almost identical beaded frocks. “Of course, with so little time you may have to go for off-the-peg, but we can give Marissa Beaumont a call and see if there’s any way at all she could squeeze you in. She was my second-choice designer, if Sarah Burton hadn’t been available.”

I looked at Katharine’s dress. It was gorgeous, the bodice stiff and heavy with sparkly embellishment, the skirt floating in a layers of ethereal chiffon petals. I’m not exactly the world’s most skilled seamstress (in fact the last time I tried to sew on a button I was trying to watch
Breaking Bad
at the same time, and ended up sewing it and the shirt to the arm of the sofa) and I had no idea how long it takes to make a dress. There were an awful lot of beads on Katharine’s, but they wouldn’t have to be sewn on one at a time, surely? And four
months
? I took a sip of champagne.

“Katharine,” I said. My voice came out a bit croaky, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Katharine, how long did all this actually take you?”

She gave her light, tinkling laugh again. It sounded a bit like other day at work, when Guido dropped a stack of roasting tins on to the kitchen floor.

“Iain proposed to me on the first of September, two years ago. Of course I’d already made some plans before then,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “Don’t pretend you haven’t, it’s just between us girls! But after that, it took us a few months to find our venue, exploring different places most weekends. Then things got really quiet for a while, and I only spent maybe a day a week researching things and writing my wedding blog – there’s a link to it here – before the dress fittings and the other final preparations started to kick in a year or so ago. But you don’t have anything like as long as I did, so it will all be much more intense.”

Much more intense? Jesus! What had I let myself in for?

“One thing I will advise.” Katharine wagged a manicured finger at me. “Don’t let it take over your relationship! Remember, your hubby-to-be is the most important person in your life. Even more important than your dress designer! I made a rule not to mention the wedding to Iain one day a week – Thursday was my day, because I have a regular breakfast meeting and Iain plays squash in the evenings and we don’t actually see each other anyway, so it wasn’t as hard as I expected. We also made Tuesdays our date nights. I’d cook us a special low-cal dinner and we’d have a glass of bubbly and then it was time for nookie. You know what men are like – that’s the best way to keep them sweet. If there was anything particularly expensive I wanted for the wedding, I’d be sure to raise the subject on. . . Tuesday,” she finished triumphantly.

“Right,” I said. “Date nights. What a lovely idea.”

“And while we’re on the subject,” said Katharine (and I thought, no, please, please get off the subject), “You might want to think of a sex diet before the big day.”

I let out an involuntary shriek of laughter. “A what diet?”

“Sex diet. No nookie for six weeks before the wedding. Iain grumbled about it at the time, but it was so worth it. It made our wedding night much more magical in that way. Almost like the first time.”

As far as I could tell, the only possible consequences of that for us would be Nick wanking himself into an early grave, or things on the wedding night coming to a disappointingly premature conclusion. But I said, “Thanks for sharing that with me, Katharine. That’s really interesting and special. I’ll keep it in mind. Now what about shoes?” I might be a bit of a dead loss when it comes to flowers and stuff, but there’s nothing I like better than a good long chat about shoes.

Just as Katharine was about to open the folder entitled ‘Shoe inspiration’ (I could see that it contained more than two hundred files and I was leaning forward eagerly for a look), Iain stuck his head round the door.

“Come on, ladies,” he said. “Tear yourselves away from the wedding master plan! We’re about ready to see the photos and the video.”

Katharine ejected the USB stick and pressed it into my hand, actually squeezing my fingers shut around it. “Guard. This. With. Your. Life,” she said.

CHAPTER THREE

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Plans

Hi Mum

Well, tomorrow we’re off to see Pippa’s folks and break the news. Can’t help feeling a bit nervous about it! Am I meant to ask Gerard’s permission, or do we just jump right in and tell them it’s a done deal, or what? And next weekend we’re going to check out a venue, a posh country house hotel. Hopefully Pippa will like it as much as I do from looking at the photos. I’m attaching a link and I can’t wait to hear what you think. It’s all starting to feel very real now – bet you never thought you’d see me settling down at last! Great that you might be able to come out for a bit longer before the wedding – it sounds like you could do with a break, and I miss you, you know.

Love

Nick

One of the first things I get asked when I tell people I cook for a living is, “Did you learn from your mum?” My reply is generally, “Well, I learned how
not
to cook.” Mum’s motto in the kitchen is that if you put nice things into food, the end result will be nice too, and to some extent this is true. But then she does tend to get a bit carried away and add rather too many nice things, or forget she’s got something in the oven because she’s catching up with
The Archers
omnibus or dead-heading the camellias.

As a child I was treated to many birthday cakes that tasted like the aftermath of a house fire, in spite of having had the burned bits scraped off into the sink and the whole thing thickly coated in lurid buttercream. And then there was the time she read an article about the importance of umami and decided a jar of anchovies would make a brilliant addition to spag bol. So Sunday lunches chez Martin tend to be a bit hit and miss, which is why Nick and I bought bacon croissants at Delice de France to eat on our way down to see my parents and deliver our good news.

Not that I care what they give us to eat. As we walked hand in hand from the station to the house where I grew up, I could feel a deep sense of peace descending over me, and I know this is going to sound a bit fanciful and silly, but the closer we got, the more intense it became. By the time we pushed open the garden gate and I could smell the roses and phlox that were blooming in wild profusion, even though it was almost November (since Mum and Dad retired from academia, they’ve gone completely gardening-crazy, along with discovering amateur dramatics. Their garden is a thing of beauty and the plays put on by the Westbourne Thespians are staggeringly awful), I could feel a huge, happy smile plastering itself on my face. I love coming home.

“Hello, darling,” Mum met us at the front door, wearing ancient jeans and a checked shirt that I remembered giving Dad about fifteen Christmases ago. Despite her shabby clothes, her hair and her make-up were perfect as always, and she smelled deliciously of Chanel Number 5 when she hugged me. “Hello, Nick dear. Come in and have a drink. Your father’s tidying the shed, he promised he’d be in soon but perhaps you could go and hurry him along while Pippa helps me with lunch. I thought I’d put some beetroots into the stew but they seem awfully hard, and I’m afraid the lamb’s a bit tough too. It’s the most extraordinary colour though, quite dramatic.

“Did I tell you I’m playing Gertrude?” she went on. “It’s our first attempt at Shakespeare and I think perhaps
Hamlet
was a tiny bit ambitious. Stanley, the director, has cut ever so many lines but it’s still over three hours long and you know how restive audiences can get when they want to go to the loo and have a drink.”

I shuddered inwardly at the thought of the hours that lay in my future watching the Westbourne Thespians transform the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark into farce. “That’s brilliant, Mum, you must be really proud! If it’s too long surely they can just cut more?”

“You’d think so,” she said, “but Dominic Baker is playing the lead and he’s really rather good and gets cross if too many of his lines are taken out. So it may end up being one long soliloquy. But how are you, darling? How’s work? What shall we do about this lamb?”

As I attempted a rescue job on lunch and Mum opened a bottle of Riesling, I told her all about Guido and Zelda and the ostrich lasagne, and she laughed. She loves hearing my stories about Falconi’s. If my parents were disappointed to have a daughter who only just scraped through three A-levels in Food Technology, Creative Writing and French and was clearly never destined to become a mathematician like Mum or a chemist like Dad, they’ve hidden it really well.

They’ve always loved Nick, too, ever since he became my First Proper Boyfriend when I was sixteen. By the time I met him, I’d had a few unsatisfactory fumbles at parties and three disastrous dates with Kevin Popplewell, culminating in us going to see
What Lies Beneath
and him pressing my fingers into his lap and urging me to discover what lay beneath the zip of his jeans. Two minutes later he’d spunked all over my hand and I’d stormed out into the night. I still can’t see Michelle Pfeiffer’s face without wanting to reach for the antibacterial gel.

Anyway, it was a Saturday night and Callie and I were made up to have been invited to Suze Pickford’s birthday party. Suze was one of the most popular girls in our year and was rumoured to have a hot older brother who played in a band, so she was way out of our league. However, she’d been at Tabitha Smith’s party two weeks before, and I had increased my standing amongst our peer group hugely by making a batch of hash brownies that were not only lethal but actually tasted quite good. So I, together with Callie and a batch of Nigella’s finest, liberally laced with weed, had cracked the nod.

Even at sixteen, I knew I was never going to achieve the long-limbed, silky-haired look that was all the rage at the time (thanks for demolishing any confidence I might have had in my appearance as a teenager, cast of
Friends
). I was short and hourglass-shaped, with dark brown hair that would occasionally, for no apparent reason, decide to fall into soft, loose natural curls, but was a mop of frizz the rest of the time. Mum always said I should value my best features, my clear skin and greeny-blue eyes, but at five foot two, all any potential boyfriends got to see of me was the top of my head. So I enlisted Callie’s help to prepare me for Suze’s party.

We’d done our nails and fake tan the night before. Then it had taken Callie three hours to blowdry my hair straight, in those dark days before GHDs, and we’d both slicked on masses of wet-look lip gloss. As soon as we were out of sight of my parents’ house, we pulled down our jeans so our sparkly thongs and my muffin-top showed at the back, and teetered onwards on our platform flip-flops. But within a few seconds of arriving, we realised we’d got it terribly wrong.

The prevailing aesthetic among Suze’s friends was more Manic Street Preachers than Steps, and we stood out like deeply uncool, French manicured sore thumbs from the black-clad, smudgy-eyelinered crowd. Humbly, I handed over the hash brownies – our only ticket to any sort of credibility – and we armed ourselves with bottles of warm Smirnoff Ice and tried to look like we belonged.

Callie, of course, had a not-so-secret weapon: her fantastic figure and blonde hair were enough to guarantee that she’d pull, dodgy lip gloss or no dodgy lip gloss, and within about half an hour she was wrapped round Dwayne Roberts on the dance floor, the two of them kissing passionately as they locked pelvises to U2. I leaned despondently against the wall and wondered whether to go and look for another Smirnoff Ice, go and find a bathroom and confirm that my hair was frizzing up again, or head home – I’d already had four drinks in quick succession and was feeling light-headed and furry-toothed.

I’d actually decided to interrupt Callie’s snog to tell her I was abandoning her (yes, I was as much of a loser as I sound when I was a teenager), when I got the sense I was being watched. I looked up and there, on the other side of the room, was the boy I realised must be Suze’s big brother. He had the same ice-grey eyes as her and the same air of effortless cool. He had shaggy dark hair. He was wearing camo trousers and a faded Iron Maiden T-shirt and smoking a fag. And looking at me. And smiling.

I felt myself start to blush, and pretended to inspect my fingernails intently. But when I glanced up again, he was coming towards me.

He didn’t say anything for a bit – not that I would have heard anyway, the music was deafening. But he handed me another drink – a cold one – and stood next to me, and straight away I felt less stupid and out of place. When the music stopped, he smiled again and said, “So, what brings you here?”

I must have been emboldened by alcopops, because instead of staring at my shoes and blushing and stammering something about how I’d come with my mate, that was her over there, the hot one, I looked up at him and said, “I came to meet you.”

And that was how it began. For the rest of that night Nick and I talked and danced together. He took my number, and two days later he called and asked me out, and for the next two years we were inseparable, an item, Nick and Pippa, Pippa and Nick. And now we were going to be Mr and Mrs Pickford. Or rather, Mr Pickford and Ms Martin.

“So, that went well,” said Nick as we boarded the train home. And it had, as I’d known it would. My parents were thrilled, in their slightly muddle-headed way. Mum recited ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment’, and Dad insisted that Nick smoke one of his special-occasion cigars. Nick was still looking faintly green, although that may just have been the after-effects of Mum’s salted caramel chocolate pudding, which was a bit heavy on the salt – I was feeling rather thirsty myself.

“I knew it would,” I said. “They’re pretty chilled out generally and they’ve always loved you to bits. They’ll be cool about the wedding anyway – they won’t try and take over and invite loads of distant relatives I’ve never met. Speaking of which. . .”

Although Nick doesn’t have brothers or sisters apart from Suze, who’s married and lives in Melbourne, Erica, his mum, is one of eleven siblings. Consequently Nick has an absolute plague of cousins, and they all have wives and husbands and children and even grandchildren, and their name is legion. Seriously, if you ever find yourself in need of a cousin or twelve, Nick’s your man. He’ll never get through them all.

“We’re going to have to talk about who we’re going to invite, at some stage,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to rush into asking people but if we at least have an idea of who we want to be there. . .”

“I’m on it,” said Nick. “Remember, I did a spreadsheet?” He took out his iPad and tapped away at the screen for a bit. “Here’s where I got to. There are three hundred names so far. I’ve put them in categories to make it easier: friends, family, work people, other.”

“What’s ‘other’?” I said. “Why on earth do we want anyone at our wedding who isn’t a friend, family or a colleague?”

“Won’t your parents want to invite some of their friends?”

“Er. . . no, I don’t think so. And if they did I’d tell them they couldn’t. Why would we want their friends at our wedding? And why would their friends want to come when they haven’t even seen me since I was sixteen? Or distant relatives, for that matter. Not that I have any of those, thank God.”

“I have no idea, Pippa. But apparently people do invite their whole family and their parents’ friends as well. Mum says. . .”

I started to feel all prickly and defensive, the way I get whenever Nick mentions Erica. “She says what?”

“Hold on, I’ll find her email,” said Nick. “She sent it the other day. Here you go, just that paragraph there.” He pushed the iPad across the narrow train table towards me.

“You’re in my thoughts and in my meditation all the time,” I read. “And in all the excitement of planning this important day, there is something I would like you to keep in your thoughts, too. A wedding is about more than the frock and the flowers – although I know Pippa will have exciting plans for those.”

“I haven’t even thought about the fucking flowers,” I snapped at Nick. “What did you tell her?”

He laughed. “Steady on, Pip, I didn’t tell her anything. She’s just making assumptions. You know what she’s like.”

“Right,” I said. “Still, though, it’s a bloody cheek that she thinks. . .” I caught Nick’s eye and shut up. I hate slagging off his mother, and I know he hates me doing it, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. “Sorry.”

I carried on reading. “A wedding is, first and foremost, about the wider community. One day, if Pippa is not too focused on her career to give you children, you will understand that it takes a village to raise a child; for now, please trust my wisdom in the matter. And remember, if you can, how special Susannah and Dylan’s wedding was: a true celebration of family love.”

I remember Suze’s wedding well. Suze and her mother didn’t speak for weeks before it. Dylan was so stressed out by the whole thing that he started making plans to emigrate the minute they got back from honeymoon. And on the day, everywhere you looked, were dozens of cousins.

“If she thinks we’re going to have her entire bloody family. . .” I stopped myself and took a breath. “I’m honestly not sure it would work to have that many people at the wedding, Nick. Three hundred is loads. I haven’t even met all your cousins and it’s not like you ever really see them.”

“I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,” Nick said. “Would you like anything? Diet Coke?”

Nick can be maddeningly evasive when we’re arguing, especially, I’ve noticed, if I’m in the right. But I did need to calm down a bit and I was still suffering from low-grade salt poisoning after Mum’s dessert. “I’d love one,” I said. “Thanks.”

Nick swayed off down the carriage and I turned my attention back to his iPad, trying to breathe myself into a state of Zen calm as I reread Erica’s email. She was just a woman with a strong sense of family values, I told myself. She just wanted the best for her son. But I couldn’t help waves of resentment crashing over me as I read.

“I know you won’t lose sight of the preciousness of family bonds when you are planning this day,” Erica had written. “Alongside my spirituality, the ties that bind me to my family are the most precious thing in the world to me. Which is why it has been so hard for me to answer the call of duty that has kept me so far away from the people I love best for so many years.” Utter bollocks, I thought, she couldn’t wait to get on a flight to India when Nick’s dad died.