A Groom With a View (5 page)

“Fortunately, the bride and groom who had their wedding here yesterday left early for their honeymoon. They’re off to St Lucia.” Imogen lowered her voice confidingly. “Jenny and Greg. Such lovely people, it’s been a delight working with them for the past two years. But then all our couples are special! Now, it’s up this little spiral staircase, in the medieval turret, which is just so romantic – I think it’s my favourite room in the house! Most of our brides stay here the night before the wedding too, so you can have your getting-ready photos here, because, as you see, it’s really quite enchanting.”

Imogen held open the iron-studded wooden door, and waved us inside. The evening sun streamed in through the leaded windows, which overlooked the rose garden, sweeping green parkland, a graceful silver S of river and, in the distance, hazy blue hills. The four-poster bed was draped with chiffon curtains and covered with a white duvet as puffy as whipped cream. The free-standing bath had massage jets and mood lighting for that in-room spa experience. There was a lounge area where we could enjoy a final glass of champagne or a late-night snack before retiring for the night, because you’d be amazed how many happy couples are too excited to want more than a mouthful on the day.

“I’ll leave you two here,” Imogen murmured. “If there’s anything at all you need, just press the bell and your personal butler will be with you shortly.” And she tiptoed out, closing the door as softly and discreetly as if we actually were about to consummate our marriage.

I flopped bonelessly on the bed on my back and bounced briefly upwards before being enfolded in exquisite softness.

“I’d fucking kill for a Diet Coke,” I said.

Two hours later, I’d had my Diet Coke and a lovely long soak in the bath, making a big dent in the Molton Brown toiletries. I’d painted my nails a rather fabulous shade of mint green and straightened my hair and put on makeup and a sparkly top over my jeans, and Nick and I were sipping champagne in the drawing room while we perused the dinner menu. He kept looking up from the squashy leather folder and gazing around the room, and every time he did, he’d get this huge, excited grin on his face.

“It’s fabulous, isn’t it, Pippa? Isn’t it fabulous?” he kept asking.

“Totally fabulous,” I agreed. “I love the. . . er. . . art. Who do you think that painting’s by?”

“Turner.” Nick identified it within about a nanosecond. Although he studied graphic design and his party trick is being able to identify more than two hundred fonts on the basis of an uppercase G and a question mark, he knows lots about painting too. “And that’s a Cunningham over there, that drawing of the hare. But anyway, Pip, what do you really think? Fabulous, isn’t it?”

“Nick, it’s beautiful, it really is. I’m so excited about tasting the food. Our room’s gorgeous and you were so clever to find it.” But it doesn’t feel right, I wanted to say. It doesn’t feel like us – or not like me, anyway. I belong at the other end of places like this – behind the scenes, swearing and sweating and showing off my mad knife skills with the brigade in the kitchen. Not out here with the guests – the guests who we used to mercilessly mock for asking for their steak well done or ordering ketchup to put on their sea trout.

“We have some canapés for you to enjoy with your drinks,” said the handsome Spanish waiter, putting down a square of slate and topping up our glasses. “This is a grouse-liver bonbon, and this is a shot of celeriac velouté with a Sussex crumble crisp. Your table is ready whenever you’d like to come through to the dining room.”

I took another gulp of champagne and ate my bonbon. It was delicious. Nick watched me expectantly. “It’s lush,” I said, “that’s a technical term.” And he looked as proud as if he’d made it himself.

“And how about this? This soup stuff? And the whatchamacallit crisp?”

“Sussex crumble,” I said. “It’s a cheese. It’s gorgeous.”

“Pippa, I’m so pleased you like it,” he said. “I was really worried you wouldn’t. I was worried things wouldn’t be right.” To be fair to Nick, I do have form. He’s banned me from ever ordering steak when we go out for dinner because I send it back if it isn’t cooked right, which it hardly ever is.

“Well, they’ve got seven courses left to fuck up,” I teased him. “So shall we go through and let them get on with it?”

But they didn’t fuck up any of the courses. Everything was perfect, even the steak I insisted on having in order to put Hugh Jameson through his paces. We ate every bit of all the dishes on the tasting menu, plus the little random palate-cleansers and pre-desserts that weren’t on it. Afterwards, replete with food and drink, we went for a wander in the moonlit rose garden and watched the black swans drifting on the moat, their heads tucked under their wings. We found our way to the centre of the maze and Nick kissed me and said, “I’m so glad I’m marrying you, Pip. I still don’t know how we decided but I’m glad we did.”

I said I was the lucky one, and felt a lump in my throat because it was all so romantic and perfect, and I was being an ungrateful cow for feeling that something, somehow, wasn’t right. But I pushed aside my feelings of unease and followed Nick up the spiral staircase to the enchantingly romantic bridal suite and we made love in the four-poster bed and I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder.

The next morning was a bit of a mad scramble. I’d told Guido I was going away for the night but would be in the office by eleven o’clock, and Nick had a lunch meeting with a new client who he wanted to impress. So we gulped down the coffee and croissants that were delivered to our suite by yet another impeccably trained waiter, packed our bags and headed downstairs to arrange a taxi to the station.

Imogen was hovering in the hallway.

“Good morning!” she said. “I do hope you enjoyed your stay with us. Did you have a pleasant dinner last night?”

“Pippa’s the one to ask,” Nick said. “She’s a chef and very hard to please.”

I said it had all been absolutely wonderful. Imogen was charmingly interested about my job, and by the time I’d finished telling her where I worked and Nick had finished telling her how much he’d loved the room and admired the art, our cab had arrived.

“Anyway, thanks so much,” Nick said, picking up my bag. “It was all brilliant. I’ll send you an email this afternoon to confirm the booking and transfer over the deposit.”

I stood for a second, gawping at him. We hadn’t definitely agreed anything. Had we? “Thanks, Imogen,” I said. “We’ve had a great time. Nick will be in touch and I’ll. . . er. . . see you soon.”

Trying desperately to find the words that would tell Nick that I wasn’t sure, that despite its perfection, I wasn’t convinced that a wedding there was what I wanted, I climbed into the taxi. But before I could say anything, Nick’s mobile rang and it was a client needing to be talked through how to upgrade his content management system, and that took up most of the journey.

By the time we approached Waterloo, I’d made up my mind. I wasn’t going to be a spoiled or bratty or a bridezilla or a control freak. This was Nick’s day as well as mine, and if what he wanted was to get married at Brocklebury Manor, that was what we would do. I owed it to him, after all.

CHAPTER FIVE

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Tonight

Cool – I’ll be in the Grope & Wanker at 8. Hope all is ok. Love you.

N xx

I kissed Nick goodbye and headed for the Tube, trying to force myself to stop thinking about the wedding and my ambivalence towards the whole thing, and focus on the job in hand. Literally. It looked like I had a punishing week ahead. Thatchell’s had finally given the go-ahead to the reduced-everything ostrich lasagne, but it was just one product in the range, and Guido and I needed to give some serious thought to a pumpkin and baobab soup (whatever the hell baobab was – I’d better find a supplier sharpish and figure out what to do with the stuff, or I would find myself deeply regretting including it on a whim in our original proposal). We also had to finalise the spicing for the boerewors burgers and work out how to cut the fat content of those right down without making them like chewing on heavily seasoned MDF.

And I’d be fighting to get a decent amount of time with Guido actually in the kitchen, because as well as flying to Glasgow twice a week to supervise a new restaurant launch, he and Tamar were nailing down recipes for
Guido’s African Safari
and having loads of meetings with the production company about locations and shooting schedules.

And Erica was due to arrive on Wednesday. I felt my jaw clench just thinking about it. I’d better plan some kind of welcome dinner for her – I made a mental note to check with Nick if she was still following a strict vegan diet. Surely it would be beyond even Erica’s capabilities to buy quinoa and tofu in Monrovia? I’d call in some favours with our suppliers and see if I could get hold of some morels just in case.

I stopped at Kaffee Klatch, which is just around the corner and has been our coffee shop of choice since we moved to the area, long before it became as achingly cool and hipsterish as it is now. (I’m convinced that Kaffee Klatch has survived the influx of competitors with their chai lattes and bubble tea chiefly thanks to the caffeine requirements of the Falconi team.) Clutching a cappuccino for Guido (he always drinks cappuccino before noon and espresso after – “It’s the Italian rules! My pappa would turn in his grave if he saw you drinking espresso with breakfast!”) and a Diet Coke for myself, I buzzed open the door and let myself into the office.

“Morning!” I called, depositing Guido’s coffee on his desk and my bag on mine. Four of the five desks were empty, but Eloise, Guido’s PA, was there.

“Ssssh,” she hissed, and made a series of cryptic hand gestures involving the boardroom door, her watch and what looked like a lethal right hook.

I scooted my chair over to her and whispered: “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know,” she whispered back. “Guido, Tamar and Helen have been shut in there for the past hour. I heard loads of shouting a few minutes ago but it’s all gone quiet now.”

Helen’s the HR manager who looks after staffing across the whole group. She mostly spends her time running recruitment drives for waiters in Manchester or conducting disciplinary hearings for chefs caught snorting coke on the job and consequently her visits to the office are rare and greeted with a mixture of fascination and dread.

“Shit!” I said. Tamar’s great to work with and a fantastic cook but she can be a bit temperamental. When she joined two years ago she was going through a divorce, poor thing, and her meltdowns were absolutely epic, but things seemed to have settled down quite a lot recently, and she’d been looking really glowy and happy, so Eloise and I had been speculating that perhaps there was a new man in her life.

“I know.” Eloise was wide-eyed with the drama of it all. “Anyway, I’d better have that cappuccino and you can tell me all about the fabulous wedding venue.”

I handed the coffee over and gave her the executive summary of our night at Brocklebury Manor, including details of the food, the turret bedroom, the rose garden and the rest of it, but leaving out my deep misgivings about it all.

“It sounds amazing,” she said. “I’m so jealous. Dean and I had to make do with curling sandwiches in the local pub. You are lucky to have a rich, generous mother-in-law.”

I was about to say that if she was faced with the prospect of Erica as a mother-in-law, she’d be changing her mind about that PDQ, when we heard Tamar’s voice, raised to a near hysterical pitch, coming through the boardroom door.

“Fourteen-hour flights!” she said. “And yellow fever and malaria! I’m just not. . .” There was a soothing murmur from Helen and then we could hear nothing more.

Then Eloise’s phone rang. “Florence,” she said, and rolled her eyes. Florence is Guido’s girlfriend. They’ve been together about five years, and I have the sense that Florence is desperate for Guido to marry her and Guido is desperately resisting. There have been several occasions when Guido’s come into the office in a foul temper after one of their many rows and I’ve been convinced that this is it, Florence is going to be given her marching orders. But somehow she always persuades him to change his mind. She’s a former lingerie model and absolutely gorgeous but extremely high maintenance, and has a very annoying habit of treating all Guido’s staff like we’re her personal team of slaves. Last year I almost got roped into doing the catering for her daughter Tanith’s seventh birthday party, but I managed to invent a holiday to Portugal just in time.

“Of course, Florence,” Eloise said, “Just a pedicure or a reflexology massage as well, like you had last time? Any time on Thursday? I’ll let you know. And I rang the dentist, they say he can’t fit Tanith in next Monday but he can do half two on Wednesday or three forty-five on Friday. Friday works? Great. And I have your cardigan back from the cleaners, they say unfortunately there’s nothing they can do about a turmeric stain on cashmere. I’m really sorry.”

“I’d better get some work done,” I said regretfully, and wheeled myself back to my desk, where I switched on my PC and started googling UK sources of baobab, but it wasn’t long before I got distracted and found myself composing an email to Mick the mushroom man to ask about morel supplies. Just as I was pressing send, the boardroom door opened and Helen and Tamar emerged. Tamar had been crying. Her eye makeup was smeared all over her face, and her shoulders were hunched beneath Helen’s comforting arm. They were followed by Guido, looking about as furious as I’ve ever seen him.

“I’m going to take Tamar round the corner for a cup of tea,” Helen said. “If she’s feeling up to it, she’ll be back in the office later this afternoon. Hi Pippa, lovely to see you briefly. I’ll be in touch on email in a couple of days.”

Guido said, “Eloise, please ring Zack at Platinum Productions and postpone our four o’clock. Try and get another date in the diary ASAP, and pass on my apologies. Tell him there’s an. . .”

“Unavoidable complication?” suggested Helen.

“Yes, one of those,” said Guido grimly. “Pippa, could I see you in the boardroom for ten minutes?”

“So, Tamar’s pregnant,” I told Nick. As soon as I got back to my desk, I’d emailed him and suggested we meet in the Hope and Anchor for an emergency summit conference. He was already there when I arrived, and had ordered me a large glass of rioja. I kissed him, sank into the banquette next to him and came straight out with the news.

“She’s been having IVF with donor sperm, apparently. She never said a word about it but she’s been longing to have a baby since she left Bruce and she decided, to hell with it, she wasn’t going to piss about waiting for another man to come along, she was going to crack on with it on her own.” I took a big gulp of my wine.

“Wow, that’s really exciting for her,” Nick said. “But she won’t be going on maternity leave for, like, ages, will she?”

“No, she won’t,” I took another swig of wine and realised the glass was almost empty. “Another pint? And shall we order some food?”

“So what’s it got to do with you?” Nick asked, when I got back from the bar. “I mean, obviously you’ll have to work with a new person when she does go off to have the baby, but for now?”

“It’s
Guido’s African Safari
,” I said. “It’s being filmed in South Africa and Tamar’s flat-out refusing to go. She says she’s not willing to risk the long-haul flights, and what’s more a lot of the filming locations are in high-risk areas for malaria. Apparently the official advice is for pregnant women to stay away. Guido’s furious, but Helen says if he were to try and make her go she could claim constructive dismissal and Guido would be in court before you could say ‘indirect sex discrimination’. Not that he would, obviously, because he doesn’t treat us that way.”

“Blimey,” Nick said. “But I still don’t see what. . .”

For someone as clever as he is, Nick can be maddeningly dense sometimes. Our burgers arrived and we went through the whole, “Ketchup or mayo? Anything else you need?” conversation with the waitress.

I applied a liberal sprinkling of salt to my chips and ate one. After the low-fat, low-sodium Thatchell’s food, it tasted like heaven.

“I’m going to have to go instead,” I said. I tried to sound reluctant, but to be totally honest I was absolutely fizzing with excitement about the idea. I mean, filming for national television in an exotic location on the other side of the world and getting paid a substantial bonus for it – you so would, wouldn’t you?

“Wow!” said Nick. “Pip, that’s absolutely fantastic for you! Awesome! Congratulations.” He clinked his glass against mine. “So when do you go?”

“Well, that’s where the problem is,” I said. “The good news is it doesn’t overlap with the date of the wedding. The other good news is that I’ll be able to take lots of time off afterwards so we can have a fabulous honeymoon. But the bad news is I’ll be away for a week at the beginning of next month, then for two weeks after Christmas and I only get back three weeks before the wedding. So basically there’s going to be hardly any time between now and then when I’ll be around, and even then work is going to be totally full-on.”

“Okay.” Nick had another bite of his burger and a sip of lager. “It’s not ideal. But you know what? You took the office job with Guido so you could have a life with me instead of working nights. You didn’t buy new shoes or have a holiday for two years when I left Iain’s agency and started out on my own. You’ve sacrificed a room in the flat to be my studio. You’ve never once moaned when clients ring me at ten o’clock at night. And your career’s fucking important, Pippa. What kind of dick would I be to mind about taking on a bit more of the planning for our wedding because you’re doing something awesome that you care about, that’s going to benefit us both in the long term?”

I reached across the table and kissed him, my hair narrowly missing the ketchup. “You’re so amazing. I thought that was what you’d say. I hoped it was. But I was worried it might be a problem. It’s a hell of a lot of work, planning a wedding. Katharine says it took her five hundred hours, or something, in total.”

“Ah, but Katharine’s offered to help, remember?” said Nick. “She spent five hundred hours planning a wedding so we don’t have to. And we’ve got her USB stick holding all the secrets of the known universe, and I can rope Iain in too, and Callie will want to be involved, won’t she? And of course Mum will be here in a few days and although she needs a break from work, you know what she’s like. She’ll be scrubbing our kitchen cupboards and arranging all our books in alphabetical order within about three hours, she’ll get so bored. She’ll love helping out with it all. So don’t worry. I’ll plan the wedding and it will be the perfect day, just wait and see.”

I ate the last of my chips – the extra salty ones at the bottom of the bowl – and finished my wine. It took an absolutely mammoth effort of self-control not to say that if Erica so much as opened one of my kitchen cupboards there would be hell to pay. Because now that Nick was being so lovely and reasonable about work, and offering to singlehandedly arrange our wedding, there was no way I could complain about anything his mum did, was there? I’d just have to suck it up.

“Well, the one thing you can’t do is choose my dress,” I said. “So I’d better see if Katharine can come shopping with me.”

“If she can’t, Mum would love to,” said Nick. “She really would! She. . .”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.

It felt as if I’d barely had time to accept the terrible blow of Erica’s approaching visit, when the day of her arrival came. I made sure I left work on time, and stopped at Wholefoods to stock up on out-of-season Peruvian asparagus and avocados, three kinds of tofu, two kinds of quinoa, some sort of superfood breakfast cereal that looked like lip-liner sharpenings, dairy-free carob chocolate, spelt bread, cartons of oat and almond milk and a bottle of sulphur-free champagne. That pretty much covered all bases, I thought, lugging it all home along with the hard-won morels sourced from Mick the mushroom man at vast expense.

Nick was in his studio when I got home, but there was no sign of Erica.

“Hey, Pip,” he said. “Mum arrived safely, I met her at Heathrow this afternoon.”

“Great!” I said, thinking that she couldn’t be as exhausted as all that if she’d already gone gallivanting off somewhere.

Nick lowered his voice. “She’s asleep at the moment. She really isn’t looking well. I’ve changed the sheets on our bed for her – I’m really sorry, I forgot to mention it to you last night but I thought it would be a good idea for her to have our room, and you and I can sleep on the sofabed in here for the next couple of months. I thought you wouldn’t mind, as you’re going to be away such a lot.”

“You
what
?” I couldn’t believe it, I honestly couldn’t. So for the next three months I was going to have to knock on my own bedroom door every time I wanted a clean pair of pants, sleep with my legs under Nick’s desk, and shower in the tiny second bathroom while Erica wallowed in luxury in our en-suite. I sound horribly selfish, I know I do, but it was
our bedroom
. Our little haven where we slept and had sex and where Nick brought me breakfast in bed on Sundays.

“I thought it made sense,” said Nick, “otherwise I’d disturb her if I have to work late. You don’t mind, do you?”