A Groom With a View

by Sophie Ranald

  “Yep. It was a terrible line but I managed to tell her we’re getting married, after we’d been cut off about five times.”

  “And what did she say?” I felt a cold knot of anxiety in my stomach. Even though Nick and I had been together for a decade, Erica had never forgiven me for our first break-up when we were teenagers – for, as she saw it, selfishly swanning off to pursue my career in That London and thinking that my ambitions were more important than her darling boy, along with other, worse transgressions. I’m sure when she’s training Liberian nurses she’s a model of professionalism, but as soon as she sets foot on English soil Erica reverts to a sort of Stepford wife demeanour, and apparently expects me to be one too. So despite me having made compromises in my career to be with Nick, and despite me being a bloody model girlfriend in a lot of ways, still, in Erica’s eyes, I just couldn’t get it right.

  “She seems to be cool with it,” Nick said, looking down at his empty plate. “I’m sure she said she knows we’ll be very happy. It was a really bad line.”

  “She probably said she thinks the idea’s very crappy,” I said.

  Nick laughed. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that, Pip. Anyway, she did say that she’s going to be here for the wedding, and we must let her know as soon as we’ve decided on a date so she can arrange it. And she said she wants to help us pay for stuff, so, you know, you don’t have to feel we can’t have the kind of day you want.”

  When Nick’s dad died shortly after Nick moved to London, Erica sold their modest three-bedroom house for an absolute fortune, and announced that she was off to make far-flung climes better far-flung climes. She spent some time at an ashram in India and some in a Tibetan Buddhist collective in Cumbria, before deciding that her skills would be put to best use in tented hospital compounds in the middle of nowhere, rather than having massages on luxury cruise ships, which is what I’d do if I found myself suddenly loaded after slaving away in an NHS hospital for thirty years. But then, I’m not Erica.

  “Nick,” I said. “I really don’t think we need to have a massive wedding. Those magazines we were looking at last night – don’t you think some of it’s a bit, like, excessive?”

  “Oh, God, yes, of course!” he said. “That couple that hired the whole island. Crazy. And the ones that got Robbie Williams to sing for their first dance. Just nuts. I mean, Robbie Williams, for fuck’s sake. Now if it had been Radiohead, or even the Arctic Monkeys. . .”

  “Nick! It’s not about that. It’s the whole way it seems to take over people’s lives, to the exclusion of everything else. It seems like they stop being people and start being. . . just a bride and groom. Worse – a plastic bloody plastic cake topper. You know what Katharine was like, she didn’t talk about anything else for months.”

  “She was a bit tedious about it,” Nick agreed. “Speaking of which, they’ve invited us to go round there for dinner and, apparently, the official photograph viewing. I’ve said yes. It’s the Saturday after next, when they’re back from the Maldives.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “That’s exactly my point! It doesn’t even stop with the wedding, it carries on afterwards. Official photograph viewings and honeymoons that have to be at some stupid beach resort where they don’t allow gay people and keeping the bottom tier of your cake for your child’s twenty-first birthday and. . .” I stopped. Nick and I don’t really discuss children.

  “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 ou
tstretched 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: nick@digitaldrawingboard.com

  To: erica@visionforliberia.org

  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.