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 cous
ins, 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.
“So I am overjoyed that I will be seeing you again so soon, my precious boy. Thank you for your generous offer of a bed with you and Pippa for the three months leading up to the big day! I am very much in need of a rest but I hope I can help and support you both and be a big part of all your plans.
“Love and peace, Mum.
“PS – have you heard anything from Bethany recently? What a lovely girl she was.”
One look at my face must have been enough for Nick to know what I had seen. He put our drinks on the table and sat down.
“Oh shit, Pippa, I’m sorry. I was going to. . .”
“You were going to tell me. Tell me. Do me the courtesy of telling me that you’ve invited your mother to come and stay for three months without actually asking me if I minded, and letting her wank on about how wonderful your ex is in the same breath as accepting?”
“Okay, just hear me out, please, before you go off on one.” Nick fished the teabag out of his plastic cup. “I really didn’t have any choice. Mum told me in her last email that she’s completely burned out. She’s been working ten-hour days, seven-day weeks for months now. And Vision for Liberia have basically ordered her to go home and get some rest. She said it coincided perfectly with wanting to come out anyway, and helping with the wedding, which she’s offered to pay for, remember, out of the money she made selling her house, which is why she has nowhere else to stay when she’s here.”
“Really?” I said. “I was under the impression that she had one or two nieces and nephews floating about the place. Clearly I was mistaken.”
“Pippa,” Nick reached out and squeezed my arm. “Please don’t be angry about it. I know you and Mum don’t always get on. But she’s my mother. I haven’t seen her for three years, because last time she came home we were on holiday in Greece. I can’t just say she can’t stay with us, and expect Aunt Dawn or whoever to put her up. Think how that would make her feel.”
“How do you think it makes me feel when every time I see her she makes digs at me and finds fault with everything I do, and apparently thinks I’m some kind of scarlet woman?” I demanded. “Nick, I have tried, you know I have. But she’s just vile to me. She’s been vile to me since I was eighteen.”
“She’s mellowed,” Nick said. “Honestly, she has. She’s really affectionate about you in that email. And ignore what she said about Bethany. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
If that was affection, I’d hate to see hostility. Actually, I’d seen Erica’s hostility often and knew it well. The thing is, so many of the little things she’s done to undermine me over the years have been under the guise of being helpful and supportive. Like when we went to Prague for a long weekend and Nick asked her to pop in and feed Spanx. She did, and it was very kind and generous of her, but then she took it upon herself to defrost our fridge and throw away the fresh white truffle I’d bought at Borough Market for fifty quid. And then she ‘forgot’ to return our key and I came home from work one day to find her hoovering our mattress, saying brightly that she thought she’d ‘pop in and help out with a spring-clean, since you’re obviously so busy, Pippa’. And when she sent me a copy of The Greedy Girl’s Diet for my last birthday. And the time. . . anyway, as I’ve said, I was frankly delighted when Erica decided to take herself and her organising ways off to Africa. I felt tears of anger sting my eyes.
“Pippa, I’m really sorry,” Nick said. “Can you see where this leaves me, though? What could I do?”
“You could have asked me,” I said. “Just asked.”
“And what would you have said?”
�
��I’d have said. . . I’d have said yes, for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing else I can say.”
“It’ll be fine, Pip. I promise it will. Just trust me.”
“I do trust you,” I said miserably. It was Erica I didn’t trust.
“Good,” Nick said. “And Pip? I really don’t want this wedding to be stressful for you. It’s your day. It’s not supposed to be a massive drama. So let me do my share, okay? Don’t worry about the guest list and the cousins. I’ll sort it out.”
CHAPTER FOUR
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Booking enquiry
Hi Imogen
Just to confirm our booking for Sunday night. We’ll arrive mid-afternoon, and it would be great if you could be there to show us round. I hope that’s not too much trouble.
Look forward to meeting you.
Regards
Nick
“So I’m not worrying about the guest list and the cousins,” I told Callie and Phoebe. “He’s sorting it out.”
Phoebe laughed so much she actually snorted wine out of her nose. “He’s sorting it out? What’s he going to do? Organise a badger-style cull of them? Defriend loads of them on Facebook? Demand DNA tests so he can say some of them aren’t actual cousins?”
It was a week later, we were almost three bottles of wine down, and I was ready to see the funny side of it all myself.
“Not invite anyone else?” Callie suggested. “So the only guests at your wedding will be Nick’s mum and. . . cousins? Which of them is going to be your chief bridesmaid? Normal for Norfolk cousin Deirdre?”
A Groom With a View Page 4
