A Groom With a View

by Sophie Ranald

  “Hello, Erica, how lovely to see you. Did you have an okay flight?”

  “Hello, Pippa. Don’t you look well? You’ve put on weight, haven’t you?” she said. “My, but this flat is cold! I do find it difficult to be comfortable in a cold place.”

  “I expect it’s having come from a hot climate,” I said. “I’ll turn up the heating.”

  “You’ll feel warmer when you’ve eaten, Mum,” Nick said. “Pippa’s made a wonderful welcome dinner.”

  So I thought. But apparently I had forgotten (and Nick, who’d lived with the woman for the first eighteen years of his life, had never known) that Erica had a severe allergy to mushrooms, so my filo parcels went down like a bucket of cold sick. Erica scrutinised the sumac salad suspiciously and then said, “In cold weather, I always find that what I really fancy is some soup. Isn’t it funny the things you miss most when you’re away from home for a long time? For me, it’s Campbells tomato soup! I’m sure you’ve got some, haven’t you? It was always Nick’s favourite treat growing up.”

  In all the time I’ve known him, I have never known Nick to even mention tinned soup.

  “There’s some homemade tomato and basil soup in the freezer,” I said. “We could warm it up if you like?”

  “Oh, no, Pippa, I don’t want you to go to any trouble! I’d be quite happy with a tin, but if you haven’t got any. . .”

  So of course Nick went out to the corner shop and bought up their entire supply of Campbell’s Cream of Tomato and Erica happily slurped some down in spite of it being absolutely packed with cow’s milk and gluten. And then when I offered her some of the avocado chocolate mousse she said, “Thank you, Pippa, I’ve had quite enough. You do have to watch your figure at my age! But you must understand the importance of that, of course, working with food all the time.”

  And I remembered her earlier comment about my weight and had to say I wouldn’t have any pudding either, actually, and watch Nick scoff the lot of it. He said it was really good, too.

  That night in the too-narrow-for-two sofabed, made even narrower by Spanx, who settled down sideways between us and stretched out to his full length, I downloaded an event countdown app on to my phone. It was clearly designed for weddings, with lots of animated bells and doves and things, but I set it up to keep track of the days remaining until Erica went back to Liberia. Okay, that happened to be two days after our wedding day, but I knew which event I was looking forward to more.

  CHAPTER SIX

  From: nick@digitaldrawingboard.com

  To: caroline.travis@khanclarkegardner.co.uk

  Subject: Friday

  Hey Callie

  Hope all’s good with you. This is a very cheeky request so please say no if it’s a problem. Pip and I arranged to go down to Brocklebury Manor for an initial chat about colour schemes etc on Friday afternoon. We were meeting Imogen, the events manager, at 4.30pm. But now Pip’s got to go dress shopping on Wednesday and she says there’s no way she can do two afternoons off work in one week (I don’t know if she’s told you about the South Africa trip she’s got coming up? It’s going to be amazing but take up loads of her time, and she’s mega-stressed as it is). Anyway she says I’m the one who knows about design and she’s happy to leave all that stuff up to me. But I don’t want to screw it up! Any chance you could come along in your capacity as Best Woman and stop me having a rush of blood to the head and saying I want blue and white stripes on everything to match the QPR strip, or something?

  No bother if you can’t make it, but I’ll be pathetically grateful if you can!

  Nick x

  “But there must be a particular style you had in mind,” Katharine said, sipping her latte. I hoped she wasn’t regretting her kind offer to take an afternoon off work to come wedding dress-shopping – so far she had managed to elicit very little meaningful information from me.

  “I don’t know!” I squirmed in my chair. “It’s so difficult. All the dresses I’ve seen in magazines and on Pinterest are so. . . I don’t know. Bridal.”

  “But Pippa, you’re going to be a bride! What kind of dress do you expect to wear? Business casual? Sexy zombie?”

  I laughed. “I know, I’m being stupid. I suppose I never imagined needing to buy a wedding dress. Until recently I thought that if I ever got married – which we weren’t going to, remember – I’d be in my jeans down the pub or maybe in a bikini on a beach somewhere. But I don’t think that would go down so well at Brocklebury Manor. Maybe when I see The One, I’ll know.”

  “If only you had a bit more time, we could have gone for something bespoke,” Katharine sighed. “But it is what it is. You’ll find something gorgeous, just you wait and see. And they’re very good on trend-led stuff at Bliss Bridal, they won’t put you in a meringue. Now, we’d better get going, our appointment is in twenty minutes.”

  Call me naive, but I genuinely hadn’t realised that you had to make an appointment to try on wedding dresses, as if you were viewing a house or something. I’d assumed you just turned up at a shop, tried stuff on, and if you saw something you liked, you bought it. Like, you know, buying a dress. But Katharine soon set me straight when I called her to request moral support. She’d also given me a stern talking-to about how I must make sure to wear a strapless bra and nude-coloured pants, do my makeup and put my hair up, and then she’d secured us an appointment to view. . . sorry, try on dresses at Bliss Bridal.

  “They’ve got a really good range of off-the-peg styles and they do super-fast alterations,” Katharine went on, as we hurried down South Molton Street. “My friend Linda got her dress from there and she’s five foot eleven and a size six so she really struggles to find clothes that fit. You’re a much easier shape.”

  I found it hard to summon up any sympathy for Linda, because frankly hers was a first-world problem if ever there was one. All my life I’ve struggled with jeans that make my arse look the size of Belgium, tops that look fine on the hanger but reveal an indecent amount of cleavage on me, and skirts that are supposed to be elegantly on-the-knee but hit me unflatteringly at the widest part of my calves. Which is why my fashion purchases are sparse at best and tend to centre around nail polish and shoes.

  “Here we are.” Katharine pushed open the heavy glass door, which had an ornamental gold handle shaped like a B. It was like walking into a posh hotel – there was a vast, glittering chandelier, acres of marble tiles and gold brocade chaise-longues dotted about. And wedding dresses, of course. Loads of them, in heavy plastic covers on rails and on an assortment of uniformly tall, thin mannequins.

  Katharine accosted a tall, thin woman in a tailored black dress. “Hello, we’ve got an appointment for Pippa Martin.”

  “Let me see.” She swiped her tablet to life and tapped the screen. “Yes, we’re expecting you. Welcome to Bliss Bridal! Chelsea is your consultant today. If you’d like to come over here and have a seat, I’ll get you a glass of sparkling wine and let her know you’re here.”

  We sat for a bit and watched as girls, accompanied by the sales assistants – sorry, consultants – and their mums or their friends, approached the huge, curtained fitting rooms. It was weird to see the transformation that took place in all of them. They’d go into the cubicles in their jeans and boots, looking completely normal, and when they emerged, they were brides. Whether the dresses were white or ivory, straight or meringue-like; whether the girls’ faces looked happy and excited or anxious and cross, they were all, quite suddenly, brides. Even the girl who left her Uggs on underneath her frock. I took another sip of sparkling wine and felt a bit sick.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Chelsea.” Our consultant had poker-straight fair hair and the longest eyelash extensions I’ve ever seen. She looked about twelve. “You must be so excited about finding a dress! With your figure, you can wear absolutely anything!”

  “It’s not for me, actually,” Katharine said. “It’s for Pippa.”

  I could see Chelsea blushing through her layers of concealer. “I�
��m so sorry,” she muttered. “Pippa, lovely to meet you. I’m new here so this is still really exciting for me too. Have you had any thoughts about the sort of thing you’re after?”

  “I just don’t know,” I said feebly. “Something plain? Or maybe something in a kind of fifties style? Or maybe something in a colour that’s not white or ivory?”

  “Some brides have their wedding theme or colour scheme as a starting point,” said Chelsea, doing her best to be helpful. “What’s yours?”

  “Theme?” I said, blankly. It was a wedding – surely that was the theme?

  “Like mine was inspired by Gatsby,” Katharine said. “So we had cocktails and the wedding car was a vintage Rolls – I wanted cream but we couldn’t find one anywhere and I wanted a cigarette holder but not being a smoker, that would have been a bit pointless – and the dress was flapper-style. You remember, Pippa.”

  “Lots of brides this year have chosen a Bond theme,” said Chelsea. “With the men in dinner jackets. It looks dead glamorous. Also, birds are going to be huge next year. And Scrabble is a key trend.”

  Scrabble? How on earth did you have a scrabble-themed wedding dress? Would it have lots of squares on it? Would everyone have to stand around me arguing about whether proper nouns were allowed?

  “And I remember reading somewhere that laser-cutting is the new lace,” said Katharine.

  They both smiled hopefully at me. “All those sound really interesting,” I said.

  “Let’s have a little look at some of the styles we have in stock.” Chelsea sat down next to me and fired up her tablet.

  Half an hour later, I stood in front of the huge, gilt-framed mirror in my fifth dress. I presume it was inspired by the fashion-forward avian trend, because the skirt was covered in feathers in shades of yellow from cream to canary.

  “Now that’s just stunning on you,” Chelsea said.

  “Not right with your colouring,” said Katharine tactfully. I thought, and I’m sure she did too, that I looked like Big Bird. Which would have been great, obviously, had we opted for the lesser-known Sesame Street theme.

  “One of the biggest colour trends of the year is called Radiant Orchid,” said Chelsea. “It’s a more vibrant, but cooler shade of blush. Have a look at this.”

  She produced yet another frock, in a colour that I can only describe as mauve. I recoiled slightly, but obediently tried it on and looked in the mirror. Big Bird had been replaced by the Queen. All I needed to complete the look was a pair of clumpy black shoes, gloves and a big handbag.

  “Maybe not that one,” said Katharine.

  Even though it was beginning to look like I’d never find a dress, I was increasingly grateful for Katherine’s candour. I’d tried a dress with a high halter neck that made me look like my boobs were somewhere down round my waist, and she’d diplomatically pointed out that I might need something a little more low-cut. I’d tried a corseted, strapless number that gave me an even bigger cleavage at the back than at the front and made my upper arms look like something an all-in wrestler would be proud of, and she’d rejected it with a firm shake of her head. I’d tried a clingy column dress with ruching over the front that Chelsea assured us suited absolutely everyone.

  “Well, it doesn’t suit Pippa,” Katharine said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “How about something backless?” Chelsea suggested.

  “I love backless dresses,” I said. It’s true – I adore the screen-goddess glamour of gowns with low backs, but I’ve never been able to wear them because of the necessity of industrial-strength scaffolding to hold my chest in place. I live in hope that someone, some day will invent a strapless, backless bra that actually works, possibly involving cleverly concealed helium inserts, but it has yet to happen.

  And sure enough, the backless dress, a sheath of heavy, draped satin in the palest grey, looked marvellous from the back and woeful from the front.

  “Of course, when you’re standing at the altar, the back is what people will be looking at,” said Chelsea hopefully.

  “Yes, but she can’t spend all day turning her back on her guests. It’s lovely, Pippa, but it just doesn’t work on you.”

  By the time we reached dress number fifteen, I could see that Chelsea’s patience was beginning to wear thin. All around us, girls were gasping in delight as they found the dress of their dreams, or agonising as they attempted to choose between two near-identical, near-perfect candidates. One actually bought two dresses, saying, “I can’t decide! I’ll make up my mind on the day!”

  I was the problem child, the one who couldn’t find a frock.

  “That’s not quite right either, is it?” said Katharine, looking critically at the full, frilly skirt that made me look like I belonged on top of a roll of loo paper.

  “Not quite,” I agreed. “I’m sorry, Chelsea, you’ve been so kind and we’ve taken up so much of your time but I don’t think it’s going to happen for me today.”

  Sunk in deepest gloom, I let Katharine steer me out of the shop.

  “I’ve been so useless,” I said. “It’s just that none of them were quite right.”

  “Nonsense!” she said. “Your dress must be perfect for you, otherwise there’s no point in buying it. We’ll find The One, I promise.”

  I thought, I’ve only got a couple of months and I’m not even going to be here for half the time. If The One’s out there somewhere it’s going to have to hurry up and show itself.

  “We could pop into Selfridges or Liberty and have a look there,” suggested Katharine. “They don’t have quite as wide a range of styles but you never know.”

  But I’d stopped listening to her. I was staring into the window of a shop where, surrounded by embroidered bags, jewel-coloured velvet scarves and ornate hairpins, were the most beautiful shoes I’ve ever seen in my life. They were silver lace, with sparkly straps and rows of tiny diamonds on the buckles. Just looking at them made we want to dance, even though I can’t dance to save my life.

  “Katharine, look at those!”

  “What, the shoes?”

  “Yes! I have to try them on.”

  And this time, when I stood in front of the mirror, even though I was just wearing my jeans, rolled up over my ankles, and my outdoor coat, I felt it. The shoes made my legs look long and slim. They made my feet look dainty and perfect. They matched the pewter polish on my toenails.

  “I’ve found my shoes!” I was grinning like a lunatic. Katharine looked faintly bemused.

  “Well, whatever dress you end up buying, you’ll need to wear something on your feet,” she said. “Those are lovely, and they’re in amazing condition considering they’re vintage.” I hadn’t even noticed.

  “I can get married in a onesie and not care, so long as I get to wear these,” I said, happily handing over my credit card to buy my wedding shoes.

  “I was just hoping for a cup of tea,” Erica said, hovering in the kitchen doorway, “but I don’t want to get in your way.” It was Friday night and I was in the kitchen chopping up the makings of yet another vegan dinner. This time I was having a stab at a South-East Asian treatment involving a great deal of ginger and a huge pile of bird’s-eye chillies. I was thoroughly sick of Erica refusing my cooking for increasingly random reasons (“Oh, thank you, Pippa, but I don’t really care for quinoa.” “What I really fancy is a rice cake with Marmite. It’s impossible to get hold of in Liberia, you know.” And the particularly crushing time she simply looked at a bowl of spelt risotto with roast pumpkin and said, “I’m not very hungry, actually. I think I’ll go and lie down,” as if the very sight of it had sapped her will to live). If she was going to turn her nose up at the fruits of my labour, it might as well be because they were hot enough to blow her annoying head off.

  And in case you think I’m being mean to a poor, defenceless widow, I feel compelled to point out that the one time Nick made dinner, Erica devoured two massive bowls of dhal and kept telling me how lucky I was that he was willing to ‘help in th
e kitchen’.

  “Why don’t you sit down and relax and I’ll bring it to you?” I said. Deeply as I resented playing skivvy to my future mother-in-law, I had learned that to allow Erica to do anything for herself was to invite disaster. There was the time she asked to iron a pair of her jeans (who irons jeans? Who?) and took it upon herself to do all our stuff too, and ironed all the silver foil off my new Traffic People top. There was the time I’d come home from work to find the flat thick with black smoke because she’d tried to make some of ‘Nick’s favourite peanut butter cookies’ and put the oven on to grill instead of bake. There was the time she bought some flowers to brighten up the place, except they were lilies and could have poisoned Spanx. And in spite of this, Spanx, the traitor, had adopted Erica as some sort of idol, following her around slavishly and leaping on to her lap the second she sat down.

  I was laying the table, plonking down plates and cutlery with an undue amount of crashing, when Nick came home. He hung up his coat and kissed Erica, then kissed me.

  “So how did it go at Brocklebury Manor?” I asked, when I’d finished dishing up bowls of rice and Thai curry.

  “Brilliant,” Nick said. “Callie was a total star, she’s got all sorts of great ideas that we discussed with Imogen. Because the wedding’s going to be in February, she thought it would be good to have a winter theme – not that we’ve got much choice; if we wanted peonies and roses and things it would cost a fortune. But anyway, Callie suggested going for lots of bare, silver branches and white-on-white textural stuff. Imogen also thinks simple is the way to go.”

  “Perhaps little galvanised pots with live snowdrops in them as table centrepieces,” said Erica, to my surprise. She’d barely mentioned the wedding to me.

  “Great idea,” said Nick. “And Callie found a tutorial on YouTube that shows you how to make wreaths out of white paper flowers with fake pearls, so she says she’s going to try that and see if they look any good.”