A Groom With a View

by Sophie Ranald

  I’d been working with Tamar to develop an initial list of recipes for the book that would accompany Guido’s African Safari, and we were reasonably confident that we’d got some good stuff. But I was going to be cooking in unfamiliar kitchens, with ingredients that were new to me and, worst of all, doing my own styling, with the help of a local freelancer. I was almost as excited as I was terrified.

  “I’ve downloaded menus from forty restaurants,” Tamar said. “I based that selection on the ratings from Taste magazine, Restaurant Business and Tripadvisor. It looks like there’s some seriously awesome food out there, you’re in for a treat, Pippa. But we also need to track down places that don’t make it into the guides and magazines: the little food carts and market stalls and so on. I’ve got Sibongile, the stylist we’ll be using out there, working on a list. She’s also researching locations for us. You’ll be starting off in Johannesburg, obviously, but spending most of your time in the Cape winelands, which is where most of the fine dining places are. And Zack, the producer, feels very strongly that we should include at least one episode actually out on safari, cooking and eating wild ingredients.”

  “Great,” Guido said. “I’m meeting him tomorrow morning at nine and we’ll get a provisional episode outline planned then. It’s six thirty-minute shows, with three to four recipes cooked in each one. Pippa, you and I will need to work on a long-list of dishes while we’re out there, then when we’re back in the office we’ll get them as close to perfect as we can before we go out to start filming. Clear?”

  I nodded and drank the dregs of my espresso. I knew Guido would look after me, and I knew Tamar would be waiting at the end of a phone line or on email to help me if I got stuck, but that felt about as comforting as knowing there’s a safety net a hundred feet below when you’re about to walk a tightrope over the Grand Canyon. This was an opportunity that could seriously boost my career – but if I fucked it up, that might be it. I’d be making supermarket ready-meals for the rest of my days, assuming Guido didn’t turn nasty and sack me. There’s no pretty way to say it: I was shit scared.

  At the same time, though, the idea of cooking and eating in all those amazing restaurants, meeting new people, seeing a brand new part of the world and taking on a massive new challenge was thrilling. The knot in my stomach was definitely as much about excitement as nerves. In fact, I realised guiltily, I was looking forward to the next few weeks’ work with rather more enthusiasm than to the wedding that lay beyond.

  “All clear,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t betray my self-doubt.

  “Good,” Guido said. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow with Zack.” Tamar gathered up her papers and left, and I was about to do the same when Guido said, “Pippa?”

  “Yes?”

  “I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if I didn’t think you were capable of it,” he said. “You’re a highly talented chef. I haven’t stretched and challenged you enough in the past couple of years. This is going to be good for you, and what’s more we’ll have a blast. Right?”

  “Right. Thanks, Guido,” I said. I was feeling a bit trembly inside, as if I wanted to cry, or hug him, or something. “I’ll try my best.”

  “And you can’t do better than that, sweetheart,” he said, giving my shoulder a reassuring little squeeze.

  All my doubt and anxiety aside, one thing was for sure: I was going to be spending six days troughing for Britain, and my wedding was just a few weeks away. This was not good. Assuming I ever found a dress, I was somehow going to have to fit into it, and ideally do so without the aid of industrial-strength control underwear. It was time, I decided, to take some pre-emptive steps.

  “Eloise,” I said, “I am now going to go to the gym.”

  “To the. . . Pippa, are you feeling okay? Has your body been taken over by aliens?”

  I stuck my tongue out at her as I picked up my bag and left the office, but she did have a point. Since I took out my gym membership two years ago, I think I’d been once. But now I was going to need to embark on a serious exercise regimen, even if it did turn out to be too little, too late. And as I didn’t actually own any gym kit, I would have to go shopping first, which just goes to show that every cloud has a silver lining.

  An hour later, I was shivering in the changing rooms as I peeled off my work clothes and struggled into my brand new Lycra garments from TK Maxx. I don’t know who designs sports bras, but I’d bet good money that they’ve never tried to put one on. I tried doing up the hooks first and then pulling it over my head, and after ten terrifying minutes thinking I would be stuck half-in, half-out of it forever, managed to escape and attempted to put it on the normal way, which was more successful, except I got hideous cramp in my shoulder and broke two of my nails. By the time I was ready to start my workout, it was almost eight o’clock and I was hot, out of breath and thinking that this really hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  Clutching my towel and water bottle, I entered the holy of holies, the cardio room. I’d just cycle easily for twenty minutes on an exercise bike, I told myself. No point overdoing it the first time. And if I positioned myself in the corner at the back, I’d be suitably inconspicuous, so all the lithe, athletic girls wouldn’t be subjected to the sight of my arse spilling over the saddle, and I’d be able to check them out and imagine what I’d look like when my new fitness programme had worked its magic. And, of course, I’d be able to watch the hot men.

  Like that one over there, I thought, settling myself on to the bike and starting to pedal gently. He was wearing a sweat-soaked T-shirt, worn so thin it was almost transparent in places, and it clung to the lean V of his torso. I could see the muscles in his legs bunching and extending as he ran, and his tight bottom. . . Hold on. It was Nick. There I was, perving away like a dirty old woman over my own boyfriend.

  I abandoned my exercise bike (not without a certain feeling of relief) and went over to him, just as he reduced the speed of the treadmill and slowed down to a walk.

  “Blimey, Pippa,” he said, his breathing only slightly harder than usual, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Well, you know,” I said, “pre-wedding fitness mission.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “But if you’re done, maybe you could reward yourself by accompanying me to the pub?”

  I paused for a moment, torn. Did five minutes count as a workout? Probably not. But then, getting dressed had been exhausting. And I’d walked all the way round TK Maxx. And, of course, it was vital to keep the flame of passion alive in our relationship and that, surely, meant going to the pub together? “I’m done,” I said. “Shall we go home and shower?”

  But I didn’t make it as far as the shower. When we got home, the first thing I saw was Spanx asleep on the sofa, blissfully cuddled up to a large, white plush rabbit.

  “What the hell’s this?” I said.

  “It came by courier today,” Erica said. “There was a card with it, but of course I haven’t opened it, it must be for you and Nick.” She passed me an envelope. On it was written, ‘ABRACADABRA!’

  I peeled open the flap and took out a card in the shape of a black top hat. On the back was printed, “Hocus pocus and shazam! Congratulations on booking The Amazing Archibald. Your event is sure to go with a bang!”

  I passed the card to Nick. “Do you know what this is?” I said. “Is it meant for the neighbours? If so we’d better get their bunny back to them before it gets even more ginger fur on it.” Spanx opened his amber eyes and gazed at me reproachfully, as if to say, “But this is my new friend.”

  “No, don’t worry, Pip, it’s absolutely fine,” Nick said, but I couldn’t help noticing that he looked a bit guilty. “It’s just the entertainer guy I booked for the wedding. It’s quite a cool marketing idea, don’t you think?”

  “But we don’t need an entertainer. Why would we want an entertainer? It’s not like we’re having kids at the. . . Nick? We aren’t having kids at the wedding, right?”

  Erica retreated tactful
ly to our bedroom and closed the door.

  Nick was suddenly showing great interest in the tops of his shoes. “Well, we’re inviting your friends Jack and Julia,” he said. “They’ll bring their baby, won’t they?”

  “Iris is six months old,” I said. “The only entertainment she needs is Julia’s boobs and maybe a rattle or something. Nick, look at me. We’re not having kids at the wedding. Tell me you haven’t invited kids to the wedding.”

  “There are a few,” he muttered.

  “How many is a few? And whose are they? This is about your cousins, isn’t it?” My legs suddenly felt a bit shaky. I sat down and pulled the bunny on to my lap. Spanx followed, purring thunderously.

  “Okay,” Nick said. “We’ve got about thirty children on the list. Probably they won’t all come. I think there’ll be twenty, maybe twenty-five. And they’ll need something to keep them occupied. So I booked an entertainer. He sounds really good. He does magic tricks and face-painting and plays games with the kids and makes balloon animals.”

  “Balloon animals. I see.”

  When I was working as a trainee in restaurants, I was on the receiving end of some epic temper tantrums. I won’t name any names, but one celebrity chef actually used to pelt eggs at waiters who displeased him – a totally pointless exercise, because they’d have to spend ages sponging themselves down and it caused absolute carnage during a busy service. Another’s speciality was a sort of icy rage, which was, if anything, more terrifying. I resolved back then that when I was running my own kitchen, I would never be like that. I would reason, calmly and quietly, with my team. I would engender respect. But I was kidding myself, because the truth is that when I get angry, I just start to cry. I could feel tears stinging my eyes now, and my nose was beginning to run.

  “Are you okay, Pip?”

  “No,” I sniffed. “I’m not okay. I’m bloody pissed off, Nick, because I don’t want children at the wedding and I thought we’d discussed you not inviting all your cousins. How many people is that? How many are on this guest list?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Nick said.

  “Of course you’re sure,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re not sure! You’ve planned every single stupid thing about this wedding. If I asked you how many fucking sugared almonds you’d ordered, you’d tell me, or you’d have it on a spreadsheet somewhere.”

  “Right,” Nick said. He sat down next to me and put a placating hand on my knee. “I do know. We haven’t sent the invitations out yet but there are two hundred and fifty people on the list. Of those, eighty-five are my family and as I said, thirty of them are under twelve. Three are our flower girls and our pageboy, like you agreed. Are you satisfied now?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not, and I won’t be until you do what you said you’d do and sort this out. I don’t want loads of people at the wedding who I haven’t met, and I don’t want to have children there, except close friends’ babies and the pageboy and flower girls, and quite honestly I’d be happy not to have them either. And if you’ve booked this Amazing Archibald guy, unbook him. I’m going to bed.”

  And I picked up Spanx and the bunny and flounced off. After a bit I heard the shower running, and then Nick and Erica went out.

  When I finished shaking and crying, I fell into an uneasy sleep, but I woke up when Nick came to bed, much later. I put my arms round him and buried my head in his chest.

  “I’m sorry I was such a bitch,” I said.

  “I’m sorry too, Pip. I love you,” he said. And we had silent, surreptitious sex so Erica wouldn’t hear us and then Nick went straight to sleep. Although I was relieved we weren’t rowing any more, I was horribly aware that things were far from resolved. I lay awake most of the night worrying and when I eventually slept, I had a dream that I was plating up food for the cameras in South Africa and when I took the cloche off the roast springbok, it had turned into a fluffy white rabbit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  From: nick@digitaldrawingboard.com

  To: housemartins@macmail.co.uk

  Subject: Pre-wedding drinks

  Hi Justine and Gerard

  I hope you’re both well and the garden is standing up to the frost! So sorry I missed you when you were in London the other day. I’m getting in touch because Mum has suggested a bit of a get-together to celebrate our engagement, and for you to get to know one another better. Although you met at Pippa’s and my housewarming, that’s a good few years ago now! I also thought it would be a good idea for the two sides of the family to talk about plans for the wedding – register-signing, readings, speeches and so on.

  I know you’re both really busy with rehearsals but please let me know if you have an evening free in the next couple of weeks, before Pippa flies off to South Africa. I’m really looking forward to catching up and so is Mum.

  Love

  Nick

  PS – I was thinking it would be fun to make the party a surprise for Pip, so please don’t mention it to her!

  It was like a particularly horrible episode of déjà vu. Here I was again, in another bridal shop with Katharine. This one aimed for more of a boudoir effect, with lots of peach chiffon draped everywhere, tasselled standard lamps, oil paintings of brides that looked like they’d been created with the aid of Photoshop effects, and the dresses concealed in white-painted armoires. But apart from that it was much the same.

  The consultant this time was an older woman, who’d introduced herself as Valerie. She was Chelsea, only without the eyelash extensions and with the addition of a ruthless, headmistress-like demeanour that I suppose she’d acquired through years of persuading indecisive brides-to-be that not only were they going to buy a dress, they were going to buy one today, from her, and she was going to extract the maximum commission out of the transaction.

  Katharine’s manner was different, though. Although she’d met me with her usual bright smile and upbeat demeanour, I got the sense that her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Today’s the day, Pippa!” she said. “Today, we’ll find your dress. I’m feeling it!”

  But I detected a hint of desperation underlying her relentless positivity.

  “Now, my dear,” said Valerie. “I’ve been matching brides with their dream dresses for almost thirty years, and I pride myself on taking a different approach to it all. Even a radical one! I think it’s very easy for girls to get a bit mixed up if they try too many things. Dress fatigue, I call it! So I believe in providing a bit of firm guidance.” She guided me firmly to a fitting room.

  “You are a lucky, lucky young lady. You have the classic hourglass shape. Your skin is just radiant! We need to work with these qualities and enhance them. If you’ve been spending too much time reading wedding magazines, you may have had your head turned by trends.” She wagged a scarlet-nailed finger at me. “A wedding dress should not be a trend-led purchase! It should be chosen to make the most of you. You should wear the dress, not the other way around. Am I right or am I right?”

  I expected Katharine to bristle in the face of this hard-line approach, but she nodded meekly. I nodded meekly too.

  “Let’s get you out of those jeans. And if you could just help Pippa into this, dear, I’ll be back in a moment with a few styles that I know will work for you.” ‘This’ was a strapless, boned contraption that looked like it would do a pretty decent job on a construction site. “A good foundation garment is the single most important part of your wedding attire. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Headmistress-like she may have been, but once Katharine had wrestled and hooked me into the foundation garment, I realised Valerie knew her stuff. It may have been a particularly unattractive surgical-stocking shade of beige, but the scaffolding did its work. I immediately looked taller, straighter-backed and slimmer, and there were no bulges where bulges had been before. However, I couldn’t imagine being able to sit down, dance, eat or laugh, such was the garment’s constraining effect on my hips and diaphragm. Even breathing was something of a challenge, and I imag
ined that when I took it off, it would leave fetching red welts on my skin.

  “No one ever has sex on their wedding night,” Katharine said, as if she’d read my mind, “so you may as well submit to the killer corsetry.” I was about to remind her of her famous sex diet, which she’d promised would have us swinging from the chandeliers the second the register was signed, when Valerie bustled back through the curtains bearing an armful of dresses.

  “This is just a small selection to get us started. But I suspect your dress may well be one of these. I don’t have thirty years’ experience for nothing!

  “Now,” she said, “first of all, just to make sure we’re on the same page, here’s an example of the sort of dress I believe you should not be considering.”

  With a flourish that would have done credit to The Amazing Archibald, she whisked a frock off the rail. It was gorgeous. The full skirt fell in a cascade of ivory tucks and folds, with extravagant silk roses holding up the gathers.

  “I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, this is a fairytale dress. And it is. But it’s a dress for tall, big-boned brides. Pop it on and you’ll see I’m right.”

  And she was. I’m no delicate little sylph, but the dress swamped me. I looked like a six-year-old trying on her mother’s eiderdown.

  “See? Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s have a look at the kind of style I believe will work on you.”

  The next dress she produced couldn’t have been more different. I felt almost disappointed looking at it. It was just simple – a straight white column with a bit of beading on the wide shoulder straps, and a little puddle of a train.

  “Now don’t you dismiss it until you’ve tried it!” Valerie manhandled me into the dress and spent a few painstaking minutes doing up the row of tiny pearl buttons down the back. I looked at Katharine to see her reaction, but she was distracted, her hair falling over her face as she tapped away at her phone.