That was when I dropped the dish of leftover mac and cheese I was holding on to the floor with a sickening crash.
I longed to confide in Callie, and ask her if she’d heard, or if it had been some horrible hallucination brought on by stress. But, with Nick rallying around and stacking the dishwasher and Erica in the next room, presumably eavesdropping like a good ’un, I couldn’t. But I resolved that I was going to prove her wrong. I loved Nick. Of course our marriage would last. And I was going to get it off to the best possible start by letting him have the wedding he wanted, and by proving to Erica that I wasn’t as spoiled and selfish as she thought.
Katharine told me a while ago about a book called The Surrendered Wife, according to which the secret of a happy marriage is never arguing with your husband or trying to control him. I remember saying to her at the time that it sounded like a load of bollocks, and her arguing back that it worked, really it did. Obviously, if Katharine’s suspicions about Iain were founded in fact, being a Surrendered Wife had done the opposite of working. But still, I decided, I’d be a Surrendered Bride. (Just until the wedding, then normal service could resume.)
If that meant wall-to-wall cousins and a million children, I would just have to live with it. And maybe one of The Amazing Archibald’s magic tricks would misfire and Erica would vanish in a puff of smoke.
CHAPTER TEN
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: First dance!
Hey Pip
Just realised we haven’t got around to talking about this yet. Someone mentioned to me that she’d had a few lessons to make sure she and her H2B didn’t make tits of themselves on the dance-floor – what do you reckon? And I’ve got loads of ideas for songs.
Love you
Nxx
PS – Fancy a pint after work? Grope & Wanker at 8?
“But, Nick, you know I don’t dance.” I was feeling my resolve to be a Surrendered Bride wavering perilously. “I never dance, except when I’m pissed. I’m tone deaf and clumsy. All the lessons in the world won’t make me not make a tit of myself.”
It was true. It seemed to matter less now, but back when Nick was lead singer for Deathly Hush, I found it deeply shameful that I not only can’t sing but actually don’t really care about music that much. I mean, it’s perfectly nice and everything, but I’ve never shared Nick’s passion for it. It’s a bit like the way he feels about food – he loves eating, of course he does, but he doesn’t get it in the same way I do. But as for dancing – let me just say that I have to be quite seriously hammered to even set foot on a dance-floor, and when I do I can be relied upon to miss the beat and attempt to twerk and then fall over, and generally make my name arse.
“But we have to have a first dance.” Nick looked bemused. “Everyone has a first dance.”
“Okay, I get that we might have to sort of shuffle around a bit, with everyone else,” I said. “I’m cool with that. But an actual dance? Do we have to?”
Nick said, “It depends what you mean by ‘have to’. It’s traditional, and it makes it clear to the guests that the dancing is now, like, officially happening. If we were being really old-fashioned we’d do the thing where we’d dance the first track on our own, then Callie and Iain would join in, then your dad with Mum, and your mum with – I don’t know, someone, and so on. But we don’t have to do that. We can just do the first dance and then it’s a free-for-all.”
“Nick, seriously, I. . .” I began, and then I thought, no, Pippa. You’re being reasonable and nice and unbratty. “Okay. I suppose I’ll make less of a tit of myself with lessons than without them. How long will it take?”
“They reckon twelve hours if they choreograph a dance especially for you,” Nick said. He had a slightly mad glint in his eye and I knew he’d love nothing more than to have a dance especially choreographed for us. But he added hastily, “That’s bit over the top, obviously, and you don’t have time. So I was thinking the standard six-lesson package, where they teach you a dance that fits your choice of song, and basically coach you through it so you’re ‘confident, competent and having fun’. Look here.”
He took out his iPad and I could see him scrolling through a load of bookmarked wedding-related sites before he got to one called stepsoflove.com. The homepage was a picture of a couple in wedding attire, the groom sweeping the bride off her feet like something off Strictly Come Dancing. I cringed at the idea of us doing that.
“And look at this thing I found on YouTube,” he said, and started playing a video of a couple who actually danced down the aisle together, finishing with him down on one knee and her with her foot up on his shoulder. I cringed some more (although I couldn’t help admiring her shoes).
“Nick, there is no way on earth we’re doing that. They just look stupid. And let’s get one more thing clear. No lifting me up. You’d put your back out.”
“Of course not,” Nick said. “Don’t worry. I won’t lift you up if you don’t want to be lifted up. Just a simple dance. It won’t be more than five minutes long, depending on which song we choose.”
“What do you mean, which song we choose?” I said. “We’re having U2, Beautiful Day, obviously.”
“Pippa,” he said, “ten years ago, U2 were still cool, just. It was acceptable for us to play their covers at gigs. But now?” He shook his head. “No way. Not going to happen. Image suicide. It’s Bono, you see. They could just about get away with the hats and The Edge being called The Edge and all that stuff, back in the nineties. But now Bono’s gone all smug. Well, smugger. It’s dad rock, Pip. We’re not having it.”
“But it’s our song!” I said. “It’s the song that was playing the first night we met, and you played it for me that night in Borderline. Don’t you think of me every time you hear it?”
“To my shame,” Nick said, “I do think of you when I hear it, my gorgeous fiancée, and I also feel a bit mortified that our song is by the naffest band ever, and wonder whether maybe it’s time to find something else to be our song. Anyway, to be fair, there you were, looking so bloody gorgeous, I’d have played Yellow by Coldplay if I thought that was what it would take to get you into bed.”
“Steady on! I know my taste in music is crap but it’s never been that bad. But you’re trying to distract me from the matter in hand,” I said. “Our first dance song is going to be Beautiful Day. End of.”
“We can think of another song,” he said. “Come on, Pip. There are some awesome tracks to choose from, properly romantic. One Day Like This by Elbow. Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. Just Say Yes by Snow Patrol.”
“No, Nick,” I said. “We’re having Beautiful Day or we’re having. . . I don’t know. Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy?”
He laughed. “I Hate Everything About You by Ugly Kid Joe?”
“Um. . . Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now?”
“I Used to Love Her But I Had to Kill Her?”
“I Should’ve Cheated?”
“Every Day I Love You Less And Less?”
By this stage we were both giggling helplessly. “It’s not fair,” I said. “You’re better than me at this game. Want another beer?”
“Go on then,” Nick said.
“I’ll get it. But first, you have to promise me, if I agree to do these stupid embarrassing dance classes and a stupid embarrassing first dance all on our own with everyone watching, we’re doing it to Beautiful Day. Deal?”
“Deal,” Nick said, “I’ll make an appointment for our first lesson.” I went and got us more drinks, and then he got another round, and then we had a burger. By closing time we’d laughed so much my cheeks ached, and we were still suggesting inappropriate first dance songs when we got home.
I was feeling considerably less chipper about the whole idea two days later, when I went to meet Nick after work at the Steps of Love studio, which was in a converted warehouse just down the road from the Falconi’s HQ. I’d been cooking all day and my hands smelled of onio
ns in spite of having been scrubbed with a special stainless steel soap thing. My feet hurt and all I wanted was to collapse on the sofa with Spanx and watch EastEnders. Then I remembered that Erica would be in residence, doing the insufferable thing she does of chatting over the telly, asking who all the characters were and demanding to know whether I’d found a wedding dress yet, and I decided a dance class was the lesser of two evils.
But I cheered up when Giovanna, the instructor, turned out to be absolutely lovely. She was petite and stunning, and wearing skinny jeans and legwarmers with her high-heeled shoes, and at first I was horribly intimidated by her grace and general hotness. But she quickly reassured me that almost all the people she taught were convinced they were going to be crap, and most of them managed really well in the end.
“So,” she asked, “have you had any thoughts about the track you’re going to be dancing to?”
“We’ve had a few ideas, but we’d really value your input,” Nick said, at the same moment as I said, “Yes. Beautiful Day.”
“I have a large selection of tracks. . .” Giovanna said.
I said, “Nick!” and gave him a hard stare.
“All right, all right. Beautiful Day it is.”
“A very popular choice,” Giovanna said. “Michael Bublé, so romantic.”
Nick looked horrified.
“Er, no, U2 actually,” I said.
It was Giovanna’s turn to look alarmed. “That’s not an easy song to dance to,” she said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer Bublé?”
“Or maybe Yellow, by Coldplay?” I said.
“No!” said Nick. “No, we really have our hearts set on U2.”
“Okay.” I could see Giovanna’s mind working furiously as she tried to decide what to do with this pair of loons who, in spite of having the dance skills of one of Spanx’s toy mice, were determined to attempt a routine that would make even Bruce Forsyth struggle to be complimentary. “I’m thinking a slowed-down, dramatic tango, with lots of lifts? Very Latin, very erotic.”
I said, “No lifts!”
Nick said, “Pippa, listen to Giovanna, she’s the expert.”
I glared at him mutinously, but I’d got my own way on the song and I knew I was beaten on the lifts.
“Don’t worry,” Giovanna said. “We’ll start off with the basic steps, you’ll master it in no time.”
Half an hour later, I’d sweated oniony sweat all over Nick and trodden on his toes innumerable times. I’d fallen over twice, Nick had almost dropped me attempting a lift, and we were both in fits of laughter. Poor Giovanna was struggling to maintain her cheerful, professional demeanour.
“I think that’s enough for your first lesson,” she said. The poor woman looked like she needed a drink, and I knew I did.
We happily paid the extortionate fee and left.
Outside in the chilly December night, I said to Nick, “That was the best fun ever! I can’t believe how shit we are.”
Nick said, “Er, Pip, maybe we should think about just shuffling around a bit, along with everyone else?”
I said, “Bollocks to that! We’re going to nail this slowed-down erotic tango if it’s the last thing I do. When’s our next class?”
Over a drink in the local curry house, we compared diaries, and I remembered with a lurch of apprehension how soon I was leaving for South Africa, and that the wedding was just a few weeks away.
I snapped a poppadom in half and dipped it halfheartedly in chutney. I wasn’t feeling quite so hungry any more.
“Nick,” I said, “Tonight was brilliant fun, it really was. This wedding. . . all the planning and stuff. . . are you enjoying it? Really?”
“Enjoying it?” he said. “Yeah, mostly. It’s all new to me, I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s kind of challenging, you know? Getting everything just right for you. For us. There’s a lot to think about. Every time I get something crossed off the list, it seems like a whole load of new things come up and get added to it.”
“Like what?” I said. “You know, I don’t want you to think that just because you’re doing most of the work, I don’t care about it. I do.” But did I, really, I wondered? I certainly didn’t share Nick’s passion for getting every single detail just so.
“I know you care, Pip, don’t be daft,” Nick said. “I know you aren’t that into stuff like what the invitations look like, and that’s cool. But there are loads of things you’re going to need to do, when you have time.”
“Great! Just tell me what they are and I’ll make time to do them.”
“We need to book our honeymoon,” Nick said. “That’s going to be so much fun and we haven’t really thought about it yet. I guess with all the travel you’ve got coming up, you might not want to go straight away, so maybe we could think about taking a couple of weeks in March? And you’ll need to apply for a new passport, obviously.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Planning the honeymoon sounds great. We could even go skiing if it’s March, you love skiing. Or we could go somewhere with beaches, or somewhere totally different, like. . . I don’t know. Argentina. Guido went there last year, he says it’s ace and he’s never eaten so much steak in his life. So maybe there. But anyway, I’ve got two years remaining on my passport, so I don’t need to renew it, do I? I bloody hope not, because I’m leaving for South Africa the day after tomorrow and if my passport doesn’t work, I’m buggered.”
Nick laughed. “No, of course it’s fine for the day after tomorrow. God, imagine if it wasn’t? Nightmare! But I thought it would be nice for you to have a new one for the honeymoon, you know, with your new name on it.”
“Right,” I said. “Nick, don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’d kind of thought I’d keep my name. I like being Pippa Martin. I know it’s not that exciting a name or anything, but I don’t have any brothers or sisters and it feels a bit like our line would be dying out. It’s silly, but you know what I mean.” I didn’t add that, in my opinion, Pippa Pickford just sounded stupid. Even stupider than Nick Pickford, which, while not up there with classic comedy names I’ve come across like Micky Moosa and Wayne King and Keith Lasagne, is a bit ridiculous. What had Erica been thinking? She could surely have selected a less alliterative name for her only son.
Nick looked absolutely stricken. “I didn’t know. I’d kind of assumed. . . I know it’s old-fashioned. But I didn’t think you minded. I thought. . . when we weren’t planning to get married, one thing that bothered me a bit was that you’d never be Mrs Pickford, and when we have kids – well, what then?”
There it was. The elephant in the room, trumpeting loudly and forcing the ostrich that was me to jerk its head out of the sand.
When Nick and I were seventeen and first started having sex, with all the associated condom-fumbling that entailed, we’d speculated about what we might do if something went wrong. I’d said that there was no way, no way on earth, that I’d want a baby. Nick had looked a bit wistful and said, “Well, not now, obviously.” And later, of course, I’d taken myself off to the family planning clinic and gone on the Pill, and on the Pill I had remained.
Throughout our twenties, we’d had the odd totally hypothetical conversation about what we might call our children (Nick was dead set on Bernie for a brief period, when Ecclestone rescued Queen’s Park Rangers’ finances. Thankfully that didn’t last), but they were never really serious. Nick was building up his fledgling design agency after he agreed to let Iain buy him out of Coulson Creative because he was sick of schmoozing clients and managing staff and wanted to get back to doing proper design work again, and we knew that our tiny two-bedroom flat had barely room for us, Spanx and Nick’s new business, never mind a baby. I was working hard too, and even though it mostly felt like I was treading water in terms of my career, I certainly didn’t want to jack it all in and trade in my chef’s whites for fluffy terry nappies. So it was a conversation we never had to have, not properly, and I could never admit to Nick how relieved I was about that.
“Pippa?” Nick said. “We are going to have kids, aren’t we?”
I wiped a smear of butter off my chin with my napkin and twisted it into a knot in my lap.
“Isn’t it good enough to be just us?”
“Being just us is amazing,” Nick smiled. “Us and Spanx, obviously. But this is a big thing for me, it’s important. I thought maybe in a couple of years, we’d want to think about it properly.”
And there it was – a lovely, open escape route, an opportunity to put off having the discussion for as long as possible – maybe even indefinitely.
“Of course we will!” I gushed, weak with relief. “We’ll definitely think about it in a couple of years! And maybe I can do what Katharine does, and be Pippa Pickford on my passport, and Pippa Martin for work, and other stuff.” For everything important, I thought. Who cared what my passport said, anyway?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi
Hey gorgeous
Just a quick note to say I hope you had a safe flight and you’re getting a bit of free time to work on your tan! Spanx says he’s missing you lots, and I am too. Remember, whatever you do, no worrying about the wedding – focus on work and on having a great time. Everything is totally under control here.
Can’t wait to see you again – only three sleeps!
Your adoring husband-to-be
Nxxxx
I’d never cooked in a kitchen with a view like this before. The ground in front of me fell away into a valley, and there were distant, purple peaks of mountains beyond, with lines of lush grapevines marching up their slopes. It was all bathed in dazzling sunshine and the still air smelled faintly of ripening fruit. Unfortunately I was up to my elbows in squid ink, but that only slightly detracted from the quality of the experience.
“It’s quite special, isn’t it?” said Sibongile, the freelance stylist who we’d hired to help out, research locations and – this was not said but I was very conscious that it was true – compensate for my own inexperience. I’d warmed to her straight away – she was not only bubbly and permanently smiley, but also dizzyingly competent.
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