A Groom With a View

by Sophie Ranald

  “Can’t possibly be the girl for you then! Where you heading after?”

  “Don’t know, will ask Iain. Why – want to come?”

  “Naaaaah, I can’t crash your stag do. . . can I?”

  “Only if you’re wearing Hoops strip.”

  “Hmmm, I seem to remember you quite liking that, back in the day. Except then I wasn’t wearing anything under it. . .”

  My eyes were burning, and I realised I’d been staring so fixedly at the messages on the screen, I’d forgotten to blink. When I did, I felt tears course down my cheeks. I carried on reading. Throughout the afternoon, the messages had been going back and forth between the two of them. Every goal scored meant a joint celebration. He’d updated her throughout the evening, from the first pint, and she’d responded to every message within seconds. As the messages continued, I could see Nick’s typing getting more erratic, until the final thing he had written.

  “Ohgod Beff I don’t knowif I’m donig the right thing here. Dos everyone feel likethis on stga night?”

  And she’d replied, “I’m coming to get you.”

  That was it – there were no more messages since that one, sent half an hour before. It would be after one in the morning in London, and I had no way of knowing where Nick was or who was with him.

  I was furious, baffled and absolutely gutted. I wanted to speak to Nick and ask him what was going on. I wanted to feel his arms around me and hear him tell me it was okay, there was nothing to worry about. But at the same time, I wanted to hurt him as badly as I was hurting. I wanted it all to stop.

  For a bit I just sat on the edge of the pool, my feet dangling in the water. Then I pulled off my dress and lowered myself gently in, walked to the centre and floated, letting my body drift and wishing my thoughts could be washed away.

  I lay on my back, the water as warm as the night air that surrounded it, moving my legs and arms slowly to keep myself afloat. The sky was dense with stars, thousands of them, spinning in unfamiliar constellations. I could see the glow of the dying fires and hear the distant hum of voices from the party and the occasional shout of laughter, but I felt quite remote from it all, as if I’d been alone in this moment for a long, long time and would never be able to leave it.

  Then I heard a gentle splash, the water rippled underneath me and I realised I wasn’t alone any more. Gabriel was swimming towards me.

  “I came to check you hadn’t drowned,” he said.

  “Still afloat, last time I checked,” I said.

  “Just as well. I thought you might have gone all Ophelia on us. ‘Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death’,” he quoted.

  I attempted a laugh. It came out sounding all shaky and wrong, half laugh, half sob. “I might be heavy with drink, but my garments aren’t. If Ophelia had been wearing a bikini she would’ve been grand. I was just looking at the stars. They’re so different here.”

  “There’s the Southern Cross, obviously,” he pointed. “And Orion, and the Great Bear. It’s a good night for stargazing, because there’s no moon.”

  “How beautiful,” I said. But I didn’t mean the night sky, I meant him. His face suddenly seemed like the answer to everything.

  He kicked his legs up and floated on his back, and after a while I joined him. It might have been the copious amount of gin and wine I’d shipped – in fact it almost certainly was – but I felt entirely weightless. The water holding me up and the sky above me seemed to meld together, and I was conscious of the time slowing, the stars circling, my head spinning. I dipped below the surface of the water and came back up to my feet, spluttering.

  “You look like a mermaid,” Gabriel said. “A very cold mermaid in a bikini.”

  I realised I was shivering, although I didn’t feel cold.

  Gabriel put his arms around me, and I could feel the heat coming from beneath his cool skin. His kiss, when it came, was unexpected but also entirely unsurprising. I closed my eyes, unresisting, and let myself be kissed. Here it was: my out, and my revenge.

  When Gabriel lifted me out of the water, took my hand and guided me to my room, I didn’t resist either. As the door closed behind us, I’m sure I heard Chris shout, “Yes! My fifteen to one shot!”

  Gabriel said, “Come on, let’s get you out of those wet things.”

  I said, “Wait. Hold on, I don’t think I can. . .”

  But then I flopped bonelessly on the bed, and the room started to spin around me much faster than the stars had done.

  I was woken by bright sunlight stabbing my head like a Global knife. My hair was still damp and smelled of chlorine. I was naked under the duvet, and Gabriel wasn’t there.

  You know how sometimes you wake up with a hangover and lie, twitching with horror, trying to piece together what happened the night before. Just when you think you’ve got it all, the final pieces of the puzzle of how embarrassingly you behaved, a new piece of information surfaces through the haze, leaving you squirming with renewed mortification? This wasn’t like that. I could remember every detail of the evening. Reading the exchange of messages between Nick and Bethany, and how it had made me feel. My conversation with Gabriel, the stars, the way his body had felt, so much slighter and lither than Nick’s, the way his mouth had tasted of swimming pool and beer and he’d smelled of sunblock. Right until that last moment, every detail was clear. But afterwards, it was blackness, like when you set the digital TV box to record a film and when you play it back, it’s cut off the end.

  I stood by the door of my room for a long time before I was brave enough to face the world. Hiding behind sunglasses and a baseball cap, I crept past the swimming pool and on to the main lodge, where I could see people standing around drinking coffee, someone frying bacon, others rushing around loading equipment into trailers. Chris, Jan and some of the other camera crew were in the breakfast-cooking detail. I could hear their bursts of laughter over the sound of spitting fat as I approached, then, suddenly, they all fell silent. Their eyes turned to look at me, and stayed on me as I approached.

  “Good morning,” I said, ultra-casually.

  “Morning,” a couple of them muttered back.

  “Never mind ‘good morning’, it’s your good night we want to hear all about,” said Chris.

  “Aren’t you going to offer Pippa commission on your winnings, dude?” said Jan, and they all laughed.

  I forced a laugh too, totally unable to hide a flaming blush of mortification, and went to find Sibongile. She was sitting at one of the wooden tables drinking coffee and tapping busily away on her phone, but when she saw me approaching, she stood up, gave me a long, still gaze and walked away, leaving her almost full mug behind.

  I spent the rest of that day swamped by a blanket of shame. Gabriel had left a few hours before, Guido told me, checking out early to start the eight-hour drive home. The knowledge that I would never see him again was a faint relief. Guido was quiet too – no longer having to put up a front, he was sunk in gloom. I was sure he, too, was dreading what was waiting for him back in London, though for reasons very different from mine.

  We didn’t speak apart from exchanging essential details about the plan for the day – the short flight back to Johannesburg, the long wait at the airport, then the longer flight home, the week’s holiday I’d arranged to take. Throughout the long journey, I kept my headphones on, even though I didn’t have any music on. I wouldn’t have heard it anyway, over the soundtrack of guilt that was playing on a constant loop in my head.

  Of course, I knew that Nick need never find out. I could go home, carry on as if nothing had happened, get married. I could spend the rest of my life knowing that I’d been betrayed, and committed a far worse betrayal myself. But how, then, could I ever respect Nick again, or myself? He’d always be the man I’d cheated on and duped. And I’d be depriving him of the right to make a choice about how to respond to my behaviour. Or I could confess everything, but let him decide what to do – abdicate re
sponsibility, let him be the one who’d have to end it, tell the florist and the videographer and all the army of people who were set to descend on our wedding like a swarm of worker bees hungry for honey, that it was all off.

  I couldn’t do either of those things, I decided, at some point during the interminable night flight up Africa. The only way that I could salvage some courage and self-respect out of this whole mess was to be brave and do it the hard way.

  So when the taxi deposited me outside our front door, I asked the driver to wait. I went upstairs, tipped the contents of my bag into the washing basket and repacked it with winter clothes, and I told Nick I couldn’t marry him, because I’d slept with someone else. I was quite calm. I said I was going to stay with my parents, I was leaving, it was all off. I told him I was sorry.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  From: nick@digitaldrawingboard.com

  To: nick@digitaldrawingboard.com

  Bcc:

  Subject: Pickford/Martin wedding

  Dear friends

  I’m writing with great regret to let you know that the wedding planned between Pippa and me will not now take place.

  I know many of you have made travel plans and other arrangements, and we are both deeply sorry for your trouble. Some of you have also sent generous gifts, for which we were very grateful. These will be returned as soon as possible.

  Thanks for your friendship and understanding.

  Warm regards

  Nick

  Mum took one look at me, standing on her doorstep dripping with tears and rain (I’d decided to walk from the station, and it had started pissing it down when I was halfway there, but, masochistically, I’d carried on instead of phoning and asking for a lift), and realised what had happened.

  “Oh, darling,” she said, enveloping me in a fragrant hug. “My poor little Pippa.”

  “It’s all my fault,” I sobbed into her shoulder.

  She shushed me, told me I could talk about it when I was ready, ushered me inside, made me tea and a hot bath and put me to bed as if I was six and had been sent home from school after throwing up in assembly.

  And that’s where I remained, in my childhood bedroom, long since stripped of the Spice Girls posters and Pony Club rosettes that had adorned it when I was a teenager, for the next three days. As if I were an invalid, Mum plied me with poached eggs on toast (the toast burnt and the egg whites undercooked and mucusy), endless cups of tea and a huge stack of Agatha Christie novels, which I devoured mindlessly (unlike the eggs, which I choked down so as not to hurt Mum’s feelings). Occasionally I heard her and Dad having worried, whispered conversations outside my door, but they didn’t ask me about what had happened, beyond establishing that the wedding was off, and I didn’t tell.

  It was just the same as it had been the first time Nick and I split up, except that I was twelve years older and not pregnant.

  It was the end of the long, hot summer after I’d finished A-levels, and my friends were beginning to drift away into their new, adult lives. I was both terrified and triumphant about having got a coveted place at college to learn to be a chef, having passed several terrifying and intense rounds of interviews and tests. Callie had left to begin her year out teaching English in a primary school in Peru. Suze was Interrailing around Europe with a friend. Nick had finished his first year at art school, and when I wasn’t at my part-time waitressing job, he and I spent almost every minute together, lying in the garden in the sun, going to gigs and making love. I couldn’t possibly say which of the many, many condoms we’d got through had failed us, but clearly one of them did, because a week before I was due to leave for London and start my training, I realised my period was late.

  I’ve never known such blind panic. I didn’t want to tell Nick – I felt stupidly ashamed, and was sure he’d think it was my fault. Callie could only check her email intermittently at an internet café. I couldn’t face making an appointment with our family GP, a grandfatherly old codger who’d given me my measles vaccine when I was a baby and set my broken wrist after I fell off my pony when I was twelve. And I still believed Mum didn’t know Nick and I were sleeping together.

  Besides, I was as sure as I’ve ever been about anything that I couldn’t have a baby. I’d seen girls from school who’d ‘got themselves pregnant’, as people said, as if some sort of immaculate conception had taken place or they’d wilfully lain around in a bath of sperm. Cerys Brown had moved into a council flat with her boyfriend, but it wasn’t long before he pushed off and whenever I saw her in the street with her baby it was screaming and she looked exhausted and defeated. Lisa Henderson was still living with her parents and back at school, brightly positive about her future, but when I imagined that life for myself, it just seemed bleak and frightening.

  I’d have to give up my place on the course, or try to defer it, and perhaps never be able to get it back. I’d have to stay at home with Mum and Dad, and because they were both at work all day, there would be no one to look after my baby except me. Everyone else would have moved on and I’d be left behind.

  And Nick? I’d got it all planned: he and I would carry on seeing each other, even though I’d be in London. We were in love, we were going to be together forever – what did a couple of hundred miles matter? But if being with me meant a tiny flat somewhere with a baby and no money, would he still want me? I didn’t think he would. But I didn’t know what to do or where to turn.

  So I told Erica. We were friends, she was a nurse, she’d know what to do, I reasoned.

  I chose a time when I knew Nick would be at band practice, and went round to their house. Erica was in the kitchen making one of her worthy vegetarian dinners, and the smell of boiling chickpeas made me feel sick (it still does, to this day). She welcomed me warmly, as she always did back then.

  “Nick’s off gallivanting somewhere,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “I came to see you, actually.”

  “Well, what a nice surprise!” She made tea and produced a plate of dry flapjack and we sat down at the kitchen table, and I spilled out my sorry little story.

  “And I thought maybe you’d know if there was something I could take. . . some herbal thing, like a natural remedy, to bring on my period?”

  I’d been looking down at the scrubbed table top, pushing a few crumbs around with my finger, but now I looked up at Erica. Her face was white.

  “But that’s abortion!” she said.

  I realised that it was, of course. Erica wasn’t some modern-day white witch who could make it all disappear by magic or with some homeopathic drops in a glass of water.

  “I know,” I said in a small voice. “But I don’t think there’s anything else I can do.”

  “Pippa, I think you’re making a dreadful mistake. I know you think you’re grown up, but you’re not. You’re rushing into something I know you will come to regret very, very deeply. This is not just an inconvenience, a stumbling block to your ambition. It’s a human life. It’s your baby, Nick’s baby, my grandchild. What you’re suggesting is. . . it’s wicked.”

  I was appalled. I’d always thought of Erica as laid-back and liberal in her views, but now I remembered her ten brothers and sisters and realised that there was more to her background than I’d considered. I would have done anything to take back my words, but I couldn’t.

  “I have thought about it, Erica. I’m not rushing into anything. I can’t have a baby. I don’t want to. I’m frightened.”

  “Of course you are, my dear! Any girl would be. Even when a baby is longed for, strived for, it’s a frightening time. Being a mother is the most important job any woman can do. It’s a wonderful, precious opportunity. And we can make it work, Pippa. You’ll have my complete support, and of course that of your parents, when you tell them.”

  I thought, no, I’ll only have your support if I do what you want.

  “I’m sorry, Erica,” I said. “But I can’t. I’m going to London, I’m going to be a chef. There were hardly any places on
my course, and I got one. I was so proud of myself. I can’t give it up and have a baby.”

  “There are other ways, Pippa,” she said gently. “Have you thought how many childless couples there are, so full of love, who would give anything – anything! – for the life you’re carrying? Surely the mature, generous thing to do is to wait a little while to pursue your ambitions? You’re so young, you have your entire life ahead of you. This need only interrupt your plans for a year.”

  “No!” I said. “I don’t care about those other people. I don’t know them. I’m not going to go through this just so some random people I’ve never met can have my baby. And working in a kitchen all day – it’s hard, physically hard. It’s so competitive. I don’t think I could manage it if I was being sick and stuff.”

  Besides, I’d heard what Lisa had said about the overwhelming love she had for her child, how she didn’t regret having Callum for a moment and wouldn’t change a thing. How she couldn’t understand how anyone could ever bear to give their baby away. The prospect of that happening to me was the most frightening thing of all.

  Erica stood up. “I don’t think there’s anything left for me to say, Pippa. You can only examine your conscience and choose whether to do the right thing or the other, the selfish, sinful thing. And please know that if you go through with this abhorrent act, you will no longer be welcome in my home.”

  And then she quite literally showed me the door. If she could have thrown me out bodily, I’m sure she would have done.

  I went home and sat in my room in the dark, alone and terrified, until Nick came over. I had decided that I would talk to him about it, and we could make the decision together. But I didn’t in the end, because he had something important to tell me, and it was that he didn’t think a long-distance relationship could possibly work, that I needed my freedom, and that since I wasn’t going to end our relationship, he was.

  So the final week of that summer I spent in bed, in tears, being brought tea and detective stories by Mum. There wasn’t any choice to make any more, there was just me, alone and afraid, with only one option open to me. As soon as I got to London, I phoned a number I got off a poster on the Tube and a few days later, I wasn’t pregnant any more.