A Groom With a View (19 page)

“Did you get dud meatballs?” I asked. “Why don’t you have some of mine? I put extra pepper on them, so they’re very special.”

He stared up at me, wide-eyed.

“Go on,” I said, “try a bit.” I loaded up a fork with food and passed it to him. He ate, and his eyes widened some more.

“Like it?”

He nodded.

“Have a bit more then.”

Together, we finished the food.

“How was that?” I said.

“It was delicious, thank you,” said Solomon in perfect, unaccented English.

I laughed and gave him a hug. His little body felt warm and skinny and strong, and for just a moment, he squashed his face against me. “When you’re grown up, you must come and see me in England and then you’ll make it for me.”

“Cut,” said the director. “Outstanding work, Pippa. We’ll edit in more commentary but there’s definitely enough usable footage for an episode there. Thanks all.”

I was hot and knackered and grubby, and there was a big smear of tomato sauce on my shoulder from Solomon’s mouth, but I didn’t care – I felt as if I’d conquered Everest.

“It’s been so amazing,” I told Nick, “but absolutely hectic. We’ve been up at, like, five every morning to get wherever we’re going, and we haven’t finished shooting most days until after nine. Thank God for Sibongile, she’s a star, and Gabriel’s working incredibly hard too. He can’t cook at all, it’s hilarious, he literally can’t chop an onion, but because of the way he is in front of the camera they’ve roped him in to pretend to be this gifted young chef pursuing a dream. And in reality the only thing he’s pursuing is his next meal. I don’t know how he stays so thin, he literally eats all the time.”

There was a pause, then Nick said, very casually – too casually, “Who is Gabriel?”

I was glad we weren’t on Skype, because I could feel a hot blush creeping up my neck.

“He’s. . . just some guy. An actor. He came on set in Jo’burg and we’ve booked him to do more scenes because apparently the camera loves him. He’s going out with Sibongile.” Which he wasn’t, of course. I’m not quite sure why I felt the need to stretch the truth, but I did.

Not that anything was happening with me and Gabriel, or ever would. Partly because he was so far out of my league it would be ridiculous, and mostly because I was going home in two days’ time, and two weeks after that, I was going to marry Nick. It was all going to be fine – I was going to put my doubts behind me and eat the tomato soup and be nice to the cousins, and after that Erica would leave and everything would be back to normal with Nick and me. I’d thought about it and that’s what I’d decided.

But in the meantime, what harm was there in a bit of flirtation with a handsome man? I know just how mad this sounds, but I felt as if Gabriel was a sort of insurance policy – a guarantee that as long as I behaved myself and resisted temptation, nothing would happen between Bethany and Nick.

And Sibongile was right, Gabriel was an absolute sweetheart. The previous day, we’d been filming in the Drakensberg near the top of a mountain. Lauren had tracked down a conservation group who were working to preserve the fragile ecosystem and maintain the purity of water in the area, and the idea was that we’d film Guido fishing for trout in a mountain stream, and then Gabriel and I would cook it for the hungry ecologists.

Except the fragility of the ecosystem meant that we had to leave our vehicle at the bottom of the mountain and then walk about six miles up a vertical slope – at least that’s what it felt like – with all our cooking equipment as well as the cameras. Gabriel insisted on carrying all my stuff, and then when we got to the top he’d expertly repaired my makeup, which was ravaged by sun and sweat, before the cameras saw me. And then he carried it all down again, and helped me over the rocky bits when my totally unsuitable shoes couldn’t handle the terrain and I was scared of falling over and looking stupid.

I won’t say that I was developing a bit of a crush, but. . . Yes, I was definitely developing a bit of a crush. But it didn’t matter, because soon I’d be home and I could forget all about Gabriel. I wouldn’t see the flecks of green and gold in his eyes, admire the perfect, even whiteness of his teeth and hear the husky crack in his voice when he laughed, or feel the warmth of his hand when he helped me over the. . .

“Are you still there, Pip?”

“Yes, of course, sorry. I was just thinking. . . telling you about Gabriel, wasn’t I?”

“Good. I thought I’d lost you for a moment.”

“No, still here. So tomorrow’s our last day filming. We’re right in the bush, it’s amazing, at a game lodge. I wish you could see it, Nick. I’ve got a beautiful little thatched cottage to myself – it’s almost as big as our flat. I’m sitting outside now, and even though the sun set a couple of hours ago, it’s still really warm. There’s a lake just down the hill and you can see animals drinking there. This morning there were three giraffes. One of them was just a baby and it was so cute. You must tell Spanx it was just like his toy giraffe and he so would have taken it if he’d seen it.”

Nick laughed. “Spanx says he misses you, and so do I. I’ve been kind of bored, now all the wedding stuff is more or less done.”

“Aren’t you out on the piss every night with Iain?”

“Not exactly,” Nick said. “We’ve been out a few times, and tomorrow’s the stag do, so he’s organised that. But he’s having a hectic time at work. They’ve lost a couple of big clients, and I think he’s realising that he expanded the agency too fast. He’s talking about having to make people redundant. And tonight he’s seeing Katharine, she finally agreed to meet up. I hope it means they’re going to sort things out.”

“I’m glad,” I said. But I wasn’t sure I was, really. It seemed unlike Katharine to just accept what Iain had done, and carry on as before. Nick and I have always agreed that infidelity would be a deal-breaker for us, and I’d assumed that everyone else would feel the same. But then, once you’re married, perhaps it’s different. Perhaps the commitment you’ve made is more significant than the pain you’re feeling. Perhaps love is stronger than anger? But I was pretty sure that if I were Katharine, I’d want Iain to be alone and miserable for the rest of his life and never have sex again, and for his dying words to be, “If only I hadn’t fucked the Czech work experience girl.”

Okay, maybe not that. But I’d want him to pay for what he’d done in harder currency than a couple of weeks sleeping on his best mate’s sofa.

“Nick, do you think we’ll be different once we’re married? Like, together, I mean?”

“Do you mean, will our relationship change?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“It might,” he said. “I expect it will. When we have kids it definitely will.”

There it was again, the thing I never wanted to talk about. Now, looking out into the black night, hearing the sounds of Africa magnified by the silence, with Nick thousands of miles away, I felt compelled to talk about it.

It was pretty stupid timing, I’ll grant you that. The time to have this conversation was probably over a bottle of wine or a pot of tea, maybe over one of those coupley lunches people seem to have in glossy magazines, sitting outside a pavement café in some European city, with me wearing a simple yet elegant shift dress and Nick with his Armani shades pushed up on top of his head, and both of us being terribly adult. Oh, and ideally we’d have got it all out of the way about five years earlier.

“Nick, I don’t want to have children.”

“Obviously not now!” he said. “God, Pippa, did you think I was going to flush your Pills down the toilet as soon as I had a wedding ring on your finger? Don’t worry, I mean when eventually we have them.”

“Yes, okay, thanks for that. But I don’t think I want them ever, Nick. I’m not the maternal type.”

“Yes you are! Look how you are with Spanx. You look after him much better than I do. You always notice if he’s feeling poorly, and remember his birthday and stuff.”

“Nick, Spanx is a cat. I didn’t say I didn’t want a cat, I said I didn’t want a baby.”

“But you’d love our baby if we had one,” Nick said, sounding just like Mum. “Of course you would. Look how Suze was before she had the twins, she couldn’t have cared less about kids. And then once they started trying and it didn’t happen straight away, she says she just wanted them more and more until she thought she couldn’t ever be happy otherwise. And she loves being a mum now.”

“I’m sure she does, and good for her. But I’m not your sister, I’m me. And I’m not just some ticking biological clock with an alarm that’s going to go off any minute. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m pretty certain about how I feel.”

“I see. So you’ve been doing all this thinking, but it never occurred to you to talk to me about how you felt, until just before I make a promise to be with you forever.”

“Hold on. How is it my responsibility to tell you I don’t want kids? It’s not like you’ve sat me down and had long heart-to-heart talks about how you do want them.”

“No, because what I want is the standard, default option, Pippa. People get married, then after a bit they have babies. Or they have babies and then after a bit they get married. That’s normal. It’s what you do.”

“It’s not what I want to do. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, but you’re not listening.”

“I am listening. What I’m not doing is just agreeing with what you say and going, ‘Okay, fine, no kids. We’ll do what Pippa wants and fuck what Nick wants.’”

“But you knew!” My voice was raised and I could hear how petulant I sounded. “You’ve always known I’m not interested in babies. And I’m the one who’d have to feel sick and get fat and then push something the size of a suckling pig out of my chuff.”

“Other women seem to manage it.”

“I’m not other women.”

There was a pause. I imagined our words, laden with misunderstanding and hurt, beaming up to some satellite in space and then ricocheting down again, like something fired from a gun in a computer game. And it was a game at which we were both proving to be pretty good, every shot on target, maximum damage inflicted.

It was Nick who called the truce.

“Pippa, it’s ridiculous to talk about this now.” He still sounded angry, but now he sounded weary too.

“When do you want to talk about it? The night before our wedding? The night after?”

“I’m trying to be sensible about this, so stop scoring cheap points.” I wondered if he’d been thinking about computer games, too. “You’re in the middle of fucking Africa, it must be nearly midnight there. You’ll be home on Monday, we’ll talk about it then, and we’ll talk properly, not have a massive row about it.”

“I don’t want to have a row, Nick, I really don’t,” I said. “It’s just. . . what we had – have – is fine. Why change it, when there’s nothing wrong? I feel like since we decided to get married, we’re just fucking everything up.”

“Maybe ‘fine’ isn’t good enough, Pippa,” he said. “I thought getting married would make things better, move things forward. Nothing was wrong, exactly, but lots of things weren’t right. And so I tried to change it in a good way, in the right way, by reminding us we love each other. I don’t know about you, but I really need reminding of that at the moment. But this isn’t the time to talk about it. Get some sleep.”

So we said a sad, distant good night and I went and lay awake in the dark, listening to the frogs croaking and the cicadas chirping, until gradually the sounds changed to the first song of unfamiliar birds. Slowly, imperceptibly, the black sky lightened, then it blazed abruptly to life and my alarm clock went off.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Pickford/Martin wedding

Hi Imogen

I hope you’re well. I’m getting in touch to let you know there’s been a change to our plans. Please accept my apologies for the late notice once again. I will be in touch by phone shortly to discuss this in more detail, but in the meantime I wanted to give you a brief run-down of where things are at my end.

First of all, I

Oh fuck. I’m going to have to call her, aren’t I?

[Draft saved]

Throughout the next day, I was scratchy-eyed and distracted. Guido was back in the spotlight, cooking venison and expounding the benefits of eating meat that is entirely free-range and hence has the highest welfare standards. It didn’t matter very much what he said, because most of his script was being put together by the copywriter back in London, and was going to be recorded afterwards as a voiceover to make sure it was all on message. I cooked on autopilot, confident that these recipes, which had all been tested and developed weeks before, would work with minimal effort on my part.

“Are you okay, Pippa?” Sibongile asked. “You’re too quiet today.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just tired. I was up late talking to Nick, and then I couldn’t sleep.”

“Ah, pre-wedding nerves! You must be looking forward to getting back to him.”

“I am. But I guess I’m also sad that this is almost over. It’s been amazing. I’ve got that last day of the summer holiday feeling. Apparently it hasn’t stopped pissing with rain in London since I left.”

“Everyone always feels like that on the last day of filming,” she said. “It’s why wrap parties are such a big thing. Tonight should be fun.”

There had been murmurs all week about the approaching blow-out, and speculation about who would be spending the last night on location in bed with whom. One of the camera guys had even opened a book on it – I’d noted with amusement that Guido and me were at five to one; Gabriel and Sibongile were evens, although it had been argued that they didn’t count, having previously been an item.

“They shouldn’t waste their money,” Sibongile said. “There’s no way I’d ever sleep with him again. Madness!”

For once, the day’s shooting went without a hitch, and by mid-afternoon the director had called, “Cut!” for the last time. We cleaned our makeshift kitchen and packed up the leftover food to be given to the staff at the lodge. There was a move by some of the crew to head out for a drive and see the sunset, Sibongile announced that she was going to spend the rest of the afternoon in the spa having a massage, and Guido said there was just enough light left for a couple of hours on the golf course.

“What about you, Pippa?” he asked.

I decided that the spa sounded like a winner. My hair was a mess and my skin needed some serious attention, as I’d been too tired the last few nights to do much more than wave a cleansing wipe in the general direction of my face. And besides, I needed something to stop me obsessively looking for messages from Bethany on Nick’s blog. So I spent the rest of the afternoon being exfoliated, steamed, extracted, waxed and plucked to within an inch of my life, then went back to my room, painted my nails, did my make-up properly for the first time in ages, put on a floaty red dress over my bikini, and went to find the party.

Two huge barbeques were filled with glowing coals, and the air smelled deliciously of charring meat. Someone had brought portable speakers and the dulcet tones of Robin Thicke were competing with the sounds of the African night. Clearly I was a bit behind on the drinking. I fetched a G&T and went to join Jan and Chris, two of the camera crew, by the fire.

Chris was chattering excitedly about their drive, on which they’d apparently seen a leopard and her cubs. Jan was topping the story with one of his own, about how he’d spent two weeks filming in Kenya and seen more leopards than you could shake a stick at. Sibongile joined us and we compared notes about our spa treatments. Guido was holding court and opening bottle after bottle of champagne. There was no sign of Gabriel.

I finished my drink, and accepted another, then another, then had a couple of glasses of champagne, and somehow forgot to have any food. After a while things started to go a bit fuzzy around the edges. I remember dancing with Sibongile, treating Chris to a long and, I thought, hilarious account of the excesses of my wedding plans, and making an impassioned speech to Guido about what an honour it was to work with him, and how I loved him like a father.

It was after that that I decided I’d probably better back off before I made more of a fool of myself, so I topped up my glass and took it and my phone down to the swimming pool.

I longed to talk to Nick. But our home number rang and rang, and went to voicemail – the impersonal, professional message Nick had recorded years before thanking me for getting in touch with Digital Drawing Board, but regretting that Nick Pickford wasn’t available right now. I tried his mobile but he didn’t answer that either. Then I remembered – of course, it was Saturday night. It was Nick’s stag night. When I’d asked him about it, he’d said he had no idea what Iain was planning, and I’d been cool with that. But suddenly I felt very far away, and terribly insecure. Sitting on the edge of the pool, my feet and ankles in the lukewarm water, I opened his blog on my phone.

Staggering

So tonight’s the night. I’ve got no idea what Iain has up his sleeve for me but I’m sure it’s going to get messy. I’m trusting that the worst that will happen is the mother of all hangovers tomorrow – my mates won’t clingfilm me naked to a lamppost and tip tins of beans over my head like something out of Loaded magazine circa 1995, will they? Will they?

See you on the other side. I hope.

I scrolled down through the comments. There were lots of good luck posts from Nick’s usual followers, and a couple of stag night horror stories. Then I clicked on the ‘view private messages’ button, and what I saw made me feel like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

Nick and Bethany had been messaging each other all day.

At 8am she’d posted, “Morning lovebug,” and he’d replied straight away, “Hey Beff,” and they’d been at it ever since. I scrolled down through the messages.

“Just heading off to Loftus Road now,” Nick had written at two o’clock in the afternoon. “Reminds me of going to games with you – good times!”

“Don’t you take Pippa to football then?”

“Nah, she’s not that interested. Gotta go now – will touch base later.”

“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 responsibility, 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.