Free A Groom With a View by Sophie Ranald Page A

she’s been longing to have a baby since she left Bruce and she decided, to hell with it, she wasn’t going to piss about waiting for another man to come along, she was going to crack on with it on her own.” I took a big gulp of my wine.
    “Wow, that’s really exciting for her,” Nick said. “But she won’t be going on maternity leave for, like, ages, will she?”
    “No, she won’t,” I took another swig of wine and realised the glass was almost empty. “Another pint? And shall we order some food?”
    “So what’s it got to do with you?” Nick asked, when I got back from the bar. “I mean, obviously you’ll have to work with a new person when she does go off to have the baby, but for now?”
    “It’s Guido’s African Safari ,” I said. “It’s being filmed in South Africa and Tamar’s flat-out refusing to go. She says she’s not willing to risk the long-haul flights, and what’s more a lot of the filming locations are in high-risk areas for malaria. Apparently the official advice is for pregnant women to stay away. Guido’s furious, but Helen says if he were to try and make her go she could claim constructive dismissal and Guido would be in court before you could say ‘indirect sex discrimination’. Not that he would, obviously, because he doesn’t treat us that way.”
    “Blimey,” Nick said. “But I still don’t see what. . .”
    For someone as clever as he is, Nick can be maddeningly dense sometimes. Our burgers arrived and we went through the whole, “Ketchup or mayo? Anything else you need?” conversation with the waitress.
    I applied a liberal sprinkling of salt to my chips and ate one. After the low-fat, low-sodium Thatchell’s food, it tasted like heaven.
    “I’m going to have to go instead,” I said. I tried to sound reluctant, but to be totally honest I was absolutely fizzing with excitement about the idea. I mean, filming for national television in an exotic location on the other side of the world and getting paid a substantial bonus for it – you so would, wouldn’t you?
    “Wow!” said Nick. “Pip, that’s absolutely fantastic for you! Awesome! Congratulations.” He clinked his glass against mine. “So when do you go?”
    “Well, that’s where the problem is,” I said. “The good news is it doesn’t overlap with the date of the wedding. The other good news is that I’ll be able to take lots of time off afterwards so we can have a fabulous honeymoon. But the bad news is I’ll be away for a week at the beginning of next month, then for two weeks after Christmas and I only get back three weeks before the wedding. So basically there’s going to be hardly any time between now and then when I’ll be around, and even then work is going to be totally full-on.”
    “Okay.” Nick had another bite of his burger and a sip of lager. “It’s not ideal. But you know what? You took the office job with Guido so you could have a life with me instead of working nights. You didn’t buy new shoes or have a holiday for two years when I left Iain’s agency and started out on my own. You’ve sacrificed a room in the flat to be my studio. You’ve never once moaned when clients ring me at ten o’clock at night. And your career’s fucking important, Pippa. What kind of dick would I be to mind about taking on a bit more of the planning for our wedding because you’re doing something awesome that you care about, that’s going to benefit us both in the long term?”
    I reached across the table and kissed him, my hair narrowly missing the ketchup. “You’re so amazing. I thought that was what you’d say. I hoped it was. But I was worried it might be a problem. It’s a hell of a lot of work, planning a wedding. Katharine says it took her five hundred hours, or something, in total.”
    “Ah, but Katharine’s offered to help, remember?” said Nick. “She spent five hundred hours planning a wedding so we don’t have to. And we’ve got her USB stick holding all the