Read A Groom With a View for Free Online Page A

phlox that were blooming in wild profusion, even though it was almost November (since Mum and Dad retired from academia, they’ve gone completely gardening-crazy, along with discovering amateur dramatics. Their garden is a thing of beauty and the plays put on by the Westbourne Thespians are staggeringly awful), I could feel a huge, happy smile plastering itself on my face. I love coming home.
    “Hello, darling,” Mum met us at the front door, wearing ancient jeans and a checked shirt that I remembered giving Dad about fifteen Christmases ago. Despite her shabby clothes, her hair and her make-up were perfect as always, and she smelled deliciously of Chanel Number 5 when she hugged me. “Hello, Nick dear. Come in and have a drink. Your father’s tidying the shed, he promised he’d be in soon but perhaps you could go and hurry him along while Pippa helps me with lunch. I thought I’d put some beetroots into the stew but they seem awfully hard, and I’m afraid the lamb’s a bit tough too. It’s the most extraordinary colour though, quite dramatic.
    “Did I tell you I’m playing Gertrude?” she went on. “It’s our first attempt at Shakespeare and I think perhaps Hamlet was a tiny bit ambitious. Stanley, the director, has cut ever so many lines but it’s still over three hours long and you know how restive audiences can get when they want to go to the loo and have a drink.”
    I shuddered inwardly at the thought of the hours that lay in my future watching the Westbourne Thespians transform the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark into farce. “That’s brilliant, Mum, you must be really proud! If it’s too long surely they can just cut more?”
    “You’d think so,” she said, “but Dominic Baker is playing the lead and he’s really rather good and gets cross if too many of his lines are taken out. So it may end up being one long soliloquy. But how are you, darling? How’s work? What shall we do about this lamb?”
    As I attempted a rescue job on lunch and Mum opened a bottle of Riesling, I told her all about Guido and Zelda and the ostrich lasagne, and she laughed. She loves hearing my stories about Falconi’s. If my parents were disappointed to have a daughter who only just scraped through three A-levels in Food Technology, Creative Writing and French and was clearly never destined to become a mathematician like Mum or a chemist like Dad, they’ve hidden it really well.
    They’ve always loved Nick, too, ever since he became my First Proper Boyfriend when I was sixteen. By the time I met him, I’d had a few unsatisfactory fumbles at parties and three disastrous dates with Kevin Popplewell, culminating in us going to see What Lies Beneath and him pressing my fingers into his lap and urging me to discover what lay beneath the zip of his jeans. Two minutes later he’d spunked all over my hand and I’d stormed out into the night. I still can’t see Michelle Pfeiffer’s face without wanting to reach for the antibacterial gel.
    Anyway, it was a Saturday night and Callie and I were made up to have been invited to Suze Pickford’s birthday party. Suze was one of the most popular girls in our year and was rumoured to have a hot older brother who played in a band, so she was way out of our league. However, she’d been at Tabitha Smith’s party two weeks before, and I had increased my standing amongst our peer group hugely by making a batch of hash brownies that were not only lethal but actually tasted quite good. So I, together with Callie and a batch of Nigella’s finest, liberally laced with weed, had cracked the nod.
    Even at sixteen, I knew I was never going to achieve the long-limbed, silky-haired look that was all the rage at the time (thanks for demolishing any confidence I might have had in my appearance as a teenager, cast of Friends ). I was short and hourglass-shaped, with dark brown hair that would occasionally, for no apparent reason, decide to fall into soft, loose natural curls, but was a mop of