Highland Wedding - A CHICK LIT ROMANTIC COMEDY (SAMPLE ONLY)

The Outdated Institution

 Despite our best intentions—and all that anticipatory action we'd built up earlier in the day—we didn't stumble out of the Lochside Welcome until well after nine o'clock.

When Ashley told us the date of the Royal George launch, Jack and I exchanged horrified grimaces. Engagements were all well and good but they were supposed to last ages. We'd hold a party for our friends, everyone would bring us a present (hopefully), we'd hashtag #engaged all over the place, plan our wedding in perfect detail three years ahead of the event and bang! We got married. Three-and-a-half months—or fifteen weeks—must miss out a lot of those key steps. You couldn't, for example, ask people to come to an engagement party (armed with pressie) and then demand their attendance at your wedding a few months later (again armed with pressie).

Greedy acquisition stuff aside, I was pretty sure wedding organisation took longer than twelve weeks Like, a lot longer. Didn't photographers get booked up a year in advance? And weren't you supposed to take months searching for the perfect dress?

Jack tightened his hold on my hand. "Aye... okay, Ashley. The Lochside Welcome it is!"

A cheer sounded. Everyone had been listening in, and all those who'd been inside drifted out to join us. Camera flashed left, right and centre, making me feel as if I was a celebrity. Every single app on my phone beeped—even the BBC weather one (felt like) as folks reacted to the news.

Ashley said the champagne was on the house—well, for me and Jack anyway. He whisked the bottle out of reach of Stewart, who only ever drank out of pint glasses no matter the drink. But everyone kept toasting us and it was only polite to raise our glasses when they did so. And Jack's mother appeared—once the village's GP and now too in demand as Psychic to the Stars, Caroline McLatchie.

"Jack! Gaby!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "You've made me the happiest woman in the world!"

Fresh from her packed stall at the Highland Games, she still wore her psychic costume—long tasselled skirt, peasant-style smock top and her hair tucked under a turban. The village's former GP kept her side line secret for years. But ever since Caitlin Cartier outed her as the source of amazingly accurate advice, she was out and proud. I say 'amazingly accurate' because my (almost) mother-in-law once confessed to me she made up as she went along. Modern life made it easy for the would-be fake psychic. All she needed to do was check out people on social media, read their body language and say she sensed pain and indecision.

"Didn't you see it in the stars then, Mum?" Jack asked. He took a dim view of his mother's activities and often had to rein her in. This year, for instance, she wanted to charge people £50 for a ten-minute consultation in her tent. Psychic to the Stars prices and all that.

She flapped a heavily be-ringed hand. "I never use my powers to look at my own family members!"

Convenient.

Ashley's promised pizza never materialised so by the time we left, my feet appeared to be working independently of my brain.

"I love you, you know," I said as we headed back to the house, darkness around us. "And I'm the luckiest woman alive!"

"I know. And watch your st—oh, too late."

Crap. Literally. I'd trodden in it—a heap of steaming dog poo outside Jamal's General Store. Despite his combing through his CCTV footage looking for the culprit who made a habit of this, the irresponsible dog owner had never been identified.

"How romantic!" I wailed, wiping my feet back and forth on the grass. "Just as I was declaring my love. And by the way, aren't you the luckiest man in the entire world?"

"Luckiest guy ever...."

He might have tried to sound less sarcastic. My phone buzzed—a tinny ring sound I'd given my best friend so I could prioritise her calls and messages.

"WHAT THE..."

Some choice expletives followed. Oh dear. Katya must still be a member of the Lochalshie WhatsApp group. Or our friends' social media posts hashtag GabyJackEngaged gave it away and all before I'd spoken to her. The phone showed eight missed calls.

By this point, we'd arrived back at the house.

"Katya," I mouthed to Jack as he opened the door and I pressed the call back button. Mildred, waiting behind the door, miaowed angrily, her fluffy ginger and white tail waving huffily in the air She preferred a feed on demand routine. I'd been out most of the day. We were well behind schedule.

"Sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry times a million trillion billion," I said as soon as Katya picked up. Jack rolled his eyes and retreated to the kitchen followed by the still-complaining Mildred. "But aren't you pleased for me?"

"Marriage is a sorry institution that props up an outdated patriarchal system."

"Thanks, Katya."

"Kidding—well, half-kidding. I'm delighted for you. Have you set a date?"

"Ah, now there's a thing," I dropped onto the comfiest armchair in the room and tucked my legs under me. The phone call would take a while. Jack's expression had changed back to inscrutable, and I wished yet again that I'd done the proposal differently. In private. Nowhere near a landlord with a desperate plan. He pointed to the upstairs bedroom and left again.

There was another wish. In my proposal fantasy, I said the words, he punched the air with joy and we then spent the evening in bed doing filthy things. When I'd first met Jack, I entertained an intriguing fantasy where I imagined his body half-naked and wrapped in a pristine white towel. When I first got to see it, reality surpassed my expectations. Every time I saw him in the buff now, he still made me gasp.

"Twenty-first December," I told Katya.

"Good stuff," she said. "We can have your hen night in September, and you've got more than a year to do Pilates three times a week so your pelvic floor muscles are in excellent shape for a honeymoon that—"

"Katya. It's December this year."

The silence lasted far too long.

"OMG. Why? Are we living in 1922? Are you pregnant and you're marrying so your shame doesn't show too much as you walk up the aisle is a baggier than normal dress?"

"No!" I squawked. "I am not pregnant!"

Upstairs, a bang sounded. If bangs could sound part horrified part terrified part relieved that one did.

Mildred butted my hand with her head wafting stinky cat food breath my way. I adjusted position so she could sit on me.

"So why?"

I explained Ashley's offer stroke emotional blackmail plea for us to marry in the Lochside Welcome to knock the shine off the Royal George's official launch. And mentioned that I'd seen Zac.

A hiss. "And how is the lying git?"

"I didn't speak to him. I don't, as a rule, converse with murderers."

"But your wedding. It's so soon," she said. "I mean... well, I had something to tell you. Dead important in terms of career development."

"Aren't you already wildly successful?"

True. Katya had ghost-written Caitlin Cartier's autobiography stretching it out for 80,000 words despite Caitlin being a mere 22. She'd received a fat fee in advance. The book was due out anytime now, and Katya had negotiated royalties too. She was about to hit the stratosphere. Caitlin now considered Katya a bosom buddy, thanks to the autobiography. They exchanged DMs all over the place. I might have been jealous, had Katya not told me Caitlin considered 750 other people who also worked for her in some capacity as close mates.

"Not me. You."

"Me?"

She explained. I listened, excitement mounting. An unbelievable opportunity.

How it fitted with me walking up the aisle in three months' time was another matter.