Chapter 1: Strictly Hypothetical
Sergeant John MacTavish had the worst left hamstring in Herefordshire and the best opinion of himself, and you'd spent three weeks trying to decide which one annoyed you more.
"That's no' a stretch," he said from the treatment table, flat on his back with his leg in your hands and his arms folded behind his head like a man sunbathing. "That's torture. I've been trained to resist torture, you know. Geneva Conventions. You're in breach."
"The Geneva Conventions don't cover physiotherapy."
"They should. Write to someone."
You pressed his heel another inch toward the ceiling. He made a noise like a kettle.
"Bit more," you said.
"You're enjoying this."
"I'm a professional." You were enjoying it a bit. He'd torn the muscle doing something he refused to describe in any detail beyond "a wall, a rope, and a bad decision," and he'd been coming to the clinic three times a week since, filling your quiet treatment room with a mohawk, a running commentary, and an accent that made "physio" sound like a word with four extra syllables. Half the receptionists had swapped shifts to be on when he came in. You'd been told by your manager to stop rolling your eyes at him in front of patients.
You'd stopped rolling your eyes. You hadn't stopped wanting to.
Your phone buzzed on the counter. You ignored it. It buzzed again. And again, in the relentless triple pattern that could only mean one person on earth.
"Someone wants you," Soap said.
"It's my mum."
"Answer it. I'll hold my own leg." He reached up and took his ankle from you, which was not the exercise, and grinned when you glared. "Go on. I'm a patient patient."
You picked up the phone because if you didn't, she'd ring the clinic's landline, and she'd done it before. "Hi, Mum. I'm with a client."
"Oh, I'll be quick, darling, I just need numbers for the seating plan. Kirsty's tearing her hair out." Your mother's voice came down the line at a volume designed to be heard across a Perthshire hillside. "So it's you and your fiancé at table three with Gran and the Buchanans. He's not a vegetarian, is he? Tell me he's not a vegetarian, the venison's already been ordered."
You closed your eyes.
"He's not a vegetarian," you said.
"Good! Oh, I can't wait to meet him. Six months and not one photo. Your father says he's starting to think you made him up." She laughed. You laughed too, in a high, slightly deranged way. "Kirsty says Graham's bringing his new girlfriend, by the way, so I put them at the other end of the room. I know you said you were over it, but still."
"I am over it."
"Of course you are, sweetheart. You're engaged! Right, love you, see you in a fortnight, bring a nice dress for the ceilidh!"
She hung up. You stood very still with the phone against your ear, listening to the dial tone, and then you put it face down on the counter and pressed your forehead against the cupboard above it.
Behind you there was a long, delighted silence.
"So," said Soap. "Fiancé."
You told him, eventually, because he wouldn't leave and because he was technically paying for the next twenty minutes.
Six months ago your mother had phoned to say that Graham, your ex of four years, the one who had left you for a job in Aberdeen and a woman named Saffron, was going to be best man at your sister's wedding, because he happened to be the groom's older brother, because the universe had a sense of humour. Your mother had then spent eleven minutes asking whether you were seeing anyone, whether you were happy, whether you were eating, whether Hereford was "very lonely, darling, all those soldiers," and at the twelfth minute, in a moment of pure self-defence, you had heard your own voice say, "Actually, Mum, I've got some news."
It had snowballed. It had acquired a name you'd panic-borrowed from a patient file. It had acquired a job (accountant, safe, dull) and a proposal story (a beach in Pembrokeshire, at sunset, in the rain). Your gran had knitted him a scarf.
"She knitted him a scarf," Soap repeated.
"In blue. Because I told her his favourite colour was blue."
"Is it?"
"He doesn't exist!"
Soap swung his legs off the treatment table and sat up, which he was not cleared to do that fast, and looked at you with the expression you'd seen on him exactly once before, when you'd told him he could start light running. It was a look of tremendous, uncomplicated joy.
"Where's the wedding?" he said.
"No."
"Just tell me where."
"A hotel on Loch Tay. Near Kenmore."
"Kenmore." He put a hand on his heart. "Bonnie wee place. Is there a ceilidh?"
"Obviously there's a ceilidh, my mother is from Pitlochry. No. Absolutely not."
"Free bar?"
"Sergeant MacTavish..."
"Johnny," he said. "If we're getting married, you'd better call me Johnny."
You looked at him. He looked back, his blue eyes bright and his mohawk sticking up on one side where it had been pressed against the table. There was a scar through his left eyebrow and another on his chin and a tattoo on his forearm that you'd never asked about, and he was, you had to admit, very obviously not an accountant.
"You're on two weeks' medical leave," you said slowly. "That's the only reason you're offering. You're bored."
"I'm bored out my skull," he agreed. "My captain's in Poland, my lieutenant's in a mood, and my only friend on base wears a skull on his face and answers texts with a full stop. I've watched every episode of Bake Off ever made, twice. And there's a lass here who needs a man for a Highland wedding by a fortnight Friday, and I'm a man from the Highlands, near enough, and I own a kilt." He spread his hands. "It's practically fate."
"You're not from the Highlands. You're from somewhere outside Glasgow."
"Your mum's no' going to know that."
"My mum will know that within four seconds of you opening your mouth."
"Then I'll be charming." He grinned. "I'm extremely charming. Ask anyone at reception."
You did not ask anyone at reception. You knew exactly what they'd say.
You said no on Monday. You said no on Wednesday, when he turned up for his session with a printout of the Loch Tay hotel's wedding packages and asked whether you thought the "Laird's Suite" was worth the upgrade. On Friday you said "We'd need rules," and he punched the air so hard he pulled the hamstring again and had to lie down.
You wrote the rules on a prescription pad, because it was the only paper in the room.
1. Hand-holding permitted. Arm around shoulders permitted. Nothing below the waist.
2. Our story: met at the clinic (true). He's not an accountant (we'll say he changed careers). No one mentions the army unless they have to.
3. No getting drunk and telling Gran the truth. (Him.) (Also me.)
4. No kissing unless strictly tactically necessary.
5. This ends after the wedding. Amicable break-up by Christmas. Nobody gets hurt.
Soap read it twice, then took the pen from your hand and added a line at the bottom in surprisingly neat capitals.
6. HE GETS TO WEAR THE KILT TO THE REHEARSAL DINNER TOO.
"That's not a rule," you said. "That's a demand."
"It's a term of engagement." He tore the page off and folded it into his wallet. "Pleasure doing business with you, fiancée."
That night, he texted a screenshot. It was from a conversation with someone saved as LT GHOST, and it said in full:
Soap: Off to the Highlands to marry a lass I met at physio. Fake. Long story. Wish me luck LT GHOST: Don't blow anything up. Soap: No promises LT GHOST: .
Underneath, Soap had written: he's thrilled for us x
You didn't know what to do about the x. You lay in bed and looked at it for an embarrassingly long time.
The train from Edinburgh to Pitlochry took two hours, and he spent most of it with his face against the window narrating the landscape like a nature documentary. "And here we see a sheep. Majestic. Look at her go." He'd let you take the window seat after you'd argued about it for ten minutes, and then leaned across you to look out of it anyway, and you'd pretended to be annoyed, and he'd pretended to believe you.
Two stops out, the hills started properly, brown and purple with late heather, and he went quiet. You glanced over. He was looking at his hands.
"Johnny?"
"Aye." He shifted in his seat, dug into the pocket of his jacket, and came out with a small box covered in faded green velvet, worn bald at the corners. He didn't open it. He held it out to you on his flat palm, like you might bite.
"Your mum's going to want to see a ring," he said. "First thing. Every mum does. So I phoned my auntie Jean and she sent this down from Stirling." He cleared his throat. "It was my gran's. My mam would've had it, but she's... well. It's been in a drawer since. It's no' much. But it's real, and it's old, and it'll stand up if your mum's got a jeweller's eye."
You opened it. Inside was a narrow band of rose gold with a small, clear stone set high in an old-fashioned claw, a stone that caught the light from the window and threw it across the carriage in tiny rainbows.
You couldn't speak.
"You can say no," he said quickly. "If it's too much. I've got a backup from Argos in my other pocket, cost me twelve quid..."
"Johnny." You looked up. He'd gone red to the tips of his ears. "I can't wear your grandmother's ring for a fake wedding."
"It's no' a fake wedding. It's your sister's wedding. It's very real. I've seen the venison invoice." He took the ring out of the box with fingers that had, by his own account, defused things you didn't want to think about, and they weren't quite steady. "It's just a fake fiancé. And it's a loan." He held it out. "I'll want it back after. Obviously. Gran'd haunt me."
The train slowed. Through the window, the station sign slid into view: PITLOCHRY. On the platform, in a red raincoat, waving both arms over her head like she was bringing in a jet, was your mother.
"Quick," Soap said. "Give us your hand, fiancée, we're on."