Plus One

Every wedding needs a plus one. Lulu's needs a background check.Lulu Macrae was going to win a Pulitzer. Instead she's thirty-four, writing clickbait for the most loathed paper in Scotland, sharing a desk with a man whose smell has its own postcode, and conducting the longest relationship of her adult life with a vibrator on its last legs.Then her mother calls. Her wee sister - younger, radiant, terrifying - is marrying the richest man on Arran, and the family have thoughtfully arranged Lulu's wedding date: an eighty-something from the nursing home who's grand as long as he gets his lunch.In a moment of blind panic, Lulu invents a boyfriend.Now she has seventeen days to produce one - and the only plausible candidate is Clive: the polite, meticulous, umbrella-carrying stalker who has followed her at a respectful distance for six years and keeps files on everything, including her.One stamped contract later, they're on the ferry to the wedding of the season. Seven days of interrogating aunties, a bridezilla with a laminated run sheet, a groom whose charm doesn't survive an audit, and the boy who never kissed her at seventeen - back on the island, divorced, and holding a skimming stone.All Lulu has to do is keep the story straight, keep Clive from telling the truth, and keep her heart out of it.She fails at all three. Magnificently.