Highland Christmas-a heart-warming, laugh out loud book (SAMPLE ONLY)

The truth universally known to mothers

30 November

Dear Santa, I appreciate this is a busy time of year for you but if you could see your way to sending a few more customers to the Lochside Welcome, I'd be eternally grateful...

The person meant to be making a wish as she blew out her birthday cake candles was Evie, not me. But as this was her first birthday, I thought she'd be okay with me appropriating her request. And boy, did we need those customers... Today, however, would not be spent dwelling on non-existent punters. I pursed my lips. "Blow, Evie! Like this, one, two, three!"

Ah. Too late. The village's second youngest resident, Tamar McMillan, a year and a half older than Evie, sneaked up underneath the table, stuck his head up, blew with all his might and ducked back under again.

"Tamar!" The little scamp's mother barked at him. He ran from her, giggling. Evie wriggled in my arms, desperate to go after him. Evie loved Tamar. Her feelings weren't reciprocated. The last time Jolene and I took them swimming together, he did his best to duck her head under the water and keep it there.

"It's a phase he's going through," Jolene had said, "at least I hope so?"

I put Evie down and she scooted off on all fours—Tamar far more enticing than the prospect of cake.

As Evie was Lochalshie's youngest resident, everyone had assumed they were invited to her birthday celebration. Our house wouldn't have handled the numbers, so we hit on holding it in the Lochside Welcome, the hotel we part-owned with six others.

Jack had strewn the bar with the pink, silver and white bunting I had designed and helium balloons. The tables had been cleared away to make enough space for party games.

Xavier, the hotel's manager and head chef, had gone to town on the food. Brought up in Canada, he was unfamiliar with traditional British party food staples. Most of it made him shudder. But he'd stumbled on an old Nancy Spain cookbook from the 1960s. "Look at zees, Gaby! You slice cucumber up very thin and put it on ze whole salmon, so people think it is scales! Shall I do zis?"

When I pointed out children weren't always the biggest fans of salmon and many people in Lochalshie promised fish "gies me the dry boak" despite fish having been a natural part of the Scots diet for centuries, he pouted. Then cheered up when he read about the hedgehog—half of a grapefruit studded with cubes of cheese and pickled onions on cocktails sticks. I'd already worked my way through far too many of them, consoling myself that the pickled onions must count as one of your five a day.

The Lochside Welcome's signature pudding was a chocolate decadence dessert. Xavier had made the dessert Evie's birthday cake, levelling up the luxury with gold leaf—the gleam of it caught in the flickering flames of the candles.

He reappeared with a knife and sliced the cake into as many pieces as there were people—tricky, given the numbers. But job done, he, Jack and I handed the plates round.

Mhari, taking a break from her semi-official role as party photographer, sat down next to me and filched my cake.

"Hey!"

"Well, my slice was titchy. Cannae expect me to survive the rest of the afternoon on just a wee bittie o' cake."

"Can I see the pictures?"

"No. I need tae touch them up. 'Specially the ones of you."

Mhari, my Lochalshie self-described best friend, was an acquired taste.

"I got a cracking shot of Jack, though. Look."

Oh, wow. That one was going on our website for sure. A tough job being the wife of a man as delectable as Jack McAllan, but someone had to do it, right? Mhari had captured him as Xavier placed the cake in front of Evie—the candle flames illuminating the planes of his face, casting exaggerated shadows that only emphasised the similarity to the ancient statues of Greek gods. She must be using an enhanced colour filter too as the auburn red of his hair stood out in sharp relief.