January 2025

The below extract comes from Alexander’s newest series, The Perfect Passion Company. This novel tells the charming story of Katie who runs a matchmaking bureau in Edinburgh’s New Town. This extract follows Katie and her helpful neighbour William with one of their clients George, who has recently started a relationship with Emma. They attend an off-season Burns Night, a traditional Scottish celebration typically held in January.

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Katie spoke again to Emma as she and William walked with her to the Hutton Hotel. It was one of those settled, benign nights that an Edinburgh summer can occasionally conjure up, when latitude seems immaterial, the air is still, the sky is clear, and darkness, even at eight in the evening, is still almost three hours away.

“I’m not entirely comfortable with this,” Katie said. “In fact, I think the whole thing is slightly ridiculous. But . . .”

Emma and William both turned to look at her as they walked along.

“But?” prompted William.

“But George wants it,” Katie went on. “He doesn’t want his mother to interfere. He’s jumpy. He knows that you have to see her at some point, Emma. And you want that too, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Emma. “I do. But, like you, I don’t like the idea of a relationship – any relationship being concealed. It goes against the grain.”

“Poor George,” said William. “He’s scared stiff of that mother of his.”

“I can’t wait to see what she’s like,” said Emma. “A real dragon, do you think? Fire-breathing?”

“We’ll soon see,” said Katie. “But Emma, I think it’s really important that you keep a low profile. Don’t be tempted to do or say anything that could make her suspect that you and George are an item. Please don’t.”

Emma bit her lip.

“She may still feel she can see off anybody who threatens her relationship with her son,” William said. “People like that can be pretty confident of their powers.”

“And she’s done it before,” Katie pointed out. “She probably imagines she can do it again easily enough.”

They continued with their journey in silence. The Hutton Hotel was only twenty minutes or so from Cumberland Street, where Katie and William had met Emma at her flat. Now they were only a few minutes away.

“You’ve never been to a Burns Supper before, have you, William?” Katie asked.

William shook his head. “I went to a St. Andrew’s Night Dinner in Melbourne once, but that was different. They had a piper and so on, and somebody sang ‘Jock of Hazeldean,’ but that was about it. My father likes to go to those things. He loves formal dinners. He can’t get enough of them.” He paused. “What happens at a Burns Supper?”

Katie explained. She started by reminding him that to have a Burns Supper in a month other than January was highly unusual, so it was possible that the format could be quite different. But if it followed the normal pattern, she said that there would be a piper who would pipe in the haggis. “The chef brings it in, held high on a plate,” she said. “And then the person addressing it, sticks a knife in through the casing, which I’m sorry to say was traditionally a sheep’s stomach.”

William made a face.

“Nowadays,” Katie went on, “it’s a sort of artificial sausage skin.”

“And then?” asked William.

“Then we get our haggis, served along with turnips – or neaps, as we call them. And there are more addresses. There’s something called the Immortal Memory, where somebody speaks about Burns, and there are usually songs and so on. It’s all very Scottish. You’ll enjoy it. It’s very sentimental.”

Emma agreed. “I used to go to them,” she said. “When I was at university in Glasgow. I was in a club that used to have them. We had a speaker once who went on for almost an hour.”

“I doubt if that will happen tonight,” said Katie. “This is mainly for tourists. I suspect many of them won’t know that Burns’s birthday was back in January and that this will be the only Burns Supper in Scotland taking place off piste.”

“But what you don’t know, you don’t fret over,” said William.

“Precisely,” agreed Katie.

They arrived at the hotel, where there was already a small crowd in the entrance hall. The dinner itself was to be in the large dining room that had been added to the side of the house in late Victorian times. This room was effectively a very large conservatory, with French windows giving out onto an expanse of lawn and a walled garden. There was a top table, set for twenty or so, and a further twelve tables at which six guests would be seated. Because of the light still visible in the sky above the glass roof, there was no real need for lighting, but candles had been lit at each table. Near the open door onto the garden, these candles guttered, and in some cases had been
extinguished.

There was a seating plan, and because they were among the last to arrive, they went straight to their table and did not help themselves to the drink that the other guests had been offered. There were two spare seats at their table, but a waiter came and wordlessly removed these.

Katie looked around for George, and eventually saw him ushering guests into an anteroom off to one side. These were those who were to be seated at the top table, and when the piper struck up, these guests were piped in, all walking in a long line with a tall, rather imperious-looking woman at their head. All the other guests stood up to welcome the official party, clapping in time to the pipe tune.

“Margaret,” whispered Katie, nudging William, who was seated beside her.

William followed her gaze. “Yes,” he whispered back. “That’ll be her all right.”

Katie glanced at Emma, who had reached the same conclusion as she had. Emma gave her a half-smile, a conspiratorial acknowledgement. She mouthed a word silently, that Katie thought was probably Mother.

The haggis arrived, greeted with a cheer by some of the guests. The visitors were conspicuous by the photography in which they now engaged: every moment of the ceremony was accompanied by small flashes from phones held above heads. Then the platter was carried off by the chef, steam rising from the spilled entrails, to be divided out in the kitchen. An excited buzz of conversation now arose, as the foreign visitors discussed what they had seen.

Margaret rose to pronounce the welcome. “This supper is one of Scotland’s great traditions,” she said. “This is how we recall the memory of our great national poet and pay him homage. We are honoured to share this with all of you – wherever in the world you come from.”

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This extract comes from The Perfect Passion Company, available now. The sequel to this novel, Looking for You, will be published in the UK in February 2025.