Evil for Evil Read Free

unlike this weird, secretive little place with its mysterious alliances and feuds going back generations, so as an incomer you kept putting your foot in it because no one would tell you who was on speaking terms and who wasn’t. She’d learnt tact the hard way, and she was tolerated now – though of course you couldn’t expect to be accepted until you’d had your own fifty-year feud.
    Not that it would be hard to start one. It would be a luxury not to have to be pleasant to some people, but luxuries had no place in Georgia’s life now. She sometimes thought her tongue must be scarred from keeping it between her teeth, but she always managed to smile. As long as the pub was a going concern, there might be a bedazzled summer visitor who was as naive as they had been, and then she’d be out of here. That dream kept her going when each night she came through from the adjoining house to open up.
    Georgia took a pride in polishing the mahogany bar counter and brass fittings and the wooden floor, hollowed with the traffic of years. She kept a fire burning in the cast-iron fireplace, even in summer, since the white building with thick walls and small windows wasalways cool. Soon she’d be drawing the red curtains and switching on red-shaded lamps; the pub looked at its cosy best during the dreary winter months, though six customers then was a busy evening. Once the nights drew in and everyone retreated into their houses, she barely saw her neighbours. It was, well, creepy.
    Tonight, though, it was cheerful enough, with low sun streaming in and the back door open to the view and the soft sea air. Georgia was polishing glasses and watching the
Six O’Clock News
on the TV at the end of the bar. They’d all been agog when the film team arrived at Lovatt’s Farm and she was expecting a gossiping influx later. At the moment, though, there were only two regulars sitting up at the bar and a couple wearing shorts and hiking boots drinking lager at a table.
    Derek Sorley made small, explosive noises all through the item, like a kettle that might blow its lid off once it built up steam. He was one of Georgia’s leading feud candidates: rat-faced, bald at the front with straggling grey hair at the back caught into a ponytail, an unfortunate style suggesting the whole lot was gradually sliding off backwards.
    Sometimes she could almost see a miasma of spite and envy around him. He had a grudge against anyone with ‘advantages’, which seemed to mean anyone who hadn’t lost several jobs through rudeness and idleness as he had, to her certain knowledge. Still, he was good for a couple of pints every evening, and Georgia couldn’t afford to be choosy.
    When the report finished, Sorley burst out, ‘Oh, great! And how did St Matt arrange that little piece of PR? Our wounded hero, healing “our boys” – and girls too, you notice. Could be on to a good thing there! Wonder how Mrs Matt feels about his brave little soldier?’ He gave an unpleasant snigger. ‘And what chance now of an enforcement order for access to the island? He’s only to say they need peace andquiet to recover and he’ll have everyone sobbing. Oh, I never said he was stupid!
    ‘Right to Roam – that’s a joke! Bloody government promises access all over Scotland, but they just roll over for the landlords.’
    Georgia had no special brief for Matt Lovatt. Bit of a moody sod, and she could count the number of times he’d come in here on one hand – but then, the locals had hardly made him welcome after he’d refused Steve Donaldson a tenancy agreement so he could farm himself. Pub etiquette meant a non-committal response, but she heard herself saying, ‘Well – he’s got fallow deer there. They’re shyer than the red deer – maybe they’d panic if tourists went tramping around.’
    The man at the other end of the bar had watched without comment. Cal Findlay had a prawn boat working out of Kirkcudbright, but lived here with his mother in an isolated