The Turning Tide Read Online Free PDF

enthusiasm was sweet.
    ‘And you won’t believe what I found in a charity shop on the way here this morning,’ he said, and pulled a package from his bag. It was a large plastic suit with a hood, bright white, and big enough for a six foot man with a thyroid problem.
    ‘Crivens, Arj, those look like my father-in-law’s cricket waterproofs. I hope you weren’t planning on going out in public wearing that.’
    ‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’ he grinned. ‘Vintage, and only a fraction of the cost of Gore-Tex.’
    ‘And not breathable, so you’ll sweat your cods off in it.’ Morag shook her head. She could imagine him gamely having a go at the local hills clad in his new white plastic suit. The locals would likely think the CSI had turned up. Or possibly a spaceman.
    At least Arjun had been able to come with her on this constituency visit. Usually he stayed in London while she made her trips north, but she was short-handed this time around. Her constituency secretary had cited the barrage of abusive letters after the referendum as the source of her stress, and quit. Morag couldn’t make head or tail of it. The letters had been addressed to her, after all, not to the secretary. But she could hardly object when the woman served notice. To do otherwise would be to invite a lawsuit. She supposed that was Britain now, compensation culture all the way.
    ‘Newspaper headlines before we let the grannies in?’
    ‘Go on then.’ Morag sniffed at the cup of coffee. Any place in London offering a drink this poor would be shut in days. She sighed, tucked her silver-streaked bob behind her ears and sipped the indifferent brew. The coffee at least tasted better than it looked, but that was hardly a ringing endorsement.
    ‘Right, above the fold . . . Council backs option 8 on the town bypass,’ Arjun began. ‘Local protestors turn out in force.’ He looked up. ‘What’s “in force” around here?’
    Morag considered. ‘Eight, maybe ten.’
    ‘Not twelve?’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous, that would be a “mob”. What else?’
    Each time she came back to the Highlands, Morag felt more and more out of place. It wasn’t helped by the local memory of her predecessor in Parliament: a heavy drinking ex-boxer and leader of the Liberals who was ousted by the party for punching the Speaker. She got the feeling people would rather have an alcoholic Auld Boy representing them than someone with ambition and drive. He had died shortly after losing his seat and the funeral procession went on for five miles. Quite an achievement in a town that hardly had five miles of tarmac in it.
    Not for the first time she mused that if Scotland had gone independent, it would have spelled the end of her current tenure. At least that would have freed her from any responsibilities up here. She shook the thought out of her head. Heresy. Without that referendum success, she wouldn’t have secured her place on the front bench.
    Yet moving up into the Shadow Cabinet seemed to make her local detractors even angrier. What was she meant to do, aim for the middle? Settle for average? Waste time in a backwater constituency with no greater ambition than getting EU approved terroir status for Stornoway black pudding? That was not her style. Shadow Home Secretary was not the most glamorous brief, but she was determined to work as hard on this as she did on anything else.
    Arjun kept reading while Morag checked her make-up in a hand mirror and freshened her taupe lipstick. The deep lines etched either side of her mouth gave her the look of a stern headmistress. What folks in Cameron Bridge failed to appreciate was that her rise in the party had not been easy or quick. Far from it. Sure, the odd columnist might sneer about ‘uneasy alliances’ during the referendum and MPs who ‘sold out the voters’, but whatever they thought in Scotland, London mattered more to her. Down there, which croft your granddad had worked was less important than being able to play the