There had been some altercation between the Chief Constable and her husband in the wake of their own personal tragedy. She was not quite sure what it was all about and Bill had been reticent on the subject. Still he seemed happy to be back in his own division even though Superintendent Mitchison had returned from the Met releasing Lorimer from his temporary designation. Now he was Detective Chief Inspector once more and he gave no sign that it bothered him in the slightest.
The books and papers were scattered on the grass beside her sunbed waiting for her attention. Maggie smiled as she picked up one of the books. It was an old friend, from her undergraduate days, this book with its blue cover. Lying back, Maggie thought of the writer. Hadn’t he spun tales that were woven around the changing seasons, giving a pattern to life? There was some comfort in such notions, she thought.
Come the winter there would be the time for Rosie and Solly’s baby to be born. A Valentine’s child, Rosie had told her dreamily, after calculating when she had conceived. The year would turn and death would give way to new life, just as the Orcadian poet had observed. Maggie smiled, browsing through the familiar stories. Her kids at school would love some of these.
Then she stopped, finding a page where her younger self had underlined an entire paragraph. Maggie gave a little sigh, feeling something heavy slip away from her as she read the words that told of this dance through the everlasting cycle of life.
‘And then suddenly everything was in its place.
The tinkers would move for ever through the hills.
Men would plough their fields. Men would bait their lines. Comedy had its place in the dance too — the drinking, the quarrelling, the expulsion, the return in the morning. And forever the world would be full of youth and beauty, birth and death, labour and suffering.’