Sun at Midnight Read Online Free PDF

her and her voice famous.
    She was never short of energy. Even after she had become a celebrity she continued her research and maintained her reputation as a serious scientist. Her meticulous work on the breeding patterns of Weddell seals pioneered a subsequent generation of Antarctic studies.
    This morning, Margaret was replying to a personal message from Lewis Sullavan.
    There had been a succession of increasingly insistent communications from his staff and now there was one from the great man himself. She sat for a moment with her fingers resting beside the keyboard. She looked out into the garden without seeing the heavy trees that leaned over into the lane, then shook herself and began.
    ‘My dear friend, I really cannot accept your kind invitation,’ she recited as she picked out the words. ‘Much as I would like to. The fact is that I am now 77 years of age and I have severe arthritis. However, there remains the alternative proposal.’
    The cat yawned and stood up to claw the sofa cushions. Margaret heard Trevor’s footsteps crossing the upstairs landing from the bathroom to his study. The floorboards creaked as they always did.
    ‘My daughter is very interested in the idea,’ Margaret typed and whistled through her teeth as she sat back to review what she had written.
    ‘We’ll see, eh?’ she said, addressing the last remark to the cat.
    She heard a car and quickly looked up. Alice’s car rounded the overgrown circular flowerbed that blocked the space between the house and the gate to the road, and drew up outside the front door.
    ‘Soon enough,’ Margaret added. She saved her unfinished message to Lewis Sullavan and was hobbling away from a blank screen by the time Alice came in.
    ‘Ah, there you are at last,’ Margaret said briskly.

CHAPTER THREE
    Alice had brought a bunch of bright orange lilies with chocolate-speckled throats, her mother’s favourite flowers. She wrapped her arms round Margaret, hugging her close. She saw that the room looked as it always did; it was her mother who seemed smaller, as if the disorder might finally be on the point of overwhelming her.
    ‘Hello, Mum. Here I am.’
    After a brief embrace Margaret leaned away, apparently for a better view of her daughter.
    Alice’s hair was thick and slightly wavy, the same texture and silvery blonde colour as Margaret’s had also once been. Margaret’s was white now, and she wore it bluntly chopped round her face They were both slightly built, but Alice seemed to grow taller as Margaret’s painful stoop increased. Margaret said that her daughter was much more contemplative and serious-minded than she had ever been, but Trevor insisted that she was so like her mother at the same age that they could have passed for twins. Neither woman believed him.
    ‘Mum, the music’s very loud. Can I turn it down a bit?’
    ‘Is it? All right.’
    Margaret motioned to the CD player and watched witha touch of envy as Alice swung with an unthinking fluid movement and muted the sound.
    ‘How do you feel?’ Alice asked.
    ‘I’m grand,’ she answered, although the pain was bad today. ‘And we’re away on holiday in three days, even though we don’t do so much here that needs taking a holiday from .’
    ‘Come on, you’re just going to stay in a nice hotel in Madeira and enjoy being waited on for once. Why don’t you sit down?’
    Margaret gave an impatient shrug but she let Alice guide her gently to the sofa. They sat down once Alice had pushed the cat aside.
    ‘Where’s Dad?’
    ‘He’ll be down as soon as he realises you’re here. I want a word first.’
    ‘Is something wrong? Have you seen Dr Davey?’
    ‘Don’t fuss, Alice. I’m perfectly fine.’ Margaret’s feet in elastic-sided shoes were placed flat on the floor, exactly together, toes pointing forward. She sat upright, hands folded.
    Her mother wanted to be invulnerable, to remain as allcapable and all-knowing as she had always managed to be. Alice understood that