Few assignments appealed less to Lindsay than royal visits. To be stuck with the rest of the pack, trailing behind some lesser scion of a monarchy she despised, festooned with badges of different colors to tell the security guards where one could and couldn’t go, was not her idea of a good day’s work. And as a common freelance she could not even complain as bitterly as the rest of the press were doing, for she was glad of a day’s work, tedious though it might be. And on that Tuesday, tedious it certainly was, particularly after the excitements of her weekend in Derbyshire. A children’s hospital, an art exhibition, and a new youth club on a housing estate had all been superficially visited and the correct rituals observed. The photographers had taken their pictures, the reporters had scrambled their words together, everyone had kept in their rightful places. So, as she stood watching the royal jet take off through the rain in the late afternoon, Lindsay felt an enormous sense of relief. Another day, another dollar.

She said goodbye to her photographer and found a phone. It was after five by the time she had finished dictating copy, but she was nevertheless surprised when the news-desk told her not to bother coming into the office for the last couple of hours of her shift and to call it a day. “See you tomorrow, then,” she said, quickly putting down the phone before they could change their minds. There was a spring in her step as she walked over to the car park and climbed into her MG. Being in love made a difference, she thought wryly. Even with a possible murderer.

Twenty minutes later she was unlocking the front door of her top-floor tenement flat. She sighed with pleasure as she closed the door behind her. There was something on the answering machine, she noticed, but she ignored it, went through to the living-room, and poured herself a generous whisky. She took her glass over to the window, sat down, and lit a cigarette as she gazed over the trees to the distant university tower which stabbed the skyline to her left. She always relished returning to her eyrie, and loved the view that had nothing to do with the Glasgow of popular mythology; that hard, mean city composed of razor gangs and high-rise slums was not the city that most Glaswegians recognized as their home. Sure, there were bits of the city that were barely civilized. But for most people Glasgow now was a good place to live, a place with its own humor, its own pride.