The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

‘Max,’ said Mrs Byrne. ‘Why don’t you stay to dinner? I’ve made a chicken pie, and there’s plenty for three of us.’

‘I wasn’t being rude,’ said Mr Byrne. ‘It’s just that strange things happen to men when they hit their mid- forties. For some reason they get an uncontrollable urge to have sex with twenty-year-old girls.’

‘That would be lovely,’ I said. ‘I mean, staying for dinner, not having sex with twenty-year-old girls. Which would also be lovely, of course, but … But anyway, I’m afraid I can’t. Dinner, I mean. I’ve got … I’ve got plans for tonight.’

‘Oh dear. Well, I’ll make another pot of tea, anyway.’

She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me and Mr Byrne alone for a few minutes. For a horrible moment I thought that he was going to attempt a heart-to-heart with me about the break-up of my marriage, but I needn’t have worried. We talked about the Toyota Prius instead. He told me about an article he’d read which claimed that the manufacturing process was so long and complicated that it actually cancelled out the environmental benefits of the hybrid engine. Also, apparently, there was a big question mark over whether it was possible to recycle the battery. He seemed to know an awful lot about it. But then Mr Byrne, like his son, had always struck me as being well informed. He was another of those men blessed (unlike me) with a hungry, enquiring mind.

Mrs Byrne was away for about twenty minutes. I wasn’t sure why it should be taking her so long to make a pot of tea. When she finally reappeared, however, all was made clear.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Alison. I thought I’d call her on the off chance. She says she’s at home all week, and she’d love to see you on Wednesday.’

‘Oh,’ I said, rather taken aback. ‘Well that’s great, thank you.’

‘Philip’s in Malaysia at the moment, so she’s booking a restaurant in town for that evening, and the two of you can go out and have a cosy dinner. The boys are both at boarding school now, of course.’

‘I’m very grateful, but –’

‘Ah!’ Mr Byrne jumped to his feet. ‘That gives me an idea.’

He left the room, while I struggled to get my head around this new development. It would mean adding an extra day to my journey, catching the ferry from Aberdeen on Thursday evening and arriving in Shetland on Friday morning. Was this a problem? Not necessarily. The other three salesmen would probably have reached their destinations and gone home by then, but why should that bother me? It wasn’t a race. Or if it was, I was never going to be the first one home. I was hardly the Robin Knox-Johnston or Bernard Moitessier in this scenario, after all. And besides, I was already well on course to win the other prize – the one for petrol consumption.

‘Well, that would be … that would be terrific, actually. Yes, why not? I’d love to see Alison again.’

‘And I’m sure she’d love to see you. Splendid. That’s all arranged, then.’

She beamed at me happily, and passed me another scone. I saw my own reflection leaning across to take it from the offered plate, reflected in the glass panels of the conservatory. Outside it was now almost dark. A bleak evening lay ahead of me, alone in my room in the Quality Hotel Premier Inn, yet I couldn’t bring myself to accept the Byrnes’ offer of dinner at their house. There was still a limit on how much human company I could tolerate in one day. I ate the scone in silence while Mrs Byrne talked to me soothingly, filling me in on news about friends of hers who I’d either never met or couldn’t remember meeting. Then, after a few minutes, Mr Byrne returned, huffing and puffing and carrying a big cardboard box.

‘There!’ he said, depositing it on the floor of the conservatory with an air of triumph.

‘Oh, Donald!’ said his wife. ‘Now what are you doing?’

‘This is from the attic,’ he explained.

‘I know where it’s from. What’s it doing down here?’

‘You said you were sick of the sight of it.’

‘So I am. That’s why I took it up to the attic. What have you brought it down again for?’

‘It doesn’t belong in our attic. We’ve got enough clutter up there. It’s Alison’s.’

‘I know it’s Alison’s. I keep asking her to take it away with her, and she keeps forgetting.’

‘She doesn’t forget. She deliberately doesn’t remember.’

‘Well, all right. No need to quibble. What of it?’

‘Max can take it up to her.’

‘Max?’

‘He’s going to visit her, isn’t he? Well, he can take this with him.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly.’

I looked at the box, which was so large that Mr Bryne had had difficulty carrying it by himself, and which was so full of papers that it was almost overflowing. Still, it would fit in my boot easily enough, and I could see no reason why I shouldn’t take it.

‘No, that won’t be a problem,’ I said. ‘What’s in here?’

‘All of Alison’s coursework. Nearly thirty years old, I should think.’

‘We should throw it out,’ said Mrs Byrne, ‘that’s what we should do. Burn it.’

‘We can’t do that,’ her husband said. ‘She sweated blood over this.’

‘A lot of good it did her. She never even qualified.’

‘Sue, if you remember, she did qualify. She never practised. Not the same thing at all. And she still might, now that the children are almost grown up.’