The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

cool. I must have gone round about six or seven times before I noticed a police car approaching from the direction of New Street Station, up Smallbrook Queensway. I made a hasty exit up towards Five Ways and from there I drove back to the hotel at a very sensible twenty-eight miles per hour.

Once I’d parked the car I checked in the boot, because while I’d been using Holloway Circus as a carousel I’d heard some strange noises coming from there. Sure enough, my antics on the roundabout had caused Alison’s cardboard box to slide about from end to end, and most of the papers that had been sitting precariously on top were scattered all over the place. The wind was now quite strong and as soon as I opened the boot some of these papers even blew out and started flying around the car park. Swearing loudly, I ran backwards and forwards in every direction trying to catch them all, but while I was doing this another gust blew up and even more of them started to scatter. I slammed the boot shut and finally succeeded, with a great deal of effort and a certain amount of help from a rather bemused passer-by, in gathering them all together again. I scrunched them up in a bundle clutched tightly against my chest and got into the back of the car to try to straighten them out and put them in some sort of order. I was out of breath and strangely disturbed by the whole episode. As far as I knew these were just ancient college essays of Alison’s, of no particular value, but at the same time I felt I had been entrusted with an important task in returning them to her, and I didn’t want to mess it up.

However, this thought went clean out of my head when I glanced at the top sheet of paper as I laid it out on the back seat of the car. What do you think was the first word to catch my eye?

It was ‘Max’.

Not just once, either. The word ‘Max’ occurred four or five times on this page alone.

I seemed to be looking at the middle of an essay of some sort. I started rooting around in the random pile of papers on my lap to try to find other pages from the same essay. Most of them were still together, and still in sequence, but some appeared to be missing. I found what was obviously the last page of the essay, which was number 18. Then I found the first page, which was headed ‘PRIVACY VIOLATION – Alison Byrne, 22nd February 1980’. Privacy Violation? What was all that about? There was also a note paperclipped to this first page. It was in different – more masculine – handwriting, and after I’d read a few lines I realized that it must have been written by her tutor.Dear AlisonI think it is clear from the seminar on Thursday and our chat afterwards that you have a particular interest in the issue of privacy violation and the way that it impacts on relationships with the people involved. As everyone this term is required to write a ‘self- reflective’ essay drawing on some aspect of their own experience, I wondered whether this might be something you’d like to write about? Perhaps there is a particular incident from your own past that might be germane to this topic.Please rest assured that the self-reflective essays are NOT for marking and will not be seen by the tutors unless you specifically request it. The idea is that we trust you to complete them in your own time, and the value of the essays is considered to lie in the exercise of writing them and the opportunity for heightened self-awareness that they might bring.Anyway, it is up to you what you write about, I merely throw this out as a suggestion.Best regards,Nicholas.

After reading this, I looked at the beginning of the essay. The first paragraph just seemed to give a few words of introduction but the second paragraph began with the words, ‘It was the long hot summer of 1976’, and a few sentences later, ‘Towards the end of August that year we went on a camping holiday to the Lake District for one week with our friends the Sim family.’

The Lake District? She’d written an essay about our holiday in Coniston? Why? What had happened that week that had anything to do with ‘privacy violation’?

My hands were shaking as I shuffled through the rest of the papers. It felt like I was about to have a panic attack or something. I had to find the missing pages and read the essay through in its entirety, however painful it turned out to be. As with Caroline’s short story, I felt myself being driven on by an appalling, self-destructive curiosity. Reading that story had been difficult enough. Was this going to be even worse?

The missing pages were, it transpired, still mixed up with Alison’s other papers in the boot of the car. It took me about fifteen minutes to put the whole thing together. Then I said goodnight to Emma (‘Wish me luck,’ I murmured), locked up the car, and took the sheaf of papers with me up to my hotel room on the first floor. I made myself another cup of Nescafe, turned on the TV for company, muted the volume, then lay down on the bed and started to read.

Fire

The Folded Photograph

The incident I’m going to describe took place more than three years ago. However, it is still very fresh in my mind. It had a big effect on me because it put some distance between myself and someone I was thinking of getting close to.

It was the long hot summer of 1976. ‘Long hot summer’ in this case is not just a cliche because throughout the UK there was bright sunshine and very little rain for almost the whole of that summer – so much so that the government appointed a special ‘Minister for Drought’.

Towards the end of August that year we went on a camping holiday to the Lake District for one week with our friends the Sim family.

The Sims had once been our neighbours in the Rubery area of Birmingham. They had one son, whose name was Max, and he had been best friends with my younger brother Chris at primary school. However, at the age of eleven the two boys were sent to different secondary schools. Chris was accepted for a place at King William’s School in Birmingham (I was already going to the equivalent girls’ school). This was a selective school and you had to pass an exam to get in. Max had failed the exam and so he went to the local comprehensive school. A couple of years after this happened, we moved away from Rubery into a house with a big garden backing on to Edgbaston Reservoir. Despite this, Chris and Max stayed quite good friends and our parents continued to see a lot of each other.

At the time of this incident, Chris and Max were both sixteen years old, while I was nearly eighteen. In many ways I felt too old to be going on holiday with my family, and in fact this was the last time I did so. I had already been away to France earlier in the summer with one of my girlfriends, but this camping holiday came right at the end of August and since the weather was still nice and I did not really fancy being left on my own for a whole week at home I decided to go along.

Our campsite was by the side of Coniston Water. There were caravans on the site as well as tents, and there was a modern toilet block with shower etc. My family had a big family tent with two separate ‘bedrooms’ so we were quite comfortable really, even though I am not a great fan of living under canvas. The Sims pitched their tent (which was quite a lot smaller) a few yards from ours, but facing it, so that the space between the two tents became a sort of common area. This was the place where, every evening, we would light a fire and sit around it eating supper and talking amongst ourselves. Afterwards my brother Chris would sometimes get out his guitar but I’m pleased to say there was no singing or anything like that. He just used to strum these melancholy minor chords and stare into the distance. Both he and Max were at the age when boys get terrible crushes on girls and Chris was pining for one of the girls at my school. I had already told him he didn’t stand the slightest chance but he took no notice.