The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

distractions that the motorway throws up – a yellow police notice reporting a ‘Possible Homicide’, exit signs pointing to Penrith, Keswick, Carlisle, a big blue sign saying ‘Welcome to Scotland / Failte gu Alba’, a large pine forest planted on a hillside in the shape of a ‘T’, with the shadows of dark rain clouds drifting across it – and to let your thoughts start drifting. Funny how, when you do that, memories pop into your head, things that you’d forgotten or perhaps suppressed for forty years or more. It was thinking about Francis Chichester that did it, today. I could remember watching the TV coverage of his homecoming with my mother, but couldn’t remember whether my father had been with us or not. And then it came back to me: something odd had happened that night. My father had been watching the television with us, at first, but then the doorbell rang, and he went to answer it, and a few seconds later this strange man came into our house. I say ‘strange’ not just because Mum and I didn’t recognize him but because he was … well, strange. He was wearing a fancy wide- brimmed hat, for one thing, and was dressed in the kind of clothes that people might have been wearing in Carnaby Street in 1967 but had certainly never been seen within fifty miles of Rubery. He had a thin, reddish beard, too – that’s the only other thing I can picture about him. The man didn’t come into our living room and I saw no more of him than the glimpse I caught through the open living room door as Dad led him towards the back of the house. The two of them went into the dining room and started talking while Mum and I carried on watching the television. The man must have left after I’d been put to bed, because I don’t remember him leaving at all. In fact, as I say, I had forgotten all about his bizarre, unexpected appearance in our house until this very moment, when the memory of it came back to me vividly as I drove with Emma across the border into Scotland and the M6 shaded into the A74(M). And the question that I immediately asked myself was this: who could it possibly have been, other than the mysterious ‘Roger’, who had sent my father monthly postcards from the Far East all through the 1970s, and apparently continued to do so even now? I had never been told the visitor’s name – of that I was certain; but I was equally certain that it could only have been Roger.

– Proceed on the current motorway.

I held on to this peculiar memory for a few moments but found that it was quickly supplanted by more random thoughts. The miles slipped by as we travelled further into Scotland, and I continued to drive in an almost dreamlike state, miraculously failing to collide with any other cars. At least ten minutes must have gone by before I snapped out of it and realized, with a start, what it was that I’d just been thinking about.

I had been trying to work out the square root of minus one.

This wouldn’t do at all.

Another solitary lunchtime, another motorway service station, another panino. Mushroom, prosciutto and green leaf salad, this time.

Abington Services. Welcome Break. I can’t help it, I like these places. I feel at home in them. I liked the dark- wood chairs and the light-wood tables, the Habitat look. Very 1990s. I liked the two enormous yucca plants sitting between the tables. I liked the windswept decking area outside, the folded-up sun umbrellas flapping in today’s wet breeze. I liked the way that here, in the midst of such a spectacular rural landscape, somebody had contrived to create this little oasis of urban ordinariness. I liked the look of pleased expectancy on people’s faces as they carried their trays of pizza and fish and chips away from the counter of ‘Coffee Primo’, confident that they were about to enjoy tucking in to something special. This was my sort of place. The sort of place where I belonged.

None the less, my feeling of slight, palpable unease wouldn’t shift. Was it because I was nervous of seeing Alison? I could always phone her and call it off, although I’d still left it too late to catch that day’s ferry from Aberdeen, however fast I drove from here. But anyway, that wasn’t it. Something else was bothering me. Perhaps the weight of all these resurfacing memories.

After I’d finished eating, I booted up my laptop and inserted the little gadget that connected me to the mobile broadband network. I checked my emails, and checked Facebook. Nothing. As I turned the laptop off again I noticed that the battery was almost empty.

Feeling guilty that I had barely used it so far, I took the digital video camera outside and shot some footage of the service station and the surrounding mountains. Only about thirty seconds’ worth. As before, when I’d taken some film of my father’s apartment block in Lichfield, I could sense that this wasn’t at all what Lindsay would be wanting, and it would probably never make the final cut.

*There are also delays on the northbound side of the M6 – the problem is a stranded lorry between Junctions 31 and 31a, it was in Lane 3 and there are queues back to Junction 29. Stranded lorry in the roadworks on the M1, northbound after Junction 27 north of Leicester – that’s now been recovered, but our problems continue on the M1, which is blocked southbound at Junction 11, which is at Luton – being diverted via the sliproads, queues though – thanks to Mike and Fiona for this one – those folks say it’s back to Junction 14, which is Milton Keynes, loads of traffic using the A5 into Dunstable which is now very heavy on that southbound side. Northbound the M1 was closed for a while, it was to allow an air ambulance to land – that has landed and taken off, so that road is fully open again. There was a vehicle blocking the M25, Junctions 18–17, that’s anti-clockwise from Chorleywood to Rickmansworth – that’s all been cleared but it’s left quite a long delay, in roughly the usual place but it seems heavier today – this is anti-clock from Junction 23, which is the A1(M) to Watford at Junction 19. There’s also an accident which has just been picked up from the M25 anti-clockwise, from Junction 5, which is the M26 turn. Cambridge, there’s an accident on the northbound A11, it’s closed northbound at Papworth Everard, that’s north of the A428 at Caxton Gibbet …

‘Sorry about that, Emma,’ I said, turning the radio off. ‘It’s not that I’m getting bored of listening to you, it’s just that – you know, sometimes a man needs a change of scene, some different company …’

– In three-quarters of a mile, slight left turn.

‘I knew you’d understand,’ I said, gratefully. Emma’s voice sounded gracious and calming after the traffic announcer’s strident, hectoring monologue.

We were just a few miles from Edinburgh now. According to the car’s information screen, we had travelled only 410 miles since setting off from Reading two days earlier, but somehow, hearing all those familiar names – Rickmansworth, Chorleywood and (of course) Watford – it felt as though we were about to arrive at a place that was unimaginably remote. Darkness had already closed in and we were a part of a long line of cars threading steadily along the A702, a funeral cortege of tail-lights and occasional brake-lights as far as the eye could see. A few minutes ago we had passed a sign saying ‘Welcome to Scottish Borders’, and now we passed another saying ‘Welcome to Midlothian’. It was nice to know that we were welcome. I wondered if I would be made equally welcome at Alison’s house.

Soon we had crossed the ring road and were driving into the outer suburbs. Alison lived in an area of Edinburgh known as The Grange, which I had already guessed would turn out to be quite wealthy. I didn’t know what her husband did for a living, exactly, but I knew that he ran a large, successful company with offices in many different parts of the world, and that he spent a lot of his time travelling. All the same, I was surprised when Emma continued to guide me – as though she had known this city all her life – into ever wider, quieter, more sequestered and more exclusive streets. Most of the sandstone properties here seemed to be more like mansions than houses. And Alison’s, when we pulled up outside it, was by no means the smallest.

– You have arrived at your destination, said Emma, betraying no sense of triumph, or boastfulness; just quiet satisfaction in a job well done. The route guidance is now finished.