The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

people as much as it connects them. But there are also times when it can be an uncomplicated blessing. In a matter of hours, I had used Google Earth to locate the stretch of Adelaide waterfront on Roger’s postcard, identified his boarding house, established its name and address, and sent an email to the owners asking if they had anyone staying there by his name. Their reply arrived the next morning, and it was just the one I’d been hoping for.

So I had already found Roger Anstruther.

I flew out to Australia on 4 April. It was going to be a short trip this time, little more than a week: not even long enough to get over my jet lag properly. I couldn’t really afford it, either – not without getting even further into debt. But it had to be done. At first I didn’t plan to tell my father that I was coming. I thought it would be better to surprise him. Then I realized that this was a silly thing to do – people didn’t just fly across to the other side of the world, at considerable expense, on the off chance of seeing their fathers: supposing he had gone away somewhere? Supposing he had decided to take a couple of weeks’ holiday? So, the night before I was due to fly, I tried phoning him, and I couldn’t get through. There was no reply from his home number, and no reply from his mobile. Then I started to panic. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he was lying dead on the kitchen floor of his new apartment. Now I would have to fly out to see him.

Naturally, when I turned up at his apartment thirty-six hours later, and rang the doorbell, he came and answered it in a couple of seconds.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘I’ve come to see you. Why didn’t you answer the phone?’

‘Have you been calling? There’s something wrong with it. I’ve managed to mute the ring tone, I don’t know how. Now I can’t hear it when somebody calls me.’

‘What about your mobile?’

‘The battery ran down and I can’t find the charger. You didn’t fly all the way out here because of that, did you?’

I was still standing on the doorstep.

‘Can I come in?’

I think my father was genuinely touched that I had taken the trouble to come out here again so soon after my last visit. Touched and astounded. For most of the week we didn’t do anything special, but there was an easiness and even (dare I say this?) a closeness between us that was new to both of us. I gave him back the precious blue ring binder that I had retrieved from Lichfield and told him that I had read his memoir The Rising Sun, but apart from that we didn’t discuss it. Not for a while, at any rate. Nor did I mention, at first, that more than half of the space in my suitcase was occupied by layer upon layer of Roger Anstruther’s postcards. Instead, I bided my time, and we passed the first days of my visit in various low-key domestic ways. My father had been in this apartment for three months now but it still wasn’t furnished properly, so we spent some time going round furniture stores buying chairs and cupboards and a spare bed. Also he had this television that was about twenty years old and barely worked, so one day we went out and got him a nice new flat-screen TV and a DVD player. He complained about this and said that he had nothing to play all his old VHS tapes on now and the remote controls were too small and he was bound to lose them, but basically I think he was pleased, not just about the TV but about everything. We were already having a much better time than the last time I’d visited.

Friday night came around and I still hadn’t told him what I had planned for the next day. We ordered a Chinese takeaway and opened a nice bottle of New Zealand Shiraz and then, while he was cutting up the quarter of crispy duck and taking the little pancakes out from their cellophane wrapper, I went into the next room and when I came back I said to him:

‘Dad, I’ve got something for you.’

I put a Qantas ticket on the table between us.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

I said, ‘It’s a plane ticket.’

He picked it up and looked at it.

‘This is a ticket for Melbourne,’ he said.

‘That’s right.’

‘For tomorrow.’

‘Yes, for tomorrow.’

He put it down again.

‘Well, what’s going on?’

‘You’re going to Melbourne tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Why would I want to go to Melbourne?’

‘Because … Because someone will be there tomorrow who I think you ought to see.’

He looked at me without comprehension. I realized that I had made it sound like I wanted him to consult a specialist doctor or something.

‘Well – who?’

‘Roger,’ I said.

‘Roger?’

‘Roger Anstruther.’

My father stopped cutting up the duck into small, flaky pieces, and sat down at the table.

‘You’ve been in touch with Roger? How?’

‘I tracked him down.’