I took a deep breath, and shook my head. ‘It would take … I’m afraid it would take a very long time. You see, in a weird sort of way, everything that’s happened to me in the last few weeks is connected to Yanmei and her mother. But I’d have to tell you the whole story to make you understand that, and I’m sure you would find it very boring …’
‘But now you have to tell me. Look.’ She gestured over at Yanmei and Jennifer, who were happily splashing from one side of the pool to the other. ‘The girls are enjoying themselves. They won’t want to leave for at least an hour. I didn’t bring anything to read. So tell me your story. I want to hear it, however long and boring it is. What else am I going to do?’
And so I began telling her about all the things that had happened to me since I had first seen her and Yanmei sitting at the restaurant overlooking Sydney harbour on Valentine’s Day. It was difficult to know how to begin, and I think at first I was just confusing her. I started off by talking about Alan Guest and all the ideals and ambitions he’d tried to realize with his little toothbrush company, thinking that, if my recent experiences had taught me anything, they had taught me a lesson about the cruelty of the world: taught me that we still lived in an age when even the most well-meaning and innovative organization could be brought to its knees by more powerful forces. But then I thought that perhaps this wasn’t the meaning of the story at all, and that maybe what I had really learned (or started to learn) was something about myself, about my own nature and my own problems. So I was trying to flip backwards and forwards between these two ideas, and Lian was getting more and more bewildered, and at that point she told me to start again, and just tell the story from the beginning, exactly as it had happened. And when I started doing that, what I found myself telling her didn’t feel much like a proper story at all, any more, just a series of random, unconnected episodes: encounters, mainly, encounters with strange and unexpected people who had all done something, in small ways, to change the course of my life over the last few weeks. It had begun with Lian herself, of course, and Yanmei. But then there had been … Well, first there had been the man at the airline check-in desk in Sydney, who had upgraded me to Premium Economy class for no particular reason. Then there had been poor old Charlie Hayward, who had a heart attack while sitting next to me on the flight to Singapore. Then there was Poppy, with her secret recording device and her story about Donald Crowhurst. Then there was the man in the park in Watford, who had stolen my mobile phone and come back afterwards to ask me for directions. Then there was Trevor Paige, and Lindsay Ashworth, who had taken me out for a drink at the Park Inn and asked me to join their sales team. Then the dinner at Poppy’s mother’s house, where I had met Poppy’s mother and her obnoxious friend Richard and the only person who had been really friendly to me was her Uncle Clive. Then my meeting with Alan Guest himself, the day I set off from his office on the first stage of my journey to Scotland. And then Mr and Mrs Byrne, Chris’s parents, and then Miss Erith and Dr Hameed, high up in that apartment block on the edges of Lichfield, and then Caroline and Lucy, and our failed dinner together in Kendal, and then Alison Byrne and the way she had invited me to sleep with her in Edinburgh and I had run away, run away with her whisky bottles and got into my car at dawn and driven off into the Scottish mountains by myself. In fact the only person I didn’t mention once, in all of this, was Emma: because it embarrassed me now to admit that I had started talking to my SatNav, and I thought that Lian might think less of me if she knew.
As I was telling her about all these encounters, Lian lay back on the picnic rug, and put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t ask me any questions: she didn’t interrupt me once, even though I was talking for a long time, and then when I had finished she didn’t make any comment at first, until her silence actually made me suspect that she might have fallen asleep. But no, she hadn’t fallen asleep. She was just thinking very deeply about what I had told her, and eventually she raised herself onto her elbows and looked at me and said:
‘Well, Maxwell, now it begins to make sense.’
‘Now what begins to make sense?’ I asked her.
‘Now I can see why you looked so different, last night, to the man who had come to that restaurant two months ago.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘You saw a change in me?’
‘Of course. That first time, you scared me slightly. I thought I had never seen anyone look so lonely and depressed. But last night – and today – you look … well, you look calmer, at least. You look like a man who is almost at peace with himself.’
‘Almost,’ I repeated.
‘Almost.’
‘Mum!’ Yanmei came running over, with Jennifer not far behind. ‘What time is it? It isn’t time to go yet, is it?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Jennifer’s mother will be expecting us soon. And don’t look so disappointed – unless I’m much mistaken, she said something about an Easter egg hunt …’
The girls’ faces brightened at once.
‘OK,’ said Jennifer. ‘But one more swim first!’
They ran off laughing in the direction of the pool.
‘Five minutes!’ Lian called after them.
She turned back to me, and saw that I was lost in thought once again.
‘Sorry,’ I said, snapping out of it. ‘I hadn’t even realized that it was Easter Sunday today. The festival of the Rising Sun …’
‘The rising sun?’ said Lian, puzzled.
‘Isn’t that how Easter began? It’s supposed to be a time for new dawns, fresh starts.’
Now she smiled at me, and said gently, in a tone of apology, ‘And you thought I was going to be your fresh start. Me and Yanmei. Well, I’m sorry, Maxwell, but … you’re going to have to look elsewhere.’
‘I know.’
‘In any case …’
‘Yes?’ I said. There was something tantalizing, even a little unsettling in the way she had tailed off: as if she didn’t quite dare to say what she’d been about to say.
‘In any case,’ she continued, after a moment, ‘this thing that you’re looking for – this intimacy … You wouldn’t have found it with us.’
‘Is that what you think? How can you be so sure?’
