The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim Read Online Free PDF Page A

overtanned guy of about my own age, or perhaps even older, who had no interest in making small talk and rarely looked up from his work to make eye-contact. It seemed pretty clear that I was on a hiding to nothing here. But I couldn’t stop myself from trying, all the same.
    ‘Busy flight?’ I heard myself ask.
    ‘Pretty busy,’ he answered.
    ‘No chance of an upgrade, then?’ I said, and he grunted with laughter.
    ‘If I had a dollar for everybody who asked me that …’
    ‘Happens a lot, does it?’
    ‘All the time, mate. All the time.’
    ‘So how do you decide?’
    ‘What?’ he said, looking up.
    ‘How do you decide who gets an upgrade, and who doesn’t?’
    ‘I guess,’ he said, staring at me directly and appraisingly, before lowering his eyes again, ‘I have to like the look of whoever’s doing the asking.’
    He said nothing more, and I felt crushed into silence. It wasn’t until I had finished checking in, watched my suitcase sway off into oblivion and walked a few yards away from the desk that I thought to check my two boarding cards (one for each leg of the journey) and realized that he had upgraded me – to something called Premium Economy class. I looked back at the man to show my gratitude. He was busy with the next passenger, but he still found time to glance across at me. His expression remained blank – even surly – and yet he winked at me before returning his gaze to the computer screen in front of him.
    Two hours later, at about four-thirty in the afternoon, Sydney time, I was sipping my second glass of champagne, waiting for take-off, and contemplating the delights of the journey ahead.
    I had a seat next to the aisle; there was one other seat next to mine, a window seat, currently empty. The seats were wide and well-padded, and I had plenty of leg room. I felt an almost sensual glow of pleasure at the thought of the pampering I could look forward to. Thirteen hours to Singapore, which would include dinner, a few more glasses of champagne to wash it down, a choice of more than 500 movies and TV shows on the entertainment console in the seat-back, and perhaps a light snooze somewhere along the way. Then a couple of hours’ stopover at Singapore airport, back on to a different plane, a large whisky, some sleeping pills, and I would be out like a light until we reached Heathrow the following morning. Couldn’t be better.
    At least, that’s how it should have been. The trouble was, as I said, that seeing the Chinese woman and her daughter had unexpectedly reawakened my need for human contact. I wanted to talk. I was desperate to talk.
    No surprise, then, that when a pale, overweight businessman in a light grey suit squeezed past me with the most cursory nod of apology, and settled into the adjacent window seat, I felt an overwhelming urge to engage him in conversation. It was a misguided urge, I have to say. If my experience in sales had taught me anything, over the years, it was how to read people’s faces, so it should really have been pretty obvious that this aloof and weary-looking stranger had little interest in talking to me, and would have much preferred to be left alone with his newspapers and his laptop. But I suppose the truth is that I did notice it, and purposely chose to ignore the fact.
    The businessman took a minute or two to settle into his chair and get comfortable. Once settled, he realized that he had left his computer in a bag in the overhead locker, so then he had to get up again and there was some more slightly breathless tugging and manipulating to be done before we were both back in our places. Then he flipped open the laptop and almost at once started typing furiously. After about five minutes he stopped typing, glanced quickly over the words on the screen, pressed a final button with a firm, almost theatrical gesture, then sighed and sat back in his chair, panting a little bit as the computer shut itself down. He turned his head towards me, not really looking