The Blue Afternoon
William Boyd
Kay Fischer is an architect who has recently been defrauded by her ex-partner, Eric Meyerson. As such, she is trying to start her architectural practice again on her own. She lives in a small Spanish Colonial apartment off Laurel Avenue, on her own as she is a divorcee. However, she still keeps in contact with Philip, her ex-husband and an unsuccessful Hollywood script writer, from whom she got divorced after the death of their baby son who had a hole in his heart. Kay learns that an old man has been enquiring about her and she is confronted by a Dr Salvador Carriscant who tells her that he is her father. Thinking him a crank, she asks her mother, Annaliese Leys, more questions about her real father, Hugh Paget, an Englishman, missionary and teacher who died in a fire in German New Guinea in 1903.