My Favourite Wife

by Tony Parsons

  My

  Favourite

  Wife

  Tony Parsons

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  For Yuriko, MFW

  You see, I loved her.

  It was love at first sight,

  at last sight,

  at ever and ever sight.

  Lolita

  A man with two houses loses his mind.

  A man with two women loses his soul.

  Chinese proverb

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: Be The Prince

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Two: The Permanent Girlfriend

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part Three: Home Calling

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Part Four: See You Around

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE:

  BE THE PRINCE

  ONE

  Bill must have fallen asleep for a moment. He was jolted awake by the limo hitting a pothole and suddenly there was Shanghai. The towers of Pudong split the night. He rubbed his eyes, and turned to look at his wife and daughter in the back seat.

  Holly, their four-year-old, was sleeping with her head in her mother’s lap, blonde curls tumbling across her face, dressed like some sort of Disney princess. He wasn’t sure which one.

  ‘She can’t be comfortable in that,’ he said, keeping his voice down. Holly had been awake, or sleeping fitfully, for most of the flight.

  Becca, his wife, carefully removed the child’s tiara. ‘She’s fine,’ she said.

  ‘Foreigners are very jealous they see this,’ said the driver, whose name was Tiger. He indicated the Pudong skyline. ‘Fifteen year ago – all swampland.’ Tiger was young, barely in his twenties, wearing a half-hearted sort of uniform with three gold stripes on his cuff. The young man bobbed his head with emphatic pride. ‘New, boss – all new.’

  Bill nodded politely. But it wasn’t the newness of Shanghai that overwhelmed him. It was the sheer scale of the place. They were crossing a river much wider than anything he had expected and on the far side he could see the golden glow of the Bund, the colonial buildings of the pre-war city staring across at Pudong’s skyscrapers. Shanghai past facing Shanghai future.

  The car came off the bridge and down a ramp, picking up speed as the traffic thinned. Three men, filthy and black, their clothes in tatters, all perched on one ancient bicycle with no lights, slowly wobbled up the ramp towards the oncoming traffic. One was squatting on the handlebars, another was leaning back in the seat and the third was standing up and pumping on the pedals. They visibly shook as the car shot past. Then they were gone.

  Neither Becca nor the driver seemed to notice them and it crossed Bill’s mind that they had been a vision brought on by the exhaustion and excitement. Three men in rags on a dead bicycle, moving far too slow in the fast lane, and going in completely the wrong direction.

  ‘Daddy?’ His daughter was stirring from deep inside her ball gown.

  Becca pulled her closer. ‘Mummy’s here,’ she said.

  Holly sighed, a four-year-old whose patience was wearing thin.

  She kicked the back of the passenger seat.

  ‘I need both of you,’ the child said.

  Bill let them into the apartment and they gawped at the splendour of it all, like tourists in their own home.

  He thought of their Victorian terrace in London, the dark staircase and crumbling bay window and musty basement, holding the dead air of a hundred years. There was nothing shabby and old here. He turned the key and it was like stepping into a new century.

  There were gifts waiting for them. A bouquet of white lilies in cellophane. Champagne in a bucket of melted ice. The biggest basket of fruit in the world.

  For Bill Holden and family – welcome to Shanghai – from all your colleagues at Butterfield, Hunt and West.

  He picked up the bottle and looked at the shield-shaped label.

  Dom Pérignon, he thought. Dom Pérignon in China.

  Bill went to the door of the master bedroom and watched Becca gently getting the sleeping child into her pyjamas. She was quietly snoring.

  ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ he smiled.

  ‘She’s Belle,’ Becca corrected. ‘From Beauty and the Beast. You know – like us.’

  ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Bec.’

  Becca eased Holly into her pyjamas. ‘She can come in with us tonight,’ she whispered. ‘In case she wakes up. And doesn’t know where she is.’

  He nodded, and came over to the bed to kiss his daughter goodnight, feeling a surge of tenderness as his lips brushed her cheek. Then he left Becca to it, and went off to explore the apartment. He was bone tired but very happy, switching lights on and off, playing with the remote of the big plasma TV, opening and shutting cupboards, unable to believe the size of the place, feeling like a lucky man. Even full of the crates they had had shipped ahead from London, the glossy apartment was impressive. Flat 31, Block B, Paradise Mansions, Hongqiao Road, Gubei New Area, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. It was in a different league to anywhere they had ever lived back home.

  If they stayed on at the end of his two-year contract then they were promised a step up the Shanghai property ladder to an ex-pat compound with its own golf course, spa and pool. But Bill liked it here. What could be better than this? He thought of his father and wondered what the old man would say about this place. The old man would go crazy.

  The suitcases could wait until tomorrow to be unpacked. He carried the bottle into the kitchen and rummaged around until he found two glasses. When he came back Becca was at the window. ‘You should see this,’ she said.

  Bill handed his wife a glass and looked down ten storeys to the courtyard below. Paradise Mansions was four blocks of flats surrounding a central courtyard. There was a mother-and-child fountain at its centre, lights glinting below the water.

  The courtyard was clogged with brand-new cars, their engines purring. BMWs, Audis, Mercs, the odd Porsche Boxster and two 911s. At the wheel, or lounging by the open driver’s door, were sleek-looking Chinese men. They looked as if they came from a different world to the three men on the bicycle. The porter was moving between the cars, gesturing, trying to regain control. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of him.

  ‘Because it’s Saturday night,’ Bill said, sipping his champagne.

  ‘That’s not it,’ Becca said. ‘Cheers.’ They clinked glasses and she nodded at the window. ‘Watch.’

  So he watched, and he saw young women begin to emerge from Paradise Mansions. They were all dressed up, and like the female leads in some wildlife documentary about mating rituals, each joined one of the men waiting in the cars. They did not kiss.

  One of them caught his eye. A tall girl with a flowe
r in her hair. An orchid, he thought. Maybe an orchid.

  She came out of the block opposite, and headed for one of the 911s. She raised her face to their window and Becca waved, but the young woman did not respond. She slid her long body into the passenger seat of the Porsche, struggling with her legs and her skirt. The man at the wheel turned his face and said something to her. He was older by about ten years. The girl pulled the door shut, and the Porsche moved away.

  Bill and Becca looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘What is this place?’ she smiled, shaking her head. ‘Is this place a…what is this place?’

  But he had no idea.

  So they drank their champagne and watched the beautiful girls of Paradise Mansions pairing off with the men in their fancy cars, and by the time they had drained their glasses they were both dumbstruck by weariness.

  So they took a shower together, soaping each other with tender familiarity and then they got in bed with Holly between them. They smiled at each other over the child’s face.

  He slept until first light and then abruptly he was wide-awake.

  He counted the things stopping him from going back to sleep. His body clock was pining for London time. Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. the driver – Tiger – would take him to the Pudong offices of Butterfield, Hunt and West, and he would start his new job. He was curious to know where they were, and what their new life looked like in daylight. How could he possibly sleep with his head so full? As quietly as he could, Bill got up, got dressed and slipped out of the apartment.

  The courtyard where the men in cars had waited for the girls was empty apart from Tiger. He was sleeping with his bare feet on the dashboard of the limo, his legs either side of the steering wheel. He jumped to attention when Bill walked past.

  ‘Where to, boss?’ he said, pulling on his shoes.

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ Bill said. ‘Don’t they give you the day off on Sunday?’

  Tiger looked blank. And then hurt. ‘Where we going, boss?’

  ‘I’m walking,’ Bill said. ‘And stop calling me boss.’

  The Sabbath may have meant nothing to Tiger but out on the streets of Gubei New Area it felt almost like Sunday morning back home, with nobody around apart from the odd jogger and dog walker, the neighbourhood shuttered and still. It was early June, and the heat was already starting to build.

  Bill walked. He was hungry to see what he thought of as the real China, the China that was nothing to do with plasma televisions and Dom Pérignon. The real China was somewhere nearby. It had to be. There were blocks of flats as far as he could see in a bewildering jumble of styles, but broken up with patches of manicured green and oversized statues. There were strips of restaurants – he could see Thai, Italian, everything but Chinese -a Carrefour supermarket, and a couple of international schools, including the one that Holly would go to in the morning. Little parks. A nice neighbourhood. Gubei was greener and cleaner than the grimy, crime-ridden patch of London they had left behind. His family could live here. His wife and daughter could be happy here. He felt a quiet satisfaction, mixed with relief.

  He glanced at his watch and decided he had time to explore before Becca and Holly stirred. So he walked towards the rising sun and as he left Gubei New Area behind, the streets quickly filled. Women selling bruised fruit stared through him from shaded side streets. Someone bumped into him. Someone else spat at his feet. There were men in filthy, dirt-encrusted two-piece suits working on a building site. On a Sunday. And in the streets there were people. A tide of people. Suddenly there were people everywhere.

  He stopped, trying to get his bearings. The roads were wide and traffic flew by, horns mindlessly beeping, ignoring red lights and pedestrians and the rest of the traffic. He saw a chic girl in sunglasses with her hair up behind the wheel of a silver Buick Excelle. There were flocks of VW Santana taxis. A muddy truck piled high with junk and men. And more trucks, lots of them, with their strange cargo of cardboard or orange traffic cones or pigs or yet more cars, so new they still shone with the showroom wax.

  As the sun got higher, and Bill continued to walk east, the city got noisier, adding to his sense of dislocation. A woman on a scooter mounted the pavement and just missed him, beeping her horn furiously. Schools of cyclists with giant black visors over their faces swarmed past. Suddenly he was aware of the time difference, the light-headedness that follows a long-haul flight, the sweat of exhaustion. But he kept walking. He wanted to know something about this place.

  He walked down alleys where thin men shaved over ancient metal bowls and fat babies were fed, and where ramshackle buildings with red-tile roofs were draped with drying laundry and satellite dishes. Then abruptly the jumbled blocks with their red-tile roofs suddenly gave way to the new shining towers and shopping malls.

  Outside Prada men with their skin darkened by sun and grime tried to sell him fake Rolex watches and DVDs of the latest Tom Cruise movie. Young women hid from the sun under umbrellas. Naked Western models advertised skin-lightening products on giant billboards.

  And as Bill walked on, he felt something that he had never felt in his life, and it was an awareness of the sheer mass of humanity. All those people in the world, all those lives. It was as if he truly believed in their existence for the first time. Shanghai gave him no choice.

  Bill hailed one of the Santana taxis, impatient to see the Bund, but the driver didn’t understand a word he said and dropped him by the river, glad to get rid of him. He got out next to a wharf with a ferry; not a sightseeing ferry but some kind of local public transport.

  Bill handed over his smallest note, received some filthy RMB in return, and joined the milling mob waiting to cross to the other side. He tried to work out where the queue began. Then he realised that it didn’t begin anywhere.

  And as the ferry filled with people, and then continued to fill even more until Bill was hemmed in on every side, and fighting back the feeling that the ferry was overloaded, he saw that here, at last, was the real China.

  The numbers.

  It was all about the numbers.

  He knew that the numbers were why he would be starting his new job in the morning, why his family’s future would be decided in this city, and why all the money problems of the past would soon be over. They filled the dreams of businessmen from Sydney to San Francisco – the one billion customers, the one billion new capitalists, the one billion market place.

  He struggled to move his arms and glanced at his watch, wondering if he could make it back home to his girls before they woke up.

  The ferry began to move.

  That afternoon they did the tourist thing.

  The three of them joined the queues and took the lift to the top of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower where they stared down at the boats on the Huangpu River and saw that the city seemed to be without end.

  On the other side of the tower they looked down at a park that was full of brides, hundreds of them, all in white, looking like a flock of swans as they surrounded the lakes, feeding confetti-coloured fish food to koi carp.

  Bill lifted his daughter so she could see.

  ‘New school tomorrow,’ he said.

  Holly said nothing, her eyes wide at the sight of all those brides. ‘You’re going to make lots of new friends,’ Becca said, gripping one of Holly’s ankles, and shaking it with encouragement. Holly thought about it, chewing her bottom lip. ‘I’m going to be very busy,’ she said.

  Although foreigners were a common sight in Shanghai now, Bill and Becca and Holly were the only non-Chinese at the top of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower that afternoon, and people stared at them.

  The child and the woman were so blonde, their skin so pale, and their eyes so blue they looked like weather. The man holding his little girl and the child with her arms circling her father’s neck and the woman with her arm draped around her husband’s shoulders.

  That’s what was noticed about them – those gestures of childlike affection, the little family holding on to each other in their ne
w home, as if the three of them could not exist without that physical contact, or without each other.

  Everybody knew that Westerners didn’t care about family in the same way that the Chinese did, especially not Westerners in Shanghai. But this man and woman and child seemed different.

  TWO

  He was gone by the time she woke up.

  Letting Holly sleep on, Becca padded through the flat, edging around the stacks of crates. There was the sign of a shower, the smell of after-shave, a tie that had been considered and discarded on the back of a chair. She pictured Bill at his desk on the first day of his new job, working hard, the earnest face frowning, and felt a stab of the old feeling, the feeling you get at the start.

  She picked one of the crates at random and prised it open. It was full of baby stuff. A pink high chair in three pieces. A bassinet. A cot mattress. Assorted blankets, sterilisers and stuffed rabbits. All of Holly’s old things. She had kept them, and shipped them across the world, not for sentimental reasons. Becca had kept them for the next one. Their marriage, seven years old now, was at the stage where neither of them doubted that there would be another child.

  Becca went back to the bedroom and watched Holly sleeping. Then she pushed back the sheets and held her daughter’s feet until the child began to stir. Holly stretched, moaned and tried to curl up into sleep.

  ‘Wakey-wakey, rise and shaky,’ Becca said. She stood listening to her daughter’s laboured breathing, a wheezing more than a snoring, caused by Holly’s asthma. ‘Come on now, darling. You’ve got school.’

  While Holly came round, Becca banged about in the strange new kitchen, preparing breakfast. Yawning, Holly came and sat at the table.

  ‘I’m a bit worried,’ she said, with her spoon poised halfway to her mouth. Becca touched her daughter’s face, curled a tendril of hair behind her tiny sticky-out ears.