My Favourite Wife. Tony Parsons

Alice said.

      ‘I guess it goes on everywhere,’ Becca said, trying to sound worldly, trying not to look alarmed. Somehow prostitution would have been easier to understand.

      ‘These women can make a few thousand RMB a month in a normal job, if they’re lucky,’ Alice said. ‘Or they can live next door to you and Bill. Using what they’ve got to get what they want. Very pragmatic. Very Chinese. And this city is full of them.’

      Buzzing between the larger cars was the red Mini Cooper. Of course, Becca thought. The tall girl stuck in the wrong gear.

      ‘There’s money here, all right,’ Alice said. ‘But Shanghai is a distorting mirror. Go to the countryside. Half of the kids there have never seen the inside of a school.’

      Out of the child monitor came the sound of crying, and Becca left Alice brooding at the window. Perhaps she was trying much too hard to recapture their old friendship. Perhaps she should enjoy her own company a bit more, Becca thought as she took the half-sleeping Holly in her arms. And the company of her child in the hours between school and bed, and the company of her husband on Sunday and sometimes part of Saturday. Married people shouldn’t have this desperate need for friends, Becca thought.

      But when Holly had settled Becca went back to the living room and found Alice smiling as if something had just come back to her.

      ‘Hey Bec,’ she said. ‘Remember when I pierced your ears?’

      They couldn’t practise law in China.

      That was the joke played on the Western lawyer in Shanghai, and Shane liked to mention it whenever the clock was creeping close to midnight and the lights were going out all over Pudong and they were sipping their cold coffee at desks still crowded with paperwork.

      It said Foreign Lawyer on their business cards, because it was different for foreigners. If you were a foreign lawyer working for a foreign firm in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China restricted you to the role of legal representative and kept you in your place. Even a Chinese lawyer like Nancy Deng could not practise PRC law at a foreign firm and was designated PRC lawyer, non-practising. Butterfield, Hunt and West had to get all their Chinese contracts rubber-stamped by some tame local lawyer.

      But despite not being real lawyers in the eyes of the PRC, most nights the endless bureaucracy of doing business in China kept Bill in the office until he was too tired to see straight, and too full of caffeine to contemplate sleep.

      ‘For blokes who can’t practise law here,’ Shane said, ‘we sure are busy little buggers.’ He yawned and stretched, and sat on Bill’s desk, squashing a stack of files marked Department of Land and Resources. ‘Enough for one night, mate. More than enough. Let’s get a beer.’

      A beer sounded good. Bill knew that Becca and Holly would have gone to bed hours ago. Now that he was sleeping in the second bedroom so as not to disturb them when he came back late, and when he left for work early, it didn’t really matter when he got home. A little unwinding sounded like just what he needed.

      ‘I’m going to tell you how it works out here,’ Shane shouted, raising his voice above a song that Bill couldn’t quite place. Something about making things more complicated. ‘I’m going to tell you what we call the Kai Tak rules, okay?’

      ‘The what?’

      ‘The Kai Tak rules. Pay attention. The Kai Tak rules are very important.’

      They were in a place called Suzy Too. ‘Everybody comes to Suzy Too,’ Shane said. It was loud, smoky, crowded beyond belief. There was a dance floor in one corner, although people were dancing all over the place, including on the bars.

      There were young Chinese men with dyed blond hair and Western women in jeans and T-shirts and Western men in stained polo shirts or business suits with their ties hanging off and Chinese women in short skirts or qipao or jeans that said Juicy on the back. Lots of them.

      A woman pulled at Bill’s sleeve. She looked hungry. She tapped in some numbers on her mobile phone and showed it to him. It said 1000.

      ‘One thousand RMB,’ Shane said, taking Bill’s other sleeve. ‘That’s about £70.’

      ‘But eight hundred is okay,’ the woman said. She blinked, dazed by the smoke and exhaustion.

      Bill stared at the handset, trying to understand.

      ‘Are you looking for a permanent girlfriend?’ she asked him.

      Bill had pushed his face close to her, just to hear what she was saying. Now he reared back. ‘I’m married.’

      The woman took this in her stride. ‘Yes, but are you looking for a permanent girlfriend?’

      ‘No thank you,’ Bill said, aware that he sounded as though he was declining a second cucumber sandwich at the vicar’s tea party.

      Shane put a cold bottle of Tsingtao in his hand.

      ‘You know Kai Tak?’ the Australian said. ‘No? Kai Tak was the old airport in Hong Kong. Kowloon side. Your missus said she visited the Big Noodle as a kid. She would remember it. Before your time, mate.’ Shane’s free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a Tsingtao, impersonated a plane making an erratic landing. ‘Where you came in through the blocks of flats hanging their laundry on the balconies and you would often land with someone’s pants wrapped around your neck. Sometimes your own.’ He winked, clinking bottles with Bill. ‘And that’s the point.’

      The woman with the mobile phone said something in Chinese as she draped an arm around Bill’s shoulders, an act more of weariness than desire.

      ‘You’re beautiful,’ Shane told Bill.

      ‘Who says that?’ Bill asked. ‘You or her?’

      ‘Her,’ Shane said. ‘To me, you’re just about cute.’

      The woman turned to Bill and said something, her eyes half-closed.

      ‘She loves you,’ Shane said.

      Bill stared at her. ‘But we just met,’ he said.

      ‘Doesn’t matter,’ the woman said in English, leaning against him. ‘I have financial issues.’

      Shane laughed, said something in Shanghainese and she turned away with a shrug. Then he looked quickly at Bill. ‘You didn’t want her, did you?’

      Bill just stared at him. He managed to shake his head. Shane leaned in. This was important. This was crucial.

      ‘Kai Tak rules means that we never talk about what happens when we are on an adventure, okay?’ he continued. ‘Kai Tak rules mean omerta. It means loose lips sink ships.’ Shane gently prodded a thick finger against Bill’s heart. ‘Kai Tak rules means keep your cakehole shut, mate. You do not talk about it with your wife, your girlfriend, or the married stiff in the office. Whatever we get up to, you do not confess to Devlin, you do not boast to Mad Mitch. It’s the first rule of Fight Club. You do not talk about Fight Club – right? What happens on tour stays on tour.’

      ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,’ Bill said. But he sort of knew. Already there was the first glimmer of understanding.

      It was different out here.

      There was an eruption on the dance floor. Notes had started to fall from the sky. They looked up and saw one of their German clients – not the old rock and roller but the other one, Jurgen, the conservative-looking one – grinning foolishly from the DJ box. He was throwing his cash away with both hands, making a Papal gesture every time he released a fistful of RMB, as though he was blessing the crowd.

      ‘This will all end in tears,’ Shane predicted, as the dancers fought each other to get at the cash, which drifted slowly to the dance floor before it was seized upon by leggy Chinese girls in qipao and sweating Western businessmen.

      Two women wrapped their arms around Bill’s waist, laughing and sighing