My Favourite Wife. Tony Parsons

of BB’s, throwing around a few bar stools as they retreated.

      Bill held the tall girl’s hand as Shane got them out of the club and into the back of a Santana taxi. ‘Just go,’ he said. The cab pulled away and she still hadn’t opened her eyes. He saw that the wound on her cheekbone was livid and fresh.

      ‘Did they do that to you?’ he said. ‘The mark on your face. Did those bastards do that to you?’

      She leaned forward, touching her face. Then she sat back up, fighting back the sickness. Bill realised he had never seen anyone so hopelessly drunk.

      ‘Airbag,’ she said. ‘The airbag from my Mini.’

      Then they had to stop by the side of the road so that she could be sick. She bent double out of the open back door, dry heaving because there was nothing left to bring up. The driver watched Bill in his rear-view mirror with barely concealed contempt.

      Fucking Westerners, his eyes seemed to say. Ruining our lovely girls.

      ‘Can’t stop throwing out,’ she said when they were on the road again. ‘Please excuse me. I am throwing out all the time.’

      Her English was almost perfect. Too clearly learned in a classroom, perhaps. Too painfully formal. But she got almost everything right, he realised, and when she did get something wrong, he still had no trouble understanding her. Didn’t throwing out make more sense than throwing up? It was an improvement on the original.

      ‘You had an accident,’ Bill said. ‘What happened?’ She exhaled, shivering with grief.

      ‘My husband is very angry with me,’ she said. ‘Very angry with me for breaking the new car.’

      He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her thin shoulders. She burrowed down inside it, trying to hide from the world, and he patted her gently, the way he might try to reassure Holly if she had a bad dream. And then she fell asleep. Leaning against him. He patted her again.

      He looked at her asleep in his jacket and he saw that it was the one that still bore the ghost of a handprint.

      That’s never going to come out now, he thought.

      It was the apartment of a single girl.

      Something about it, Bill thought as he carried her inside, something about it said that here was a life lived alone. A fruit bowl containing a lonely brown banana. A magazine turned to a TV page with favourite programmes circled in red. A book of crossword puzzles, opened to one that was half-finished. She doesn’t look like the kind of girl who does crossword puzzles, he thought. And then, Well, what do you know about her?

      The flat was immaculately decorated but a much smaller apartment than the one he lived in. He found the only bedroom and laid her down on top of the duvet, still wearing his jacket. In the movies, he thought, in the movies I would undress her and put her to bed and in the morning she wouldn’t remember a thing. But he couldn’t bring himself to do anything except leave her sleeping on the bed, and turn the light off on his way out. Her voice reached him as he went to close the door behind him.

      ‘He has nobody but his wife and me,’ she said, unmoving in the darkness. ‘I am quite sure of that.’

      ‘He sounds like quite a catch,’ Bill said with a contempt that surprised him, and he let himself out of the flat as quietly as he could.

      Becca could tell there was something wrong. She could tell immediately. It wasn’t the kind of crying she was used to – the crying of a child having a bad dream, or who was too cold or too warm, or who needed a glass of water or a cuddle.

      Holly’s crying came through the monitor as Becca was nodding off in front of BBC World, and she knew immediately that it was her breathing.

      It was bad. Very bad. And Holly was frightened.

      Becca remained ludicrously cheerful and upbeat as she set up the nebuliser, the breathing machine, and placed the mouthpiece over Holly’s face.

      ‘Deep…deep…deep,’ Becca said, miming inhalation with one hand as she desperately dialled Bill’s phone with the other. ‘Good, baby. Very good.’

      No reply.

      The nebuliser took the edge off the asthma attack but it wasn’t enough. Becca had never seen her as bad as this, not since that first awful day. Holly’s breathing was shallow and laboured and it scared the life out of Becca. It scared the life out of both of them. She needed a doctor. She needed a hospital. She needed it now.

      No numbers, Becca thought, furious. I have no numbers. She had no idea what number to call for an ambulance. How could she be so stupid? How could she have been so certain that nothing bad would ever happen?

      Becca quickly wrapped Holly in her dressing gown and grabbed her coat and her keys and dialled Bill’s number again. And again and again and again. No answer.

      Then Becca was out of the flat with Holly in her arms, the child surprisingly heavy, and trying to remain as upbeat as a game show host as they went out to the night in search of a taxi.

      She saw one the moment she stepped outside Paradise Mansions, a beat-up red Santana, but it didn’t stop for her and she shouted angrily at its taillights.

      Holly began to cry and Becca held her tight and rocked her, while her eyes scanned the empty streets for another taxi. She tried calling Bill and there was still no signal and after that she didn’t try again. After that she knew she was going to have to do it alone.

       SEVEN

      There was something wrong with his home.

      It should have been still and dark and both of them sleeping, with just a nightlight left on in the kitchen. But all the lights were blazing. The television was on and BBC World was playing its theme tune. The door to the master bedroom was flung open.

      And they were gone.

      Bed empty. Duvet on the floor. Lights on. And Becca and Holly were gone.

      He flew through the apartment, throwing open doors, calling their names, and the panic was a physical sickness he could feel in his throat and in his gut.

      Calling their names, even though he knew they were not there. Shouting their names over the bloody theme tune to BBC World. He didn’t understand what was happening. It made no sense at all. He wanted them back. He looked at his watch and covered it with his hand. It was so late. He wanted to throw up.

      ‘Becca!’

      He walked to the table and picked up the mouthpiece to his daughter’s respirator.

      His phone began to ring.

      * * *

      This was what she was good at. This was what she could do. She could look after her child. She could do that. And as long as she could do that, the rest of the world could go hang.

      Holly was sitting up in bed in a private room at the International Family Hospital and Clinic on Xian Xia Lu being examined by a young doctor with an Indian face and a Liverpool accent.

      ‘Have you heard of a man called Beethoven?’ Dr Khan asked Holly, his fingers lightly feeling her ribs.

      ‘No,’ said Holly warily.

      ‘Beethoven had asthma,’ the doctor smiled.

      Becca laughed, the tears springing. Devlin was standing by her side and he placed a hand on her shoulder. She touched his hand, sick with relief. Holly was going to be all right.

      ‘How about Charles Dickens, Augustus Caesar and John F. Kennedy?’ Dr Khan asked Holly. ‘Have you heard of any of them?’

      ‘I haven’t heard of nobody,’ Holly said, wide-eyed and looking at her mother for prompting. Becca was smiling at her now. ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’