My Favourite Wife. Tony Parsons

all had asthma.’ He pulled down her top. ‘All the best people have had asthma.’ He turned to Becca and nodded. ‘She’s going to be fine.’

      Becca nodded, overcome with gratitude. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

      ‘Are you a doctor?’ Holly asked him.

      ‘I’m what they call a Senior Medical Registrar,’ he said. ‘It’s a fancy name for a doctor.’ He sat on the bed, holding Holly’s hand as he spoke to Becca. ‘She’s had a trigger reaction that could have been caused by almost anything. If she’s not around tobacco smoke, then air pollution is most likely. Shanghai is better than Beijing, but it’s still a Chinese city. We have some of the worst car pollution in the country. Then there are all the factories and power plants in the northern suburbs, up in Baoshan.’

      ‘Thank goodness they’re starting to control that,’ Devlin said. ‘Ten years ago you often couldn’t see Pudong from Puxi.’

      ‘Asthma is not a disease that we cure,’ the doctor said. ‘But it’s a condition we can control.’ He stood up. ‘But of course you know that already.’

      Becca loved this hospital. Outside its glass doors the Changning District was as grubby and down-at-heel as anywhere in Shanghai, but the International Family Hospital and Clinic looked newer, cleaner and more modern than anything she had ever seen back home.

      ‘All my boys have been in here at some stage,’ Devlin said, as if reading her thoughts and trying to keep the mood merry. ‘The youngest two were born here. And I think we have had – what? -two broken arms, one undescended testicle and a hyper-active thyroid gland.’ He beamed at Dr Khan but Becca knew the words were meant to reassure her. And they did.

      It was reassuring to know that this oasis of Western-trained, English-speaking doctors in their clean blue uniforms was available twenty-four hours a day.

      Unlike her husband.

      Devlin and Dr Khan were gone by the time Bill arrived. Holly was sleeping. Becca was almost asleep herself. Bill stood sweating and panting in the doorway.

      ‘What happened? What happened?’ he said, coming into the room. ‘Is she okay?’

      Becca stirred in her chair. ‘She woke up struggling to breathe,’ she said, her voice sounding mechanical and drained. She wanted to tell him, she really did, but it all seemed a long time ago, and it was all right now, and she really did feel tired. But he wanted more. He wanted to know everything.

      ‘I tried calling you,’ she said. She looked from her daughter to her husband, and couldn’t keep the resentment out of her eyes. ‘Lots of times. No answer. I couldn’t even get your voice-mail.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sinking to his knees next to her. He kissed her hands, kissed her face, put his arms around her. It was like holding a statue.

      ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have the numbers. You know – emergency numbers. It’s not 999, is it?’

      ‘We’ll get all the numbers,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ll get all the numbers for us.’

      ‘I couldn’t even get a taxi. So I called Tess Devlin. She was fantastic. Then things started to happen. Then I had help. Devlin came with Tiger and they brought us here. Holly and me. And Dr Khan – he’s been…’

      Bill was on his feet, looking at Holly’s face, and for a second Becca wondered if he was even listening to her.

      ‘Where were you?’ she said, very calm.

      ‘I went for a drink with Shane,’ he said, and it wasn’t a good moment. He knew how it sounded. ‘The Germans were flipping out. There have been some incidents. At the Green Acres site in Yangdong.’ He shook his head. ‘The security is out of control. They were hitting this little kid. I had to stop them, Bec.’

      ‘Jesus,’ Becca said, turning her face away. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, Bill.’ Looking back at him now. ‘Your daughter is being rushed to hospital and you’re in some bar?’

      Bill stared at her helplessly, feeling useless. He wanted so many things from this world. There was quite a list. But more than anything he wanted his wife and daughter to be happy, safe and proud of him. And he had let them down because he went for a drink with clients and got into a fight over a girl he didn’t know. When it was his family who needed him, when it was his family he should have been with all along.

      Maybe he could have explained it better. He had wanted to come home. He really did. But it was work. He wanted her to understand.

      He wanted her to get it. Surely she knew that there was nothing more important to him than her and Holly? He wanted to tell her everything.

      But he couldn’t tell her about the girl.

      Devlin had told Tiger to wait for them. As they drove back to Gubei, Becca held Holly on her lap and the child slept in her arms. Bill touched his daughter’s hair.

      ‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘She’s doing really well –’

      Becca’s anger exploded. ‘What do you know about it, Bill? You’re never around. How dare you? And she’s not okay. She’s not okay at school because she started in the middle of a term and the other kids already have their friends so she plays alone in the playground.’ It was all pouring out now, even things she had decided not to share with him because she didn’t want to worry him, because there was enough pressure already, he had enough on his plate at work. ‘Did you know that? Of course you didn’t. And her breathing’s not okay because the air here is filthy. All right? So don’t ever tell me she’s okay, because you know absolutely nothing about it.’

      They stared out at the elevated Ya’an Freeway. The lights of the city seemed to be glowing somewhere far below them.

      ‘I’m sorry, Bec,’ he said. ‘It will get better. I’ll make it better.’

      Tears sprang to her eyes. This was a good thing about him. He would always reach out a hand to her. It had always been that way when they argued. He wouldn’t allow them to go to sleep angry and hurt. He always tried to make it better. And he didn’t say what he could have said, what most men would have said – Coming here was your idea. But this life wasn’t what she had expected.

      ‘I wanted us to see the jazz band at the Peace Hotel,’ she said, almost laughing, it sounded so absurd. ‘And I wanted us to buy propaganda posters and Mao badges in the Dongtai Lu antique market. All these places that I read about, all the great places they say you should go.’

      He put his arm around her.

      ‘And I wanted us,’ she said, snuggling down, adjusting Holly on her lap. ‘I wanted us to drink cocktails in hotels where in the thirties you could get opium on room service. I want to support you, Bill. And I want to be a good sport. And I want to muck in and I don’t want to whine. But why isn’t it like that?’

      ‘We’ll do all those things,’ he said, and he touched her face, that face he loved so much, and determined to see her happy again.

      ‘But when?’

      ‘Starting tomorrow, Bec.’ He nodded, and she smiled, because she knew that he meant it.

      Her unhappiness, and her loneliness, and all the panic of tonight were things he would address with the dogged determination that he brought to everything. My husband, she thought. The professional problem-solver.

      He could never understand why people felt sentimental about when they were young. Being young meant being poor. Being young was a long, hard grind. Being young meant doing jobs that sucked the life out of you.

      Being young was overrated. Or maybe it was just him. For in his teens and twenties Bill had endured eight years of feeling like he was the only young person in the world who wasn’t really young at all.

      At weekends and holidays, he had worked his way through two years of A-levels,