My Favourite Wife. Tony Parsons

FOUR

      He liked watching his wife get dressed. He especially liked it at times like this – when she was getting dressed to go out somewhere special, and he knew that soon men and women would turn their heads to look at her in any room she entered. But now, half-dressed and getting ready for the night, the way she looked belonged only to him.

      Watching her face as she put on her lipstick, a blonde tendril of hair falling across her face as she leaned towards the mirror, the familiar lines of her body, the special dress waiting on the bed. He loved it. He could watch her forever.

      ‘Who are you looking at?’ she said, smiling at him in the mirror.

      ‘I’m looking at you.’

      They were in his room. He had his own room now, the second bedroom, so he could come home late from the office and leave early in the morning without disturbing Becca and Holly, who slept together in the master bedroom. The sleeping arrangements of the first night had become the sleeping arrangements of every night.

      In many ways this was a drag. He missed the physical nearness of Becca, of sensing her the moment he woke up. He missed being able to reach out and touch her in the middle of the night, he missed the soft sound of her breathing when she slept, and he missed the warmth of her body beside him. And yet in many ways sleeping apart made her physical presence more of a treat, as if they were playing some kind of game, rationing intimacy, pretending to be strangers. And perhaps that was a part of the excitement he felt now. It wasn’t every day that he saw his wife getting dressed.

      She stood, her make-up done, dressed in her underwear and heels. The sight of the Caesarean scar on her stomach moved him, as it always did, although he never quite knew why.

      He watched her slip into her dress and the label stuck out of the back. Koh Samui, it said, and he thought of the little shop in Covent Garden, and how much she loved it, and how they would linger there on Saturday afternoons before Holly was born. He zipped her up and deftly tucked in the label with the assured touch of the married man.

      ‘How do I look?’ she said, and he told her she looked great, and then he tried to touch his mouth against hers, but she turned away laughing, protecting her make-up, and he laughed too. Even though it felt as if he was never allowed to kiss her when he most wanted to.

      It was their first night out in Shanghai, or at least their first night out without Holly. Their first grown-up night, they called it. They had been in Paradise Mansions for three weeks now, and the jet-lag was gone and so were the packing crates, but they had never felt comfortable leaving Holly. They still didn’t, not really, but Bill could not get out of dinner invitations from Hugh Devlin forever, and Becca had to concede that the elderly Chinese ayi, Doris, who as far as Becca could tell had practically raised her own grandson, was at least as trustworthy as the string of East Europeans and Filippinas who had baby-sat for them in London.

      Holly was sleeping, sprawled sideways, and Doris was sitting by the side of the bed watching her. The old ayi smiled reassuringly as Bill and Becca crept in. They stood by the bed, reluctant to leave.

      Bill looked at the beauty of his daughter’s face, and it made him think of the high chair that was parked in a corner of his bedroom, and of the second child that they had talked about trying for once they were settled. They both wanted more children. But Bill loved his daughter so much that a secret part of him felt that another child would somehow be a betrayal of Holly.

      He understood why people had more than one child. Most of all it was because when you had just the one, you almost loved them too much. You were sometimes paralysed with love. That wasn’t good, the constant fear. That wasn’t the way to be. But with a second child, how could you ever again spend as much time with the first? Already he felt that he wasn’t spending nearly enough time with his daughter.

      If he had to find space in his life, and his heart, and his weekends, for a second child, then surely that would mean there was even less for Holly. Or didn’t it work that way? Did you love the first one in the same old way and just as much, but discover a new store of love for the second child? Did the heart just keep expanding?

      Yes, that’s the way it must work, Bill thought, as they left their daughter with the ayi.

      The heart just gets bigger.

      You don’t love the first one any less. The heart can always find room for the ones that it loves.

      A red Mini Cooper with a Chinese flag painted on the roof was blocking the exit to the courtyard.

      Tiger leaned on his horn as George the porter excitedly conferred with the driver of the Mini. A number of women were gathered around the car, offering advice to the driver. George had to push his way through them. He came and stuck his head in the window.

      ‘Hello, lady. Hello, boss,’ he said to Becca and Bill, before releasing a stream of Shanghainese at Tiger.

      ‘Keys stuck,’ Tiger translated, looking at Bill in his rear-view mirror. ‘Keys stuck in car.’

      Becca winced as Tiger put his hand on the horn and left it there. ‘Bill?’ she said, so Bill touched Tiger on the shoulder, requesting silence, then got out of the car and walked up to the Mini. George followed him. The women around the car watched him coming. From the window on Saturday night they had looked as similar as sisters, but up close they could not have been more different. There was a woman in her middle thirties, by far the oldest, who had the lithe body of a dancer. A much younger woman in thick glasses who could have been a librarian from central casting. There was one who was plain and slightly overweight who wore no makeup and carried a pack of disposable nappies. And there was one who clutched a Louis Vuitton bag and wore a mini-kilt that just about covered her sporran.

      ‘Excuse me,’ Bill said, and the little crowd parted without expression or complaint. He leaned in the window of the Mini with the Chinese flag on the roof. The tall girl with the orchid in her hair was in the driver’s seat, her long limbs everywhere as she yanked desperately at the ignition keys.

      ‘My goodness,’ she was saying, interspersed with torrents of Chinese. ‘Oh my goodness.’

      ‘Car broke,’ George said over Bill’s shoulder. ‘Brand-new car and broke.’

      Bill sighed, shaking his head, glancing from the gearbox to the girl’s face. She was a good few years younger than him. Middle twenties, he guessed. But it was hard to tell out here. She could have been anything.

      ‘Miss? You have to put it in park,’ Bill told her patiently. ‘You’ll not get the keys out until you’ve got it in park. It’s designed that way so the thing doesn’t drive off by itself and kill someone.’

      She shot him a fierce look. A leg emerged from the slit in her dress, a qipao, which back then he still thought of as a cheongsam. Her skin was an almost milky white. He thought, Why are they supposed to be yellow? Where did that myth come from? She’s paler than I am. He had never seen skin so white. It was like alabaster.

      ‘Do you mind?’ she said, glaring at him like a rich man’s wife putting a stroppy tradesman in his place. She had the biggest eyes he had ever seen. ‘My husband will address the problem.’

      Bill stared at her, momentarily stunned by the formality of her English. Then he laughed. She dressed like Suzie Wong but she talked like a member of the Women’s Institute.

      ‘No, I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Fine.’ He turned to George. ‘She’s got the car in drive and she needs to put it in park before it will let her remove the key.’ George looked confused. ‘It’s the way they make them,’ Bill explained, not quite as patient now.

      George thought about it, and understanding slowly dawned on his round face.

      ‘Ahhh,’ George said. ‘Very clever safety device.’

      ‘My husband will be here soon,’ the tall girl insisted, still struggling desperately with the key. She unleashed some Chinese and then slapped