Free My Favourite Wife by Tony Parsons

Bill was all alone in the tree-lined streets of the French Concession in the soft milky light that precedes dawn in Shanghai, unable to find a cab in the city where they say you can always find a cab, and one solitary street hawker was going to work, setting up his sad little display of cigarettes on the pavement, and on the far side of the street Bill saw a small hotel with a lone taxi parked outside, the driver asleep at the wheel.
    Bill paused to let a tow truck rumble past, and on the back of it he saw there was a red Mini Cooper, and although the front half of it was smashed like a broken accordion, the guts of its ruined engine spilling out and the windscreen shattered, the front wheels just ragged strips of mangled metal and rubber, he could clearly make out the undamaged roof with its flag of the People’s Republic of China, the red and yellow glinting in the light of the new day.

SIX
    Most days he didn’t bother with lunch.
    The only excuse for lunch was entertaining clients. Otherwise there was no real need to ever leave his desk. There was an old ayi who wheeled a trolley through the office, the Shanghai equivalent of a tea lady, and she sold sandwiches and noodles, coffee and green
cha
. But Bill liked to get out of the building in the middle of the day, just so he could stretch limbs that had been still for too long and breathe some air that wasn’t chilled by air conditioning, even if it was just for fifteen minutes.
    There was a coffee shop near their building and at noon he headed towards it, inhaling the weather, smelling the river, when suddenly a hand reached out and grabbed his tie.
    ‘Off to lunch?’ Becca said, pulling him into a doorway. She pressed her mouth against his face, a recklessly aimed kiss that he felt on his lips and cheek.
    ‘Lunch?’ he said, as if he had never heard of such a thing. She kissed him again, full on the mouth this time. ‘I thought I might get a sandwich.’
    ‘Oh,’ she laughed, pressing herself against him, feeling his instant response and loving it. ‘That doesn’t sound like much for a growing boy like you. Let me tell you about today’s specials.’
    She pulled him deeper into the doorway, kissing him harder,fingers in his hair. It was cool and dark. He looked around and was vaguely aware that they were in the entrance to a condemned building that was being torn down to make way for more office space. Men in white shirts and dark ties passed by with their briefcases and their coffee cups, giving them the occasional glance. Bill swung her around so that she was pinned against the wall and he had his back to the street.
    ‘You’re nuts,’ he said, and he looked at her face, so close that he could feel her breath. ‘I missed you,’ he said, and hugged her as hard as he dared.
    It had been three days since the firm’s dinner on the Bund and they hadn’t seen each other since. Too many late nights when he had arrived home after Becca and Holly had gone to bed, and too many early mornings when he had quietly let himself out of the apartment while they were still sleeping.
    ‘Do we know each other?’ Becca said, her hands on his arms, squeezing, her eyes half-closed, her mouth smiling. He pulled her close and kissed her, holding her as if he would never let her get away.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, and she could feel how much he had missed her. ‘I remember you.’
    And he remembered her too.
    Shane squinted at Bill through a ferocious hangover. ‘How am I looking, mate?’
    They were in the show home on the Green Acres site in Yangdong, sitting by a fountain in the shape of a dragon’s head that wasn’t working yet. On the drive north Tiger had stopped the car three times so that Shane could stumble off into some scrubby bushes.
    ‘You look better,’ Bill said. ‘You’re getting some colour back in your face.’
    Shane exhaled. ‘That’s good.’
    ‘But the colour is green,’ Bill said.
    ‘That’s not so good,’ Shane said. ‘Bad thing about a