My Favourite Wife Read Free

came round, Becca banged about in the strange new kitchen, preparing breakfast. Yawning, Holly came and sat at the table.
    ‘I’m a bit worried,’ she said, with her spoon poised halfway to her mouth. Becca touched her daughter’s face, curled a tendril of hair behind her tiny sticky-out ears.
    ‘What are you worried about, darling?’ Becca said.
    ‘I’m a bit worried about dead people,’ Holly said solemnly, the corners of her mouth turning down.
    Becca sat back. ‘Dead people?’
    The child nodded. ‘I’m afraid they’re not going to get better.’
    Becca sighed, tapping the table. ‘Don’t worry about dead people,’ she said. ‘Worry about your Coco-Pops.’
    After breakfast Becca set up the breathing machine. It was routine now. The thing had a mouthpiece to make it easy for Holly to inhale her medication, and her blue eyes were wide above it.
    Just before nine, Becca and Holly walked hand in hand to the Gubei International School. The children seemed to be from every nation on earth. There was that awkward moment when it was time to part and Holly clung to the belt of her mother’s jeans. But then a small, plump girl of about four who looked like she was from Korea or Japan took Holly’s hand and led her into the class, where the Australian teacher was taking registration, and Becca was the one who was reluctant to leave.
    Everyone else was rushing off. Some of them were dressed for the office, some of them were dressed for the gym, but all of them acted like they had somewhere very important to go. Then there was a woman by her side, smiling, wheeling a fat toddler in a pushchair. The mother of the child who had taken Holly’s hand.
    ‘First day,’ she said in an American accent. ‘Tough, right?’ Becca nodded. ‘You know what it’s like. The trembling chin.Fighting back the tears. Trying to be brave.’ She looked at the woman. ‘And that’s just me.’
    The woman laughed. ‘Kyoko Smith,’ she said, offering her hand. Becca shook it. Kyoko said she was a lawyer from Yokohama, not practising, married to an attorney from New York. They had been in Shanghai for almost two years. Becca said she was a journalist, currently resting, and she was married to yet another lawyer, whose name was Bill. They had been in Shanghai for two days.
    ‘You want to get coffee sometime?’ Kyoko asked Becca. ‘Tomorrow, maybe? I’ve got to run right now.’
    ‘Oh, me too,’ Becca said. ‘I have to run too.’
    ‘Well, that’s Shanghai,’ Kyoko Smith smiled. ‘Everybody always has to run.’
    As Becca walked slowly back to Paradise Mansions she called Bill on his mobile.
    ‘She go off okay?’ Someone was with him. Becca could tell. She could also tell he had been thinking about Holly on her first day.
    ‘Oh, she was fine,’ she said, far breezier than she felt.
    ‘She’ll be okay, Bec,’ he said, knowing how hard it was for her to leave their daughter. ‘It will be good for her to be with kids her own age. We have to let her go sooner or later, don’t we?’
    The silence hummed between them and she made no attempt to fill it. She fought back the sudden tears, angry with herself for feeling like a mad housewife.
    ‘Try not to worry too much,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’ll see you later, okay?’
    Becca still said nothing. She was thinking, wondering if the best thing for Holly wasn’t to stay with her, just keep her close, weighing it all up. Then she finally said, ‘Good luck up there, Bill,’ releasing him to get on with his job.
    She couldn’t face the flat and all that unpacking. Not yet. So she caught a taxi to Xintiandi, the new area they always talked about in the guidebooks, the place she had been looking forwardto seeing, where they said you could see the oldest and newest parts of the city. The flat could wait.
    Suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odours of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night – the first sigh of the East on