Everyone fell silent as they watched the ritual of the waiter returning with the bottle of Burgundy, presenting it to Chairman Sun, who – after a tense moment – nodded his faint approval.
The waiter removed the cork and delicately poured a splash of red wine into Chairman Sun's glass. His frog face twitched with suspicion as he smelled the wine, tasted it and – after another breathless moment – nodded his approval.
The waiter half-filled Chairman Sun's glass with Burgundy. Then the Chairman topped it up with the can of Sprite in front of him, took a long slurp and exhaled with pleasure.
Bill glanced across at Shane and Devlin and Nancy and the two Germans.
But they didn't even blink.
On Saturday afternoon he came home to an empty apartment.
He placed the stack of files he was carrying on the table, tore off his jacket and tie, and read the note Becca had stuck to the fridge. She had taken Holly to ride the bumper cars at Fuxing Park. He had promised to go with them, if he could get away in time. But Saturday was a work day at Nutterfield, Hunt and West.
Bill had spent the afternoon going through paperwork with Shane and Nancy. The contract between the Germans and the Yangdong officials was in Chinese and drawn up under Chinese law, but the deal was structured so that all the important
commercial rights were offshore, governed by Hong Kong law with documents in English.
'It makes the deal easier to enforce,' Nancy had explained.
'When someone steals all the money,' Shane added.
Bill took a bottle of Evian from the fridge and crossed to the window. The courtyard was empty apart from a silver Porsche 911. It looked like a shark waiting its prey on the bottom of the ocean. A 911, Bill thought, yawning as he stretched out on the sofa. A 911 in China …
He woke up with his daughter's face pressed close, and he could smell the sweetness of her breath as she laughed with delight. She held a brightly coloured plastic figurine in each tiny fist. A prince in one hand, and a princess in the other.
'Be the prince,' Holly urged. 'Come on, come on – be the prince, Daddy.'
He closed his eyes. He had never felt so tired. When he opened them, Holly was still offering him one of the little figurines. He stretched, groaned, and closed his eyes.
'Later, darling,' he heard Becca say from the kitchen. 'Your daddy's been working very hard for us.'
Bill felt relief as he heard small footsteps walking slowly away. When he opened his eyes he saw his daughter kneeling on the far side of the room, playing quietly by herself, and he felt unkind.
'Holly?' He was propped up on one elbow.
'Yes?' she said with that shy formality that always touched his heart, and then owned it forever.
He swung his legs round, ran his fingers through his hair.
'What do you want me to do?'
Holly looked up at him with her perfect face. 'Go on,' she said, advancing towards him with the figurines in her hand.
She pushed a piece of plastic in his face. A little unsmiling man in a golden crown and trousers that were too tight. 'Go on, Daddy,' his daughter urged. 'Go on, Daddy – be Prince Charming.'
He did his best.
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.