My Favourite Wife. Tony Parsons
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Название: My Favourite Wife
Автор: Tony Parsons
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007362912
isbn:
No, said Devlin, not at all – Shanghai was actually a perfect posting for a man with a family. A man with stability, ambition, loved ones to work for. Shanghai had too many distractions for the single man, he said. Too many distractions. Later they would all become experts on the distractions of Shanghai.
Devlin was a family man himself – and he showed Becca a wallet photograph of a beautiful middle-aged woman and three smiling boys. Devlin said he liked his staff to have families. It meant they had a stake in the future.
Becca turned to Shane, who had been listening to some of this with a lopsided grin, and asked him how his own wife liked Shanghai. But Shane said that he wasn’t married, and they all laughed.
The pipers came into the room. They were playing ‘Flower of Scotland’. And when the dinner started to break up, and Bill came over to their table, Becca could almost hear the invitation from Devlin to have breakfast, to talk about the future, all the coy small talk of the headhunter.
But as Bill took his wife’s hand, happy and relieved to be back by her side, the man from Shanghai surprised both of them.
‘I like it that you’re married,’ he told Bill.
Becca picked up Holly from the school at twelve sharp. She could have stayed until three, but Becca was afraid that her daughter might miss her.
‘She’s been fine, didn’t miss Mummy at all,’ the Australian teacher said, giving Becca a shrewd look that said, Who’s doing the missing around here?
The pair of them held hands as they walked back through the peaceful streets of Gubei to the flat and, as Holly played with her Disney princess figures, Becca made a start on the unpacking.
‘Where did Daddy went?’ Holly asked.
‘Where did Daddy go,’ Becca said.
‘That’s just what I was wondered,’ Holly said, stunned at this amazing coincidence.
Becca pulled open a case. Suits. Dark blue suits for the hot young lawyer. ‘Your daddy’s at work, darling.’
Holly banged Prince Charming’s plastic head against the palm of her hand. ‘I need to talk to him.’
‘You can talk to him later,’ Becca said, but she wondered if Bill would get home from work before their daughter went to bed. She knew he would try his best. She also knew it was unlikely.
When Becca stopped for a cup of English breakfast tea, she went to the window but the courtyard was empty. There was no sign of the young women they had seen on Saturday night.
It was only early afternoon and the girls of Paradise Mansions were still sleeping.
The firm occupied three floors in a Pudong skyscraper so new that he could still smell the paint. Bill sat with his back to the window. Behind him the financial district stretched off into the summer mist.
There were spiked Tolkien towers constructed from steel and gold and black glass, one of them built to look like a hundred-storey pagoda, another with a screen covering an entire side of the building where a smiling beauty advertised a phone network. Looming above it all like the true masters of the landscape were the giant cranes.
On Bill’s desk there were neat stacks of draft contracts and a silver-framed photograph of his family – Bill and Becca and Holly standing in the surf on a beach in the Caribbean, Bill holding the then two-year-old Holly in his arms, Becca looking jaw-droppingly gorgeous in some kind of orange shift thing, the three of them wearing slightly shy grins as they gazed at the kind passing stranger who was taking the picture. It was the holiday they took before Becca gave up work and the money got tight. When his eyes drifted to the photograph in the course of his working day, Bill always found himself smiling.
He was going through the transactional documents of a new property development on the outskirts of the city. It was called Green Acres. When completed, it would be a gated community for the new rich of Shanghai. Butterfield, Hunt and West were representing the project’s German investors, DeutscherMonde. Bill had already noticed that the firm were doing a lot of work for DeutscherMonde. He looked up as Shane appeared in the doorway.
‘These Germans,’ Bill said. ‘Do they have a fixed cap?’
Shane shook his head and Bill looked suitably impressed. Clients often pressed law firms for a fixed cap on fees for any deal, knowing that if they were billed by the hour then the legal fees were potentially limitless.
‘Sky’s the limit,’ Shane said. ‘Limit’s the sky. That’s why they’re so important.’ The big Australian came into the room and leafed through some papers on Bill’s desk. ‘This place is going to be beautiful, mate. One hundred millionaires in one square mile. Gardens based on Versailles. Pools, saunas, panic rooms – all based on the actual pools, saunas and panic rooms that they had at Versailles. Twenty-four-hour armed security for the blokes who only just got used to using inside toilets. Lovely jubbly.’
Bill leaned back in his chair. He had building plans in one hand and a map of the area in the other. The development was being built in a place where right now there were only fields and a small village.
‘It looks like it’s being built on farmland,’ he said, handing Shane the map.
‘That’s right. The village is called Yangdong. They’ve been pig farmers for generations.’
Bill thumbed through the file. ‘So who owns the land?’
Shane put the map back on Bill’s desk. ‘The People,’ he said.
Bill looked at the map and up at Shane. ‘So the people of this village – the farmers – they own it?’
‘Not the farmers,’ Shane said. ‘The People. In China, all farmland is owned collectively. Each family in the village has a long-term lease on its holding. Our clients are buying the land from the local government.’
‘What happens to the farmers?’ Bill said.
‘They get a compensation package,’ Shane said, ‘and get to say so long and fare-thee-well to their pigs. Our clients build their two-million-US houses for people rich enough to afford them -and there are plenty of those. These places were all sold off the drawing board. And in a year there will be palaces where there used to be pig farms. And everybody will be happy.’
A man with fair, thinning hair appeared in the doorway. He was maybe ten years older than Bill, in his early forties. Bill had noticed him around the office because he seemed older than everyone else.
‘Shane?’ the man said. There was the north of England in his accent. ‘Mr Devlin is looking for you.’
‘Thanks, Mitch,’ Shane said. ‘I’m right there, mate.’ Shane made no attempt to introduce the man to Bill, so the pair of them smiled awkwardly at each other for a moment, and then the man was gone.
‘Who’s that?’ Bill said.
‘Pete СКАЧАТЬ