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  Then he turned around. They lived on the thirty-third floor and today the buildings opposite were invisible in the smog. ‘You’ll be needing your mask,’ he said, and left the room.

  Jing’s relief was followed by a small surge of power. For once, he had agreed to her wishes! Usually she kept them so buried that they hardly existed, even to herself. But now she’d had this small triumph she was conscious of how many more of them lurked there. She would not mention them, however. She was a good wife and knew her position.

  Besides, her husband was a volatile man and she couldn’t predict his reactions. Sometimes she felt that she hardly knew him at all. They had been married for five years but in reality it was much shorter; this was because he was away for weeks at a time and during his absences she reverted to her former self. Her marriage, like so many she knew, was full of departures; it never seemed to shunt forward.

  If they had a child this would change; the child would be a growing thing and they would grow with it. But they didn’t have a child and it was all her fault that their marriage was stuck in sterility. She had always suffered from painful and irregular periods and recently polycystic ovaries had been diagnosed. She had failed him.

  And after all he had done! He had plucked her out of poverty and installed her in this vast marble apartment in CBD, the embassy district. He had given her clothes and jewellery and a credit card for when she went shopping. All this, and more, and she couldn’t give him the one thing he wanted in return. And, stuck up in the sky, in a city where she had no friends, she could confide in nobody. Sometimes she was so homesick that she lay all afternoon on the bed, her face buried in the coverlet.

  She never knew who suggested that her husband should have a check-up. He had mentioned it casually, as if it were a passing thought. Maybe nobody had suggested it; Lei had few intimates. Maybe he had secretly become worried and investigated on the internet.

  The result, however, was that he had undergone some tests and now the two of them were sitting in the consultant’s room. He was an elderly man with pebble glasses. ‘This is your sperm count, sir.’ An abrupt way of putting it, she thought, considering the delicacy of the subject. He passed her husband a piece of paper.

  There was a silence. The only sound was a faint bubbling from an aquarium. It was surprisingly murky for such spotless surroundings, its glass stained green with algae.

  Lei read the paper briefly. Then he folded it and put it in his pocket.

  ‘If it’s any comfort,’ said the consultant, ‘this is not unusual. Sperm counts have fallen dramatically during the past ten years. It’s now been proven that this is directly related to our industrial growth. Fertility in Hebei province is down eighty per cent, and Beijing is not far behind. Pollution is to blame, sir, rather than any shortcomings in yourself.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘It seems that nature is finishing what our leaders started. The one-child policy is fast becoming a no-child policy.’

  Nobody smiled. This was unsurprising. Jing, avoiding her husband’s eye, gazed at the submerged castle, dimly visible in the aquarium. Her first thought was for Lei. How she wished she hadn’t accompanied him, to witness his shame!

  Lei got up, shook the consultant’s hand and left the room without a word. Jing followed him. As they descended in the elevator she glimpsed him in the mirror. His face was smooth and expressionless. The reality hit her and her guts tightened. They were doomed to be childless, for ever. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away, inspecting the emergency telephone. Now hope was removed, she realized how much she had been presuming that it would happen one day, sooner or later. One day she would hold a baby in her arms. She would love and be loved. She would love it until she died.

  Lei strode ahead of her down the street. People passed them, masked and scarved. The neon sign of McDonald’s loomed up, then a noodle bar. As she followed her husband, Jing felt the phantom child dissolve into the smog. So this was it.

  A bus passed, belching fumes. Lei opened the car door and she climbed in. Even in her despair, however, Jing felt a small tweak of relief – so it wasn’t her fault, not entirely. She had felt such shame and guilt, that she had failed as a wife. Now her husband was her new companion in barrenness. Nothing felt companionable just now, however, as he abruptly pulled out into the street. Horns honked.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Mother fucker!’ he shouted at a van.

  She could hardly guess at the depths of his shame. Everyone knew it was different for a man. Pride drove them; it was both their fear and their fuel. Wang Lei was a tough, strutting, aggressive man; status was important to him – no, more than that. It was his core. This was often the case with small men. The shopkeeper back in her village, a stocky little pug-dog, was always getting into brawls.

  Her husband’s battles took place in the boardroom, or wherever it was that he did business. Jing had no idea of the exact nature of his work. He never spoke about it and she had no intention of asking him. Africa, the source of his wheeler-dealing, lay like a great dark unknowable secret. She knew only the private man, a man addicted to malt whisky and gambling. The most private thing of all, which so often ended in failure, was something she would keep to herself till she died. It’s all right, she used to whisper, touching him as he lay hunched, his back to her. He had never responded so she had learned to keep silent. And sometimes it did happen – enough times for them to have conceived a child, if either of them had been able to do so.

  He was driving past the smudgy bulk of the Hyatt Park Hotel, near where they lived, but he didn’t take the turning.

  ‘Aren’t we going home?’ she asked.

  Lei shook his head. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  He said nothing else, and now they had joined the stream of traffic on the Second Ring Road. Headlights swept past in the opposite direction; it was only two-thirty but dusk had lasted all day. Sitting in their beautiful, silent car she thought: pollution doesn’t distinguish between rich and poor. And then, with a lurch of homesickness, she pictured the blue sky of her family village. She pictured the clear streams, the egrets stepping fastidiously, hesitantly, through the shallows. She pictured the washing swaying in the breeze and her grandmother tock-tocking at the hens as she fed them. If only she could sit with her family now in the fresh air, drinking tea and laughing! But yet another gulf had opened up between them. Never, ever, could she tell them what had happened in the doctor’s room. One gulf after another, all of them unbridgeable – this one above all. And she the envy of her schoolfriends!

  They drove past a row of electronics shops, their lights glowing, then over a flyover. Through the dimness she could see cranes and half-built apartment blocks. Beijing was one vast building site, spreading ever wider. It was disorientating how landmarks upon which she used to rely disappeared, seemingly overnight, and skyscrapers grew up in their place. And she had only lived there for five years.

  The sky had cleared; they were out in the countryside now. What was Lei’s surprise? Were they going to drive into a village and snatch a baby? Did he have a joint suicide in mind, a hand-in-hand jump from a bridge? Jing had no idea and she didn’t care; she was sunk into apathy. This was strangely liberating. Her inner censor had loosened and, as they sped along the motorway, words swam dreamily into her head, words she had never admitted. What would it be like to make love to another man? She was a virgin when she married. Why did Lei show no interest in her life? Why, to be fair, did she show no interest in his? Was every wife as lonely as she was? Would a baby really have bound them together? Did Lei have sex with black women in Africa? Did she even like him?

  Despair had made Jing blazingly honest; she flushed at her boldness. When she was little she had gone to a ventriloquist show; now, as she sat beside her husband, she felt as if a dummy had popped up to ask those forbidden questions. They came so thick and fast it seemed impossible that Lei didn’t sense them as he sat at the wheel, wreathed in cigarette smoke.

  T
hey had been driving for an hour, through heavy traffic. Lei, sounding his horn, overtook a fleet of coaches. Mountains rose up on either side. She had travelled this road before, when Lei had taken her to the Great Wall. He had taken her parents too – five-star hotel, lavish meals; she must remember that he was a generous man. And she must remember how he was suffering. The humiliation, the sense of male inadequacy, the loss of hope.

  He seemed remarkably cheerful, however, as he indicated left. He even started whistling.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  He smiled at her. ‘Wait and see, bao bei.’

  The endearment gave her a jolt of pleasure. The sun had come out, though the tops of the mountains were wreathed in mist. Somewhere up there the Great Wall ran up and down the spine, as rhythmic as music. A group of tourists in fluorescent jackets cycled along the road. It led along a valley, past orchards of apricot trees and farmhouses. A row of elderly villagers were pumping away at exercise machines.

  And now their car was climbing up a winding road, in a queue of vehicles. Arrows pointed to hotels; a placard said PICK UP YOUR LITTER. By now Jing had guessed that her husband was taking her to the Wall. Yet he was wearing a business suit and hardly dressed for it. Maybe it was an impulsive decision, to cheer her up. He had realized the news had been as upsetting for her as it had been for him.

  He parked in the village of Beigou, where coaches were disgorging sightseers. They got out. Jing had a strong desire to take his hand in gratitude, but he disliked public shows of affection. And now he was beckoning to her to follow him up a path. A sign said RESIDENTS ONLY.

  Jing followed him, her feet slipping in their city sandals. They left behind the village and the tourists. The path was thickly bordered with bushes; she glimpsed a surveillance camera. After ten minutes Lei paused. He looked at her, his eyes glittering with excitement, and took something out of his pocket.

  She followed him round a corner and stopped dead. In front of them stood a house. It was brand new, with a gabled pagoda roof and vast windows surrounded by fancy woodwork.

  For a moment she thought they were visiting one of his business cronies – a government official, perhaps. Lei had connections in the highest places and only they could afford such a property. ‘Whose house is this?’ she asked.

  Lei opened his hand. A key lay in his palm. ‘It’s ours,’ he said.

  He unlocked the door, walked in and ambled around the lobby. He ran his finger down the wood as casually as a farmer stroking the flank of a cow. ‘It’s our beautiful holiday home, an escape from the suffocating city. Our beloved country is choking itself to death. That’s progress, my dear wife, that’s our great miracle. Here, however, we can relax in the fresh air.’ He pointed to the floor. ‘These bricks were used for the restoration of the Great Wall, bought from the factory that made them. The architect is world-class. He is Italian.’

  She was still suffering from shock. She thought: why has he done all this and told me nothing? What other secrets does he have? ‘Holiday home?’ she asked. She had never heard of such a thing. If people were rich they went to Europe or the USA. If they were poor they went back to their villages.

  He was irritated. She couldn’t blame him. ‘It’s what’s happening,’ he snapped. ‘Do you know nothing?’

  ‘No,’ she said and stepped towards him. ‘I’m sorry. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Shall we look around?’

  As she followed him up the stairs she thought how mysterious he was to her. She knew he had other properties. He had bought apartments in London, investments in places called Kensington and Battersea. He spent hours on the phone. In fact, now she thought of it, her abiding image of him was muttering into his mobile as he pushed the door shut with his foot.

  They stood in the master bedroom. Its entire wall was glass, with a view that stretched to the end of the world. Lei said: ‘There were plenty of buyers but I moved fast. You know I always get what I want.’ He moved close and touched the hollow of her throat. ‘When I saw you I knew I had to have you.’

  His finger lifted the gold chain around her neck. Jing felt a sexual jolt – such an unusual sensation it took her by surprise.

  To be truthful, she didn’t remember that moment at all. She was checking out a customer at the Shanghai Sheraton, where she worked at the reception desk, and Wang Lei was checking in. Her colleague must have dealt with him. Needless to say, she had never admitted this.

  If he had been tall and handsome she might have noticed him. Lei, however, was a plain man. His attraction lay in his energy; there was something of the boxer about his short, squat body. During those first weeks she had succumbed to the sheer force of him as he wined and dined her and made it clear that he would keep her safe for the rest of her life – indeed, keep her in the sort of luxury she had only glimpsed in the dreamworld of magazines. He wooed her parents too – as if they needed it – taking them shopping in New York and gambling in Atlantic City, a trip so unreal that by the time they had offered up thanks in their temple, back in their village, they couldn’t believe it had happened at all.

  The two of them left the house and walked down the path. The scent of woodsmoke drifted up from Beigou village. It was the scent of her childhood, which was never far from her mind. She remembered lying in bed, her grandmother singing her a lullaby.

  Be quiet and don’t keep crying

  My lovely child,

  If you cry your loveliness will fade away.

  I hope that you will have an honourable life, and be a good person,

  Upholding your parents’ name.

  Be a patriot.

  Don’t cry, my child,

  Look! The moon is rising

  Like a giant’s head, so dreadful,

  Looking for a crying child.

  Much as she loved her grandmother, Jing vowed that she would never sing such gloomy words to her baby; she would sing it something cheerful by Britney Spears.

  A wave of desolation swept through her. What baby?

  They had reached the car park. The woodsmoke was replaced by the smell of exhaust fumes, billowing from the idling coaches. A row of passengers queued at the toilets.

  Emboldened by the presence of other people, the revving engines and the voices, she turned to Lei and plucked up courage.

  She said: ‘The house does seem a little large for just the two of us.’

  ‘What do you mean, the two of us?’ Lei aimed the car key like a dagger.

  ‘I mean, the doctor said …’ She faltered to a stop.

  ‘Of course we’ll have a child.’ Wang Lei pressed the key and the car beeped. ‘I’ll see to that.’

  Pimlico, London

  THERE’S BEEN ANOTHER explosion. I’m reading about it in the newspaper. This time it wasn’t cows that blew up, it was a Muslim terrorist. Apparently he put a bomb under a car which was parked near an army barracks. When he returned to check why it hadn’t detonated it blew up in his face. Police suspect that he had forgotten about the clocks changing to British Summer Time. He miscalculated, they said, and forgot to set his watch forward by an hour.

  I burst out laughing but it sounds odd, doesn’t it, in an empty kitchen? I should have got used to it by now but I feel like a madwoman. What do I do with all the laughter and all the unsaid words that fill my brain? There’s so many things I want to tell someone; where do I put all that stuff? I need some sort of depository so I can store it for later, until I meet someone who might enjoy it. Along the Thames nowadays it’s one huge building site – Battersea, Vauxhall. Ugly skyscrapers are rising into the sky. They’re not for Londoners; they’re pension pots for foreign investors from Malaysia and China and most of them will remain empty. Plenty of space there. I could fill up whole floors with my ideas and observations. Some of them are quite entertaining, though I say so myself. This idea, for instance.

  The thing is, I’m lonely. Howlingly, achingly lonely. I can’t phone my children because, for them, it’s either the middle of the night
or six in the morning. Besides, they have their own lives and I don’t want to sound needy. Of course I have friends but they’ll be at work. I should be at work. I’m a picture researcher and should be up in my study by now. It appears to be eleven o’clock, however, and I’m still in my dressing-gown. Hammerings come from the basement where at last a couple of builders are finishing off what Alan started. Did I tell you, by the way, that he slapped me about? On three occasions he hit me when he was drunk. Once is too many; only a true neurotic would hang about for more.

  Today I’m feeling particularly depressed. During the past few months I’ve been meeting men on the internet, something I’ve been doing off and on for years. After several dismal failures I met somebody I rather liked. His name was Barry and I warmed to him when he asked me about my life – virtually unheard-of, in these situations. Plus he hated golf. And he had a full head of hair. These might seem minor attributes but from them – doggedly, stupidly, like a naive, ageing teenager – I started spinning the man of my dreams. I even imagined our future together, isn’t that pathetic? He lived in Billingshurst – direct trains to Victoria – and I live in Pimlico, a few streets from the station. We could live partly in London and partly in what I imagined was his picturesque dwelling deep in the Sussex countryside where we could spend our days gardening and then, with a sigh, sink into our armchairs with a glass of whisky and I could make him laugh by telling him about Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up by mistake.

  Then, one day, he stopped replying to my emails, and within a week his profile was back on the website.

  And to make things worse, just when I’m feeling at my lowest, my old friend Bev sends one of her round-robins.

  Bev has one of the world’s happiest marriages, you see, and likes to share this with the large circle of friends and acquaintances to whom she sends her excruciatingly smug blogs. As if we’re fucking interested. She’s out in West Africa with her adorable husband Jeremy, who works for some big pharmaceutical company. He’s a litigation lawyer and I suspect he does something murky, like fighting cases brought by poor people who’ve been used as guinea pigs for new drugs. In fact I seem to remember something about some slimming pill, a couple of years ago. There’s a touch of the con man about Jeremy, though I do have to admit he’s fun.