My Favourite Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 ifthey 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