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in the People’s Republic of China. A visa … a bleeding red-inked sore at the very heart of her passport. On an unofficial visit. A personal visit. The most personal of visits to the only goddamn thing in her life that lay distanced, untouched by slur and backroom dealings. Untainted by the wash from fast-track political careers and dirt-digging. Family. Blood. Her son … Bobby. It was all that she had that was truly hers. Only recently understanding how her own needs and career had robbed Bobby of her for so long. How he had always been secondary to her driving ambition. Second, always coming second. A long way from home, but now he was first. Her son Bobby had her all to himself. At last, she was doing the right thing.

Chapter 5
    HONGQIAO AIRPORT, SHANGHAI.
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.
    She was surprised, expecting her first nibbles of China to be flavoured with rows of ordered queues and a sea of faded bluey-grey Mao jackets. She was wrong. Hongqiao Airport had the liveliness, the chaotic bustle of Kennedy on a snow-bound Saturday. The terminal throwing wave after wave of faces at her … all seeming to have been peeled from the same mould. Tight-eyed. High cheekboned. She suddenly felt very tall. Very blonde. Very female. Struggling with her cases. Tugging at her too short skirt to lower it. Buttoning her blouse higher. Aware of her legs. Her hair. Her breasts. Her skin. Reminding herself of Marilyn in … ‘Some Like It Hot.’ Lazy glances. Studied stares. Without exception, every eye examining her. In D.C, New York, Dallas … she relished it. But here she felt as if every eye was a pin, and she the pincushion. She moved out of the terminal. A row of taxis jockeying for position in the periphery of her vision. Fat, angry meat-flies staking their portion of the action. She joined the queue, ushered to the front of it by a flurry of flapping hands. The air heavy with the smell of aviation fuel, old people, and rain about to fall. Stuttering into the taxi, manhandling the cases in front of her.
    Damn it, I’ve brought too much. I always bring too much.
    Skirt riding high above her knees. Lines of eyes with permanent questions riveted to their irises, following her every move as if she were a new and exotic spectator sport. “The Jing Jiang Hotel please.”
    The taxi pulled away. She settled into the plastic covered seat for the journey into the city’s heart. Fifteen kilometres. The banner over the driver’s head proclaiming the name of the company whose taxi it was that she was driving in … the ‘FRIENDSHIP TAXI SERVICE.’ It didn’t feel very friendly. The driver’s stare into the rear-view mirror not leaving her for the whole of the fifteen kilometres.
    *
    The main entrance of the Jing Jiang Hotel sits opposite a row of shops, the most exclusive in China. Amongst these is a supermarket that sells some rare treats … chocolate, cheeses, biscuits. Day and night there is a permanent queue at the checkout … such is the hunger.
    *
    It took all of her strength not to go over the same territory again. Not to grab the demure white bloused receptionist and haul her over the desk …
    Where’s my goddamn son, you bitch. What have you done to him?
    And if an answer had not been forthcoming, which it would not have been, to do the same to the deputy manager. Then the general manager. And then the fucking shit of an owner, if she had thought that it would have done any good. But that had already been done verbally from many thousands of miles away; and on several occasions since the night when Bobby’s name had javelined into the depths of her sleep … splitting her life away from all that it had previously been anchored to. She and Carmichael, bombarding the hotel with calls. Prodding. Probing. Slicing away at every polite response to their questions. Digging for an inaccuracy. Words … pinned. Sentences … dissected. Silences … analysed. Pressure, and a contact of