by Tony Parsons
And as I watch that heartbreaking Hong Kong skyline of glass, silver and gold, I think of my lost wife and the time that will never come again, and that’s when I have to turn away from the girl beside me, so that she will not see what is written all over my face.
It’s funny. You love something and then one day it’s suddenly gone or changed or lost forever. But somehow that doesn’t stop your love. Maybe that’s how you know it’s the real thing. When it doesn’t come with conditions and get-out clauses, when it doesn’t have a best-by date. When you just give your love, and never stop giving it, and know that you never will. That’s when it is real. That’s when they can never touch it or spoil it or take it away from you.
All too soon we are at the other side. It goes so fast, this brief ride. A short, sweet journey that is always over too soon. The girl gets up to leave. We smile at each other and I wonder what she is doing tonight. I know that there will be some handsome young man waiting for her somewhere in this town, and I am happy for her.
‘Good luck with the writing,’ she says. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.’
‘I’d appreciate it.’
The girl hefts her big cardboard box in her thin arms, gives me one final smile, and soon she is lost among the impatient throng.
I turn my face to the open window once more. And suddenly I see the two of them moving through the lunch time crowds of Central. Jackie and Plum.
They are loaded down with their shopping bags, cameras swinging around their necks, laughing together about something.
I smile to myself. When you see them at moments like this, unaware that they are being watched, they always look closer than sisters, and more than mother and daughter. They look like best friends.
There they are now, Jackie and Plum, making their way to meet me where the Star Ferry docks on the other side. They haven’t seen me yet. But they will soon. And as I watch their faces move through that great lonely crowd of people who I will never know, as I watch Jackie and Plum until they disappear into the ferry terminal where we have arranged to meet, I wonder how I ever believed that you can have too much love in your life.
Then the Star Ferry is rolling beneath my feet as it is secured to Hong Kong Island, so I join the crowds waiting for the gangway to be lowered, all of us eager to be on our way now, and I can feel a sense of silent anticipation in the air, like someone finally turning for home, or a baby waiting to be born.
About the Author
Tony Parsons is the author of Man and Boy, winner of the Book of the Year Prize, and translated into 38 languages. His subsequent novels—The Family Way, Man and Wife, Stories We Could Tell and My Favourite Wife—were all bestsellers. He lives in London.
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Praise for One for My Baby
‘Subtle and intelligent’
The Times
‘Full of hard-earned wisdom. An essential purchase’
GQ
‘The writing is confident and accomplished…He makes the reader care…This is art shot through with humanity’
Independent on Sunday
Praise for Tony Parsons
‘Funny, serious, tender and honest…Tony Parsons is writing about the genuine dilemmas of modern life’
Sunday Express
‘He takes as his specialist subject contemporary emotional issues which almost every other male writer has ignored’
Guardian
‘A touching novel…full of quiet tenderness and written from the heart’
Independent
‘Memorable and poignant—nobody squeezes more genuine emotion from a scene than Tony Parsons’
Spectator
‘His stories show all too well how we muddle along in search of love and fulfilment and when we fluff it…sometimes that’s just because it’s easier’
Observer
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Man and Boy
Man and Wife
The Family Way
Stories We Could Tell
My Favourite Wife
Copyright
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2001
Copyright © Tony Parsons 2001
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
‘One For My Baby (and One More For the Road)’ Words by Johnny Mercer. Music by Harold Arlen. © 1944 Harwin Music Corp., USA. Chappell Morris Music Ltd, London W6 8BS. Lyrics reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-36292-9
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