Unit Director Luo asked which shred he had in mind, and Chen suggested that he should keep his job. To begin with Unit Director Luo didn’t agree, but in the end she caved in and he kept his job, though he would be moved to Lingshan farm on the back mountain to raise pigs. She asked us what we thought of that. I agreed but I recommended that when Comrade Wang was punished, we shouldn’t drag Comrade Huang’s name into it. Chen immediately agreed. ‘You’re right. We must preserve Comrade Huang’s reputation or it might have a disastrous effect on her work.’

Unit Director Luo agreed to that, and told the head of the political affairs division to write a carefully worded document as soon as possible so that she could send it up to headquarters, get a decision quickly, and then that bloody Wang could piss off to the farm.

Approval was immediately given for our plan, and formal notification was sent to every division. The wording of the document was deliberately vague, saying that Wang was ‘morally corrupt and an extremely bad influence on others’. It didn’t go into details.

But Huang Yiyi really didn’t appreciate our gesture, and so the afternoon the verdict was delivered she came bursting into my office and started calling me to account: why were we punishing Comrade Wang like that? I really had no idea how I had managed to contain my anger at her behaviour for so long, and this was a wonderful opportunity to express my resentment. I just exploded with rage, and shouted at her, ‘How dare you come in here like this!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know perfectly well!’

‘I don’t know!’ In a voice loud enough to shout me down, she added, ‘The verdict didn’t say why you were punishing him, just that he’s “morally corrupt and an extremely bad influence on others”. What do you mean by that? I don’t know. If you mean that we are having an affair, then I can tell you that it is not his fault, I seduced him, and if you want to punish someone it should be me and not him!’

‘Do you think we are going to listen to you?’

‘This isn’t about listening to me, it is about the facts. If you want to punish someone you need to prove that they have done something wrong, and I have just told you the fact of the matter.’

‘The fact is that we went to massive trouble to bring you on board, and that was not so that you would cause trouble but in the hope that you would take up a heavy burden and do something useful!’

She curled her lip contemptuously. ‘I told you ages ago, I am a bad person …’

I cursed her. ‘Are you completely stupid? He’s a married man – what’s the point of getting involved with him?’