Crazy Rich Asians

1 Astrid

SINGAPORE

Cassian was just being buttoned into his smart new Prussian-blue sailor suit when Astrid got a call from her husband.

“I have to work late and won’t make it in time for dinner at Ah Ma’s.”

“Really? Michael, you’ve worked late every single night this week,” Astrid said, trying to maintain a neutral tone.

“The whole team is staying late.”

“On a Friday night?” She didn’t mean to give away any indications of doubt, but the words came out before she could stop herself. Now that her eyes were wide open, the signs were all there — he had canceled on almost every family occasion over the past few months.

“Yes. I’ve told you before, this is how it is at a start-up,” Michael added warily.

Astrid wanted to call his bluff. “Well, why don’t you join us whenever you get off work? It’s probably going to be a late night. Ah Ma’s tan hua flowers are going to bloom tonight, and she’s invited some people over.”

“Even more reason for me not to be there. I’m going to be much too worn out.”

“Come on, it’s going to be a special occasion. You know it’s awfully good luck to witness the flowers bloom, and it will be so much fun,” Astrid said, struggling to keep the tone light.

“I was there the last time they bloomed three years ago, and I just don’t think I can deal with a big crowd tonight.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s going to be that big a crowd.”

“You always say that and then we get there and it turns out to be a sit-down dinner for fifty, and some bloody MP is there, or there’s some other sideshow distraction,” Michael complained.

“That’s not true.”

“Come on lah, you know it’s true. Last time we had to sit through a whole piano recital by that Ling Ling guy.”

“Michael, it’s Lang Lang, and you’re probably the only person in the world who doesn’t appreciate a private concert by one of the world’s top pianists.”

“Well, it was damn lay chay,[42] especially on a Friday night when I’m exhausted from the long week.”

Astrid decided that it wasn’t worth pushing him any further. He obviously had a thousand ready excuses not to be at dinner. What was he really up to? Was the texting slut from Hong Kong suddenly in town? Was he going to hook up with her?

“Okay, I’ll tell the cook to make you something when you get home. What do you feel like eating?” she offered cheerily.

“No, no, don’t bother. I’m sure we’ll be ordering food here.”

A likely story. Astrid hung up the phone reluctantly. Where was he going to order the food? From room service at some cheap hotel in Geylang? There was no way he could meet this girl at a decent hotel — someone was bound to recognize him. She remembered a time not long ago when Michael would be so sweetly apologetic for missing any family occasion. He would say soothing things like, “Honey, I’m soooo sorry I can’t make it. Are you sure you’ll be okay going on your own?” But that gentler side of him had dissipated. When exactly did that happen? And why had it taken her so long to notice the signals?

Ever since that day at Stephen Chia Jewels, Astrid had experienced a catharsis of sorts. In some perverse way, she was relieved to have proof of her husband’s unfaithfulness. It was the uncertainty of it all — the cloak-and-dagger suspicions — that had been killing her. Now she could, as a psychologist might say, “learn to accept and learn to adapt.” She could concentrate on the bigger picture. Sooner or later the fling would be over and life would go on, as it did for the millions of wives who quietly endured their husbands’ infidelities since time immemorial.

There would be no need for fights, no hysterical confrontations. That would be much too cliché, even though every silly thing her husband had done could have come straight out of one of those “Is My Husband Cheating on Me?” quizzes from some cheesy women’s magazine: Has your husband been going on more business trips lately? Check. Are you making love less frequently? Check. Has your husband incurred mysterious expenses with no explanation? Double check. She could add a new line to the quiz: Is your husband getting text messages late at night from some girl proclaiming to miss his fat cock? CHECK. Astrid’s head was beginning to spin again. She could feel her blood pressure rise. She needed to sit down for a minute and take a few deep breaths. Why had she missed yoga all week, when she so badly needed to release the tension that had been building up? Stop. Stop. Stop. She needed to put all this out of her mind and just be in the moment. Right now, in this moment, she needed to get ready for Ah Ma’s party.

Astrid noticed her reflection in the glass coffee table and decided to change her outfit. She was wearing an old favorite — a gauzy black tunic dress by Ann Demeulemeester, but she felt like she needed to turn up the volume tonight. She was not going to let Michael’s absence ruin her night. She was not going to spend one more second thinking about where he could possibly be going, what he might or might not be doing. She was determined that this would be a magical night of wild blooming flowers under the stars, and that only good things would happen. Good things always happened at Ah Ma’s.

She went into the spare bedroom, which had basically become an extra closet for her overflow of clothes (and this didn’t even include the rooms upon rooms of clothes she still kept at her parents’ house). The space was filled with metal rolling racks on which garment bags of outfits had been meticulously organized by season and color, and Astrid had to move one of the racks into the hallway in order to fit comfortably into the room. This apartment was much too tiny for the family of three (four if you counted the nanny, Evangeline, who slept in Cassian’s room), but she had made the best of it for the sake of her husband.

Most of Astrid’s friends would have been utterly horrified to discover the conditions in which she lived. To the majority of Singaporeans, a spacious two-thousand-square-foot, three-bedroom condo with two and a half baths and a private balcony in District Nine would be a cherished luxury, but for Astrid, who had grown up in such palatial surroundings as her father’s stately house on Nassim Road, the modernist weekend beach bungalow in Tanah Merah, the vast family plantation in Kuantan, and her grandmother’s Tyersall Park estate, it was totally unfathomable.

As a wedding gift, her father had planned to commission an up-and-coming Brazilian architect to build the newlyweds a house in Bukit Timah on land that had already been deeded to Astrid, but Michael would have none of that. He was a proud man and insisted on living in a place that he could afford to purchase. “I am capable of providing for your daughter and our future family,” he had informed his stunned future father-in-law, who instead of being impressed by the gesture, found it rather foolhardy. How was this fellow ever going to afford the kind of place his daughter was accustomed to on his salary? Michael’s meager savings would barely even get them a down payment on a private flat, and Harry found it inconceivable that his daughter might live in government-subsidized housing. Why couldn’t they at the very least just move into one of the houses or luxury apartments that she already owned? But Michael was adamant that he and his wife begin their life on neutral territory. In the end, a compromise was struck and Michael agreed to let both Astrid and her father match what he was able to put in as a down payment. The combined amount allowed them a thirty-year fixed mortgage on this condo in an eighties-era apartment complex off Clemenceau Avenue.

As Astrid sifted through the racks, it suddenly, rather comically, occurred to her that the money she had spent on the couture outfits in this room alone could have paid for a house three times the size of this one. She wondered what Michael might think if he knew actually how many properties she already owned. Astrid’s parents bought their children houses in a way that other parents might buy theirs candy bars. Over the years, they had purchased so many houses for her that by the time she became Mrs. Michael Teo, she was already in possession of a staggering real estate portfolio. There was the bungalow off Dunearn Road, the house in Clementi and the semidetached on Chancery Lane, a row of historic Peranakan shop houses on Emerald Hill left to her by a great-aunt on the Leong side, and numerous other luxury condominiums scattered throughout the island.

And that was just in Singapore. There were land holdings in Malaysia; a flat in London that Charlie Wu had secretly bought for her; a house in Sydney’s exclusive Point Piper and another in Diamond Head, Honolulu; and recently, her mother had mentioned picking up a penthouse in some new tower in Shanghai under her name. (“I saw the special computer mirror in the closet that remembers everything you wear and immediately knew this place was for you,” Felicity had excitedly informed her.) Quite frankly, Astrid didn’t even bother trying to remember all of it; there were too many properties to keep track of.

It was all quite meaningless anyway, since aside from the shop houses on Emerald Hill and the London flat, none of the properties were truly hers — yet. This was all part of her parents’ wealth-succession strategy, and Astrid knew that as long as her parents were alive, she had no real control over the properties, though she benefited from the income derived from them. Twice a year, when the family sat down with their business managers at Leong Holdings, she would notice that her personal accounts always increased in value, sometimes to an absurd degree, no matter how many couture dresses she had splurged on the previous season.

So what should she wear? Maybe it was time to bring out one of her latest Paris treats. She was going to wear her new embroidered Alexis Mabille white peasant blouse with the pearl-gray Lanvin cigarette pants and her new VBH earrings. The thing about those earrings was that they looked so over the top, everyone would think they were costume jewelry. They actually dressed down the whole outfit. Yes, she deserved to look this good. And now maybe she should also change Cassian’s outfit to complement hers.

“Evangeline, Evangeline,” she called out. “I want to change Cassian’s clothes. Let’s put him in that dove-gray jumper from Marie-Chantal.”

2 Rachel and Nick

TYERSALL PARK

As Peik Lin’s car approached the porte cochere of Tyersall Park, Nick bounded down the front steps toward them. “I was worried you’d gotten lost,” he said, opening the car door.

“We did get a bit lost, actually,” Rachel replied, getting out of the car and staring up at the majestic façade before her. Her stomach felt like it had been twisted in a vise, and she smoothed out the creases on her dress nervously. “Am I really late?”

“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry, were my directions confusing?” Nick asked, peering into the car and smiling at Peik Lin. “Peik Lin — thanks so much for giving Rachel a lift.”

“Of course,” Peik Lin murmured, still rather stunned by her surroundings. She longed to get out of the car and explore this colossal estate, but something told her to remain in her seat. She paused for a moment, thinking Nick might invite her in for a drink, but no invitation seemed to be forthcoming. Finally she said as nonchalantly as possible, “This is quite a place — is it your grandmother’s?”

“Yes,” Nick replied.

“Has she lived here a long time?” Peik Lin couldn’t resist trying to find out more as she craned her neck, trying to get a better look.

“Since she was a young girl,” Nick said.

Nick’s answer surprised Peik Lin, as she assumed that the house would have belonged to his grandfather. Now what she really wanted to ask was, Who on earth is your grandmother? But she didn’t want to risk seeming too nosy. “Well, you two have a great time,” Peik Lin said, winking at Rachel and mouthing the words Call me later! Rachel gave her friend a quick smile.

“Good night, and get home safe,” Nick said, patting the roof of the car.

As Peik Lin’s car drove off, Nick turned to Rachel, looking a little sheepish. “I hope it’s okay … but it’s not just the family. My grandmother decided to have a small party, all arranged at the last minute, apparently, because her tan hua flowers are going to bloom tonight.”

“She’s throwing a party because her flowers are in bloom?” Rachel asked, not quite following.

“Well, these are very rare flowers that bloom extremely infrequently, sometimes once every decade, sometimes even longer than that. They only bloom at night, and the whole thing only lasts for a few hours. It’s quite something to witness.”

“Sounds cool, but now I’m feeling really underdressed for the occasion,” Rachel said pensively, eyeing the fleet of limousines that lined the driveway.

“Not at all — you look absolutely perfect,” Nick told her. He could sense her trepidation and tried to reassure her, placing his hand on the small of her back and guiding her toward the front doors. Rachel felt the warm, radiating energy from his muscled arm and instantly felt better. Her knight in shining armor was at her side, and everything would be just fine.

As they entered the house, the first thing that caught Rachel’s eye was the dazzling mosaic tiles in the grand foyer. She stood transfixed for a few moments by the intricate black, blue, and coral pattern before realizing that they were not alone. A tall, spindly Indian man stood silently in the middle of the foyer next to a circular stone table clustered with pots of enormous white-and-purple phalaenopsis orchids. The man bowed ceremoniously to Rachel and presented her with a hammered silver bowl filled with water and pale pink rose petals. “For your refreshment, miss,” he said.

“Do I drink this?” Rachel whispered to Nick.

“No, no, it’s for washing your hands,” Nick instructed. Rachel dipped her fingers into the cool scented water before wiping them on the soft terry cloth that was proffered, feeling awed (and a little silly) by the ritual.

“Everyone’s upstairs in the living room,” Nick said, leading her toward the carved stone staircase. Rachel saw something out of the corner of her eye and let out a quick gasp. By the side of the staircase lurked a huge tiger.

“It’s stuffed, Rachel.” Nick laughed. The tiger stood as if about to pounce, mouth open in a ferocious growl.

“I’m sorry, it looked so real,” Rachel said, recovering herself.

“It was real. It’s a native Singaporean tiger. They used to roam this area until the late nineteenth century, but they were hunted into extinction. My great-grandfather shot this one when it ran into the house and hid under the billiard table, or so the story goes.”

“Poor guy,” Rachel said, reaching out to stroke the tiger’s head gingerly. Its fur felt surprisingly brittle, as if a patch might fall off at any minute.

“It used to scare the hell out of me when I was little. I never dared go near the foyer at night, and I had dreams that it would come alive and attack me while I was sleeping,” Nick said.

“You grew up here?” Rachel asked in surprise.

“Yes, until I was about seven.”

“You never told me you lived in a palace.”

“This isn’t a palace. It’s just a big house.”

“Nick, where I come from, this is a palace,” Rachel said, gazing up at the cast-iron and glass cupola soaring above them. As they climbed the stairs, the murmur of party chatter and piano keys wafted down toward them. When they reached the landing to the second floor, Rachel almost had to rub her eyes in disbelief. Sweet Jesus. She felt momentarily giddy, as if she had been transported back in time to another era, to the grand lounge of a twenties ocean liner en route from Venice to Istanbul, perhaps.

The “living room,” as Nick so modestly called it, was a gallery that ran along the entire northern end of the house, with art deco divans, wicker club chairs, and ottomans casually grouped into intimate seating areas. A row of tall plantation doors opened onto the wraparound veranda, inviting the view of verdant parklands and the scent of night-blooming jasmine into the room, while at the far end a young man in a tuxedo played on the Bösendorfer grand piano. As Nick led her into the space, Rachel found herself reflexively trying to ignore her surroundings, even though all she wanted to do was study every exquisite detail: the exotic potted palms in massive Qian-long dragon jardinieres that anchored the space, the scarlet-shaded opaline glass lamps that cast an amber glow over the lacquered teak surfaces, the silver- and lapis lazuli — filigreed walls that shimmered as she moved about the room. Every single object seemed imbued with a patina of timeless elegance, as if it had been there for more than a hundred years, and Rachel didn’t dare to touch anything. The glamorous guests, however, appeared completely at ease lounging on the shantung silk ottomans or mingling on the veranda while a retinue of white-gloved servants in deep-olive batik uniforms circulated with trays of cocktails.

“Here comes Astrid’s mother,” Nick muttered. Before Rachel had a moment to collect herself, a stately-looking lady approached them, wagging a finger at Nick.

“Nicky, you naughty boy, why didn’t you tell us you were back? We thought you weren’t coming till next week, and you just missed Uncle Harry’s birthday dinner at Command House!” The woman looked like a middle-aged Chinese matron, but she spoke in the sort of clipped English accent straight out of a Merchant Ivory film. Rachel couldn’t help but notice how her tightly permed black hair fittingly resembled the Queen of England’s.

“So sorry, I thought you and Uncle Harry would be in London at this time of the year. Dai gu cheh, this is my girlfriend Rachel Chu. Rachel, this is my auntie Felicity Leong.”

Felicity nodded at Rachel, boldly scanning her up and down.

“So nice to meet you,” Rachel said, trying not to be unnerved by her hawklike gaze.

“Yes of course,” Felicity said, turning quickly to Nick and asking, almost sternly, “Do you know when your daddy gets in?”

“Not a clue,” he replied. “Is Astrid here yet?”

“Aiyah, you know that girl is always late!” At that moment, his aunt noticed an elderly Indian woman in a gold and peacock-blue sari being helped up the stairs. “Dear Mrs. Singh, when did you get back from Udaipur?” she screeched, pouncing on the woman as Nick guided Rachel out of the way.

“Who is that lady?” Rachel asked.

“That’s Mrs. Singh, a family friend who used to live down the street. She’s the daughter of a maharaja, and one of the most fascinating people I know. She was great friends with Nehru. I’ll introduce you later, when my aunt isn’t breathing down our necks.”

“Her sari is absolutely stunning,” Rachel remarked, gazing at the elaborate gold stitching.

“Yes, isn’t it? I hear she flies all her saris back to New Delhi to be specially cleaned,” Nick said as he tried to escort Rachel toward the bar, unwittingly steering straight into the path of a very posh-looking middle-aged couple. The man had a pompadour of Brylcreemed black hair and thick, oversize tortoiseshell glasses, while his wife wore a classic gold-buttoned red-and-white Chanel suit.

“Uncle Dickie, Auntie Nancy, meet my girlfriend Rachel Chu,” Nick said. “Rachel, this is my uncle and his wife, from the T’sien side of the family,” he explained.

“Ah Rachel, I’ve met your grandfather in Taipei … Chu Yang Chung, isn’t it?” Uncle Dickie asked.

“Er … actually, no. My family isn’t from Taipei,” Rachel stammered.

“Oh. Where are they from, then?”

“Guangdong originally, and nowadays California.”

Uncle Dickie looked a bit taken aback, while his well-coiffed wife grasped his arm tightly and continued. “Oh, we know California very well. Northern California, actually.”

“Yes, that’s where I’m from,” Rachel replied politely.

“Ah, well then, you must know the Gettys? Ann is a great friend of mine,” Nancy effused.

“Um, are you referring to the Getty Oil family?”

“Is there any other?” Nancy asked, perplexed.

“Rachel’s from Cupertino, not San Francisco, Auntie Nancy. And that’s why I need to introduce her to Francis Leong over there, who I hear is going to Stanford this fall,” Nick cut in, quickly moving Rachel along. The next thirty minutes became a blur of nonstop greetings, as Rachel was introduced to assorted family and friends. There were aunties and uncles and cousins aplenty, there was the distinguished though diminutive Thai ambassador, there was a man Nick introduced as the sultan of some unpronounceable Malay state, along with his two wives in elaborately bejeweled head scarves.

All this time, Rachel had noticed one woman who seemed to command the attention of the room. She was very slim and aristocratic-looking with snow-white hair and ramrod-straight posture, dressed in a long white silk cheongsam with deep purple piping along the collar, sleeves, and hemline. Most of the guests orbited around her paying tribute, and when she at last came toward them, Rachel noticed for the first time Nick’s resemblance to her. Nick had earlier informed Rachel that while his grandmother spoke English perfectly well, she preferred to speak in Chinese and was fluent in four dialects — Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Teochew. Rachel decided to greet her in Mandarin, the only dialect she spoke, but before Nick could make proper introductions, she bowed her head nervously at the stately lady and said, “It is such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for inviting me to your beautiful home.”

The woman looked at her quizzically and replied slowly in Mandarin, “It is a pleasure to meet you too, but you are mistaken, this is not my house.”

“Rachel, this is my great-aunt Rosemary,” Nick explained hurriedly.

“And you’ll have to forgive me, my Mandarin is really quite rusty,” Great-aunt Rosemary added in her Vanessa Redgrave English.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Rachel said, her cheeks flushing bright red. She could feel all eyes in the room upon her, amused by her faux pas.

“No need to apologize.” Great-aunt Rosemary smiled graciously. “Nick has told me quite a bit about you, and I was so looking forward to meeting you.”

“He has?” Rachel said, still flustered.

Nick put his arm around Rachel and said, “Here, come meet my grandmother.” They walked across the room, and on the sofa closest to the veranda, flanked by a spectacled man smartly attired in a white linen suit and a strikingly beautiful lady, sat a shrunken woman. Shang Su Yi had steel-gray hair held in place by an ivory headband, and she was dressed simply in a rose-colored silk blouse, tailored cream trousers, and brown loafers. She was older and frailer than Rachel had expected, and though her features were partially obscured by a thick pair of tinted bifocals, her regal countenance was unmistakable. Standing completely still behind Nick’s grandmother were two ladies in immaculate matching gowns of iridescent silk.

Nick addressed his grandmother in Cantonese. “Ah Ma, I’d like you to meet my friend Rachel Chu, from America.”

“So nice to meet you!” Rachel blurted in English, completely forgetting her Mandarin.

Nick’s grandmother peered up at Rachel for a moment. “Thank you for coming,” she replied haltingly, in English, before turning swiftly to resume her conversation in Hokkien with the lady at her side. The man in the white linen suit smiled quickly at Rachel, but then he too turned away. The two ladies swathed in silk stared inscrutably at Rachel, and she smiled back at them tensely.

“Let’s get some punch,” Nick said, steering Rachel toward a table where a uniformed waiter wearing white cotton gloves was serving punch out of a huge Venetian glass punch bowl.

“Oh my God, that had to be the most awkward moment of my life! I think I really annoyed your grandmother,” Rachel whispered.

“Nonsense. She was just in the middle of another conversation, that’s all,” Nick said soothingly.

“Who were those two women in matching silk dresses standing like statues behind her?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, those are her lady’s maids.”

“Excuse me?”

“Her lady’s maids. They never leave her side.”

“Like ladies-in-waiting? They look so elegant.”

“Yes, they’re from Thailand, and they were trained to serve in the royal court.”

“Is this a common thing in Singapore? Importing royal maids from Thailand?” Rachel asked incredulously.

“I don’t believe so. This service was a special lifetime gift to my grandmother.”

“A gift? From whom?”

“The King of Thailand. Though it was the last one, not Bhumibol the current king. Or was it the one before that? Anyway, he was apparently a great friend of my grandmother’s. He decreed that she must only be waited on by court-trained ladies. So there has been a constant rotation ever since my grandmother was a young woman.”

“Oh,” Rachel said, stupefied. She took the glass of punch from Nick and noticed that the fine etching on the Venetian glassware perfectly matched the intricate fretwork pattern on the ceiling. She leaned against the back of a sofa for support, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. There was too much for her to take in — the army of white-gloved servants hovering about, the confusion of new faces, the mind-blowing opulence. Who knew that Nick’s family would turn out to be these extremely grand people? And why didn’t he prepare her for all this a little more?

Rachel felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Nick’s cousin holding a sleepy toddler. “Astrid!” she cried, delighted to see a friendly face at last. Astrid was adorned in the chicest outfit Rachel had ever seen, quite different from how she had remembered her in New York. So this was Astrid in her natural habitat.

“Hello, hello!” Astrid said cheerily. “Cassian, this is Auntie Rachel. Say hi to Auntie Rachel?” Astrid gestured. The child stared at Rachel for a moment, before burying his head shyly into his mother’s shoulder.

“Here, let me take this big boy out of your hands!” Nick grinned, lifting a squirming Cassian out of Astrid’s arms, and then deftly handing her a glass of punch.

“Thanks, Nicky,” Astrid said as she turned to Rachel. “How are you finding Singapore so far? Having a good time?”

“A great time! Although tonight’s been a bit … overwhelming.”

“I can only imagine,” Astrid said with a knowing glint in her eye.

“No, I’m not sure you can,” Rachel said.

A melodious peel rang through the room. Rachel turned to see an elderly woman in a white cheongsam top and black silk trousers playing a small silver xylophone by the stairs.[43]

“Ah, the dinner gong,” Astrid said. “Come, let’s eat.”

“Astrid, how is it that you always seem to arrive just when the food is ready?” Nick remarked.

“Choco-cake!” little Cassian muttered.

“No, Cassian, you already had your dessert,” Astrid replied firmly.

The crowd began to make a beeline for the stairs, passing the woman with the xylophone. As they approached her, Nick gave the woman a big bear hug and exchanged a few words in Cantonese. “This is Ling Cheh, the woman who pretty much raised me from birth,” he explained. “She has been with our family since 1948.”

“Wah, nay gor nuay pang yau gum laeng, ah! Faai di git fun!” Ling Cheh commented, grasping Rachel’s hand gently. Nick grinned, blushing a little. Rachel didn’t understand Cantonese, so she just smiled, while Astrid quickly translated. “Ling Cheh just teased Nick about how pretty his lady friend is.” As they proceeded down the stairs, she whispered to Rachel, “She also ordered him to marry you soon!” Rachel simply giggled.

A buffet supper had been set up in the conservatory, an elliptical-shaped room with dramatic frescoed walls of what appeared from a distance to be a dreamy, muted Oriental scene. On closer inspection, Rachel noticed that while the mural did evoke classical Chinese mountainscapes, the details seemed to be pure Hieronymus Bosch, with strange, lurid flowers climbing up the walls and iridescent phoenixes and other fantastical creatures hiding in the shadows. Three enormous round tables gleamed with silver chafing dishes, and arched doorways opened onto a curved colonnaded terrace where white wrought-iron bistro tables lit with tall votives awaited the diners. Cassian continued to squirm in Nick’s arms, wailing even louder, “I want choco-cake!”

“I think what he really wants is S-L-E-E-P,” his mother commented. She tried to take her son back from Nick, but the child began to whimper.

“I sense a crying fit on the way. Let’s take him to the nursery,” Nick offered. “Rachel, why don’t you get started? We’ll be back in a minute.”

Rachel marveled at the sheer variety of food that had been laid out. One table was filled with Thai delicacies, another with Malaysian cuisine, and the last with classic Chinese dishes. As usual, she was a bit at a loss when confronted with a huge buffet. She decided to start one cuisine at a time and began at the Chinese table with a small helping of E-fu noodles and seared scallops in ginger sauce. She came upon a tray of exotic-looking golden wafers folded into little top hats. “What in the world are these?” she wondered aloud.

“That’s kueh pie tee, a nyonya dish. Little tarts filled with jicama, carrots, and shrimp. Try one,” a voice behind her said. Rachel looked around and saw the dapper man in the white linen suit who had been sitting next to Nick’s grandmother. He bowed in a courtly manner and introduced himself. “We never met properly. I’m Oliver T’sien, Nick’s cousin.” Yet another Chinese relative with a British accent, but his sounded even plummier than the rest.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Rachel—”

“Yes, I know. Rachel Chu, of Cupertino, Palo Alto, Chicago, and Manhattan. You see, your reputation precedes you.”

“Does it?” Rachel asked, trying not to sound too surprised.

“It certainly does, and I must say you’re much more fetching than I was led to believe.”

“Really, by whom?”

“Oh, you know, the whispering gallery. Don’t you know how much the tongues have been wagging since you’ve arrived?” he said mischievously.

“I had no clue,” Rachel said a little uneasily, walking out onto the terrace with her plate, looking for Nick or Astrid but not seeing them anywhere. She noticed one of Nick’s aunties — the lady in the Chanel suit — looking toward her expectantly.

“There’s Dickie and Nancy,” Oliver said. “Don’t look now — I think they’re waving to you. God help us. Let’s start our own table, shall we?” Before Rachel could answer, Oliver grabbed her plate from her hand and walked it over to a table at the far end of the terrace.

“Why are you avoiding them?” Rachel asked.

“I’m not avoiding them. I’m helping you avoid them. You can thank me later.”

“Why?” Rachel pressed on.

“Well, first of all, they are insufferable name-droppers, always going on and on about their latest cruise on Rupert and Wendi’s yacht or their lunch with some deposed European royal, and second, they aren’t exactly on your team.”

“What team? I didn’t realize I was on any team.”

“Well, like it or not, you are, and Dickie and Nancy are here tonight precisely to spy for the opposition.”

“Spying?”

“Yes. They mean to pick you apart like a rotting carcass and serve you up as an amuse-bouche the next time they’re invited to dine in the Home Counties.”

Rachel had no idea what to make of his outlandish statement. This Oliver seemed like a character straight out of an Oscar Wilde play. “I’m not sure I follow,” she finally said.

“Don’t worry, you will. Just give it another week — I’d peg you for a quick study.”

Rachel assessed Oliver for a minute. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with short, meticulously combed hair and small round tortoiseshell glasses that only accentuated his longish face. “So how exactly are you related to Nick?” she asked. “There seem to be so many different branches of the family.”

“It’s really quite simple, actually. There are three branches — the T’siens, the Youngs, and the Shangs. Nick’s grandfather James Young and my grandmother Rosemary T’sien are brother and sister. You met her earlier tonight, if you recall? You mistook her for Nick’s grandmother.”

“Yes, of course. But that would mean that you and Nick are second cousins.”

“Right. But here in Singapore, since extended families abound, we all just say we’re ‘cousins’ to avoid confusion. None of that ‘third cousins twice removed’ rubbish.”

“So Dickie and Nancy are your uncle and aunt.”

“Correct. Dickie is my father’s older brother. But you do know that in Singapore, anyone you’re introduced to who’s one generation older should be called ‘Uncle or Auntie,’ even though they might not be related at all. It’s considered the polite thing.”

“Well, shouldn’t you be calling your relatives ‘Uncle Dickie’ and ‘Auntie Nancy’ then?”

“Technically, yes, but I personally feel that the honorific should be earned. Dickie and Nancy have never given a flying fuck about me, so why should I bother?”

Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Well, thanks for the crash course on the T’siens. Now, how about the third branch?”

“Ah yes, the Shangs.”

“I don’t think I’ve met any of them yet.”

“Well, none of them are here, of course. We’re not supposed to ever talk about them, but the imperial Shangs flee to their grand country estates in England every April and stay until September, to avoid the hottest months. But not to worry, I think my cousin Cassandra Shang will be back for the wedding next week, so you will get a chance to bask in her incandescence.”

Rachel grinned at his florid remark — this Oliver was such a trip. “And how are they related exactly?”

“Here’s where it gets interesting. Pay attention. So my grandmother’s eldest daughter, Aunt Mabel T’sien, was married off to Nick’s grandmother’s younger brother Alfred Shang.”

“Married off? Does that mean it was an arranged marriage?”

“Yes, very much so, plotted by my grandfather T’sien Tsai Tay and Nick’s great-grandfather Shang Loong Ma. Good thing they actually liked each other. But it was quite a masterstroke, because it strategically bound together the T’siens, the Shangs, and the Youngs.”

“What for?” Rachel asked.

“Oh come on, Rachel, don’t play the naïf with me. For the money, of course. It joined together three family fortunes and kept everything neatly locked up.”

“Who’s getting locked up? Are they finally locking you up, Ollie?” Nick said, as he approached the table with Astrid.

“They haven’t been able to pin anything on me yet, Nicholas,” Oliver retorted. He turned to Astrid and his eyes widened. “Holy Mary Mother of Tilda Swinton, look at those earrings! Wherever did you get them?”

“Stephen Chia’s … they’re VBH,” Astrid said, knowing he would want to know who the designer was.

“Of course they are. Only Bruce could have dreamed up something like that. They must have cost at least half a million dollars. I wouldn’t have thought they were quite your style, but they do look fabulous on you. Hmm … you still can surprise me after all these years.”

“You know I try, Ollie, I try.”

Rachel stared with renewed wonder at the earrings. Did Oliver really say half a million dollars? “How’s Cassian doing?” she asked.

“It was a bit of a struggle at first, but now he’ll sleep till dawn,” Astrid replied.

“And where is that errant husband of yours, Astrid? Mr. Bedroom Eyes?” Oliver asked.

“Michael’s working late tonight.”

“What a pity. That company of his really keeps him toiling away, don’t they? Seems like ages since I’ve seen Michael — I’m beginning to take it quite personally. Though the other day I could have sworn I saw him walking up Wyndham Street in Hong Kong with a little boy. At first I thought it was Michael and Cassian, but then the little boy turned around and he wasn’t nearly as cute as Cassian, so I knew I had to be hallucinating.”

“Obviously,” Astrid said as calmly as she could, feeling like she had just been punched in the gut. “Were you in Hong Kong before this, Ollie?” she asked, her brain furiously trying to ascertain whether Oliver had been in Hong Kong at the same time as Michael’s last “business trip.”

“I was there last week. I’ve been shuttling between Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing for the past month for work.”

Michael was supposedly in Shenzhen then. He could have easily taken a train to Hong Kong, Astrid thought.

“Oliver is the Asian art and antiquities expert for Christie’s in London,” Nick explained to Rachel.

“Yes, except that it’s no longer very efficient for me to be based in London. The Asian art market is heating up like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I hear that every new Chinese billionaire is trying to get their hands on a Warhol these days,” Nick remarked.

“Well, yes there are certainly quite a few wannabe Saatchis around, but I’m dealing more with the ones trying to buy back the great antiquities from European and American collectors. Or, as they like to say, stuff stolen by the foreign devils,” Oliver said.

“It wasn’t truly stolen, was it?” Nick asked.

“Stolen, smuggled, sold off by philistines, isn’t it all the same? Whether the Chinese want to admit it or not, the true connoisseur-ship of Asian art was outside of China for much of the last century, so that’s where a lot of the museum-quality pieces ended up — in Europe and America. The demand was there. The moneyed Chinese didn’t really appreciate what they had. With the exception of a few families, no one bothered to collect Chinese art and antiquities, not with any real discernment, anyway. They wanted to be modern and sophisticated, which meant emulating the Europeans. Why, even in this house there’s probably more French art deco than there are Chinese pieces. Thank God there are some fabulous signed Ruhlmann pieces, but if you think about it, it’s a pity that your great-grandfather went mad for art deco when he could have been snapping up all the imperial treasures coming out of China.”

“You mean the antiques that were in the Forbidden City?” Rachel asked.

“Absolutely! Did you know that in 1913, the imperial family of China actually tried to sell their entire collection to the banker J. P. Morgan?” Oliver said.

“Come on!” Rachel was incredulous.

“It’s true. The family was so hard up, they were willing to let all of it go for four million dollars. All the priceless treasures, collected over a span of five centuries. It’s quite a sensational story — Morgan received the offer by telegram, but he died a few days later. Divine intervention was the only thing that prevented the most irreplaceable treasures of China from ending up in the Big Apple.”

“Imagine if that had actually happened,” Nick remarked, shaking his head.

“Yes indeed. It would be a loss greater than the Elgin Marbles going to the British Museum. But thankfully the tide has turned. The Mainland Chinese are finally interested in buying back their own heritage, and they only want the best,” Oliver said. “Which reminds me, Astrid — are you still looking for more Huanghuali? Because I know of an important Han dynasty puzzle table coming up for auction next week in Hong Kong.” Oliver turned to Astrid, noticing that she had a faraway look on her face. “Earth to Astrid?”

“Oh … sorry, I got distracted for a moment,” Astrid said, suddenly flustered. “You were saying something about Hong Kong?”

3 Peik Lin

SINGAPORE

Wye Mun and Neena Goh were stretched out on teal-colored leather recliners in their screening room at Villa d’Oro, munching on salted watermelon seeds and watching a Korean soap opera, when Peik Lin burst into the room.

“Mute the TV! Mute the TV!” she demanded.

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Neena asked in alarm.

“You’re not going to believe where I just came from!”

“Where?” Wye Mun asked, a little annoyed that his daughter had interrupted during a pivotal moment of his favorite show.

“I just came from Nicholas Young’s grandma’s house.”

“So?”

“You should have seen the size of the place.”

“Dua geng choo, ah?”[44] Wye Mun said.

“Dua doesn’t even begin to describe it. The house was huge, but you should have seen the land. Do you know that there is an enormous piece of private land right next door to the Botanic Gardens?”

“Next to Botanic Gardens?”

“Yes. Off Gallop Road. It’s on a street I’ve never even heard of called Tyersall Avenue.”

“Near those old wooden houses?” Neena asked.

“Yes, but this wasn’t one of the colonial houses. The architecture was very unusual, sort of Orientalist, and the gardens were unbelievable — probably around fifty acres or more.”

“Bullshit, lah!” Wye Mun said.

“Papa, I’m telling you — the property was immense. It was like the Istana. The driveway itself went on for miles.”

“Cannot be! Two or three acres I might believe, but fifty? No such thing, lah.”

“It was fifty acres at least, probably more. I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was in another country.”

“Lu leem ziew, ah?”[45] Neena looked at her daughter in concern. Peik Lin ignored her.

“Show me,” Wye Mun said, his interest piqued. “Let’s see it on Google Earth.” They walked over to the computer desk in the corner, pulled up the program, and Peik Lin began searching for the place. As they zoomed in on the topographical screen, she immediately noticed something amiss in the satellite image.

“Look, Papa — this whole patch is empty! You think it’s part of the Botanic Gardens, but it’s not. This is where the house is. But why are there no images? It doesn’t appear on Google Earth at all! And my GPS couldn’t find the address either.”

Wye Mun stared at the screen. The place his daughter claimed to have seen was literally a black hole on the map. It did not officially exist. How very strange.

“Who is this fellow’s family?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But there were a lot of VIP cars in the driveway. I saw quite a few diplomatic license plates. Old Rolls-Royces, vintage Daimlers, that type of car. These people must be loaded beyond belief. Who do you think they are?”

“I can’t think of anyone specifically who lives in this area.” Wye Mun ran the cursor over the perimeter of the blacked-out area. His family had been in the property development and construction business in Singapore for more than forty years, but he had never come across anything like this. “Wah, this is prime, prime land — right in the middle of the island. The value would be incalculable. Cannot be one property, lah!”

“Yes it is, Papa. I saw it with my own eyes. And supposedly Nick’s grandmother grew up there. It’s her house.”

“Make Rachel find out the grandma’s name. And the grandpa. We need to know who these people are. How can one person own this much private land in one of the most crowded cities in the world?”

“Wah, it looks like Rachel Chu has hit jackpot. I hope she marries this guy!” Neena chimed in from her recliner.

“Aiyah, who cares about Rachel Chu? Peik Lin, you go after him!” Wye Mun declared.

Peik Lin grinned at her father, and began texting Rachel.

Wye Mun patted his wife on her shoulder. “Come, call the driver. Let’s take a drive down Tyersall Road. I want to see this place for myself.”

They decided to take the Audi SUV in an effort to be as inconspicuous as possible. “See, I think this is where the property actually begins,” Peik Lin noted as they turned onto the curving, densely wooded road. “I think all this on the left side is the southern boundary of the land.” When they reached the gray iron gates, Wye Mun made the driver stop the car for a minute. The place looked completely deserted. “See, you wouldn’t think there’s anything here. It looks like some old section of the Botanic Gardens. There’s another guard house farther down this road, a high-tech one manned by Gurkha guards,” Peik Lin explained. Wye Mun stared down the unlit, overgrown road, completely fascinated. He was one of Singapore’s leading property developers, and he knew every square inch of land on the island. Or at least he thought he did.

4 Rachel and Nick

TYERSALL PARK

“The tan huas are coming into bloom!” Ling Cheh announced excitedly to everyone on the terrace. As the guests began to head back in through the conservatory, Nick pulled Rachel aside. “Here, let’s take a shortcut,” he said. Rachel followed him through a side door, and they wandered down a long hallway, past many darkened rooms that she longed to peek into. When Nick led her through an arch at the end of the passage, Rachel’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

They were no longer in Singapore. It was as if they had stumbled onto a secret cloister deep within a Moorish palace. The vast courtyard was enclosed on all sides but completely open to the sky. Elaborately carved columns lined the arcades around its perimeter, and an Andalusian fountain protruded from the stone wall, spouting a stream of water from a lotus blossom sculpted out of rose quartz. Overhead, hundreds of copper lanterns had been meticulously strung across the courtyard from the second-floor walkway, each flickering with candlelight.

“I wanted to show you this place while it was still empty,” Nick said in a hushed voice, pulling Rachel into an embrace.

“Pinch me, please. Is any of this real?” Rachel whispered as she looked into Nick’s eyes.

“This place is very real. You’re the dream,” Nick answered as he kissed her deeply.

A few guests began to trickle in, disrupting the spell they had momentarily been under. “Come, it’s dessert time!” Nick said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

Along one of the arcades stretched long banquet tables that displayed a wondrous selection of desserts. There were elaborate cakes, soufflés, and sweet puddings, there was goreng pisang[46] drizzled with Lyle’s Golden Syrup, nyonya kuehs in every color of the rainbow, and tall polished samovars filled with different steaming-hot elixirs. Servers wearing white toques stood behind each table, ready to dish out the delicacies.

“Tell me this isn’t how your family eats every day,” Rachel said in amazement.

“Well, tonight was leftovers night,” Nick deadpanned.

Rachel elbowed him in the ribs playfully.

“Ow! And I was about to offer you a slice of the best chocolate chiffon cake in the world.”

“I just stuffed my face with eighteen different types of noodles! I couldn’t possibly eat dessert,” Rachel groaned, pressing her palm against her stomach momentarily. She walked to the center of the courtyard, where chairs were arranged around a reflecting pool. In the middle of the pool were huge terra-cotta urns that held the painstakingly cultivated tan huas. Rachel had never seen a species of flora quite so exotic. The tangled forest of plants grew together into a tall profusion of large floppy leaves the color of dark jade. Long stems sprouted from the edges of the leaves, curving until they formed huge bulbs. The pale reddish petals curled tightly like delicate fingers grasping a silken white peach. Oliver stood by the flowers, scrutinizing one of the bulbs closely.

“How can you tell they are about to bloom?” Rachel asked him.

“See how swollen they’ve become, and how the whiteness of the bulbs are peeking through these red tentacles? Within the hour, you will see them open fully. You know, it’s considered to be very auspicious to witness tan huas blooming in the night.”

“Really?”

“Yes, indeed. They bloom so rarely and so unpredictably, and it all happens so fast. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event for most people, so I’d say you’re very lucky to be here tonight.”

As Rachel strolled around the reflecting pool, she noticed Nick under an arcade chatting intently with the striking lady who had been sitting next to Nick’s grandmother. “Who is that woman talking to Nick? You were with her earlier,” Rachel asked.

“Oh, that’s Jacqueline Ling. An old family friend.”

“She looks like a movie star,” Rachel commented.

“Yes, doesn’t she? I’ve always thought that Jacqueline looks like a Chinese Catherine Deneuve, only more beautiful.”

“She does look like Catherine Deneuve!”

“And aging better too.”

“Well, she’s not that old. What is she, in her early forties?”

“Try adding twenty years to that.”

“You’re kidding!” Rachel said, staring in awe at Jacqueline’s ballerina-like figure, shown to great advantage by the pale yellow halter top and palazzo pants that she wore with a pair of silver stilettos.

“I’ve always thought it a bit of a pity that she hasn’t done more with herself than disarm men with her looks,” Oliver observed.

“Is that what she’s done?”

“Widowed once, almost married a British marquess, and since then she’s been the companion of a Norwegian tycoon. There’s a story I heard as a child: Jacqueline’s beauty was so legendary that when she visited Hong Kong for the first time in the sixties, her arrival attracted a throng of spectators, as if she were Elizabeth Taylor. All the men were clamoring to propose to her, and fights broke out at the terminal. It made the newspapers, apparently.”

“All because of her beauty.”

“Yes, and her bloodline. She’s the granddaughter of Ling Yin Chao.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was one of Asia’s most revered philanthropists. Built schools all over China. Not that Jacqueline is following in his footsteps, unless you consider her donations in aid of Manolo Blahnik.”

Rachel laughed, as both of them noticed that Jacqueline had one hand on Nick’s upper arm, stroking it gently.

“Don’t worry — she flirts with everyone,” Oliver quipped. “Do you want another piece of juicy gossip?”

“Please.”

“I’m told Nick’s grandmother very much wanted Jacqueline for Nick’s father. But she didn’t succeed.”

“He wasn’t swayed by her looks?”

“Well, he already had another beauty on his hands — Nick’s mother. You haven’t met Auntie Elle yet, have you?”

“No, she went away for the weekend.”

“Hmm, how interesting. She never goes away when Nicholas is in town,” Oliver said, turning around to make sure no one was within earshot before leaning closer in. “I’d tread extra carefully around Eleanor Young if I were you. She maintains a rival court,” he said mysteriously before walking off toward the cocktails table.

Nick stood at one end of the desserts, wondering what to have first: the goreng pisang with ice cream, the blancmange with mango sauce, or the chocolate chiffon cake.

“Oh, your cook’s chocolate chiffon! Now this is the reason I came tonight!” Jacqueline ran her fingers through her shoulder-length curls and then brushed her hand softly against his arm. “So tell me, why haven’t you been calling Amanda? You’ve only seen her a handful of times since she moved to New York.”

“We tried getting together a couple of times this spring, but she’s always overbooked. Isn’t she dating some high-flying hedge-fund guy?”

“It’s not serious; that man is twice her age.”

“Well, I see her pictures in the newspapers all the time.”

“That’s just the problem. That has to stop. It’s so unseemly. I want my daughter to mix with quality people, not the so-called Asian jet set in New York. All those pretenders are riding Amanda’s coattails — she’s just too naïve to see that.”

“Oh, I don’t think Mandy’s that naïve.”

“She needs proper company, Nicky. Gar gee nang.[47] I want you to look out for her. Will you promise to do that for me?”

“Of course. I spoke to her last month and she told me that she was too busy to come back for Colin’s wedding.”

“Yes, it’s too bad, isn’t it?”

“I’ll call her when I’m back in New York. But I do think I’m far too boring for Amanda these days.”

“No, no, she would benefit from spending more time with you — you were so close once upon a time. Now tell me about this charming girl you’ve brought home to meet your grandmother. I see she’s already won over Oliver. You better tell her to be careful with him — he’s such a vicious gossip, that one.”

Astrid and Rachel sat by the lotus fountain, watching a lady dressed in flowing apricot silk robes play a guqin, the traditional Chinese zither. Rachel was entranced by the mesmerizing speed of the lady’s long red fingernails plucking gracefully at the strings, while Astrid desperately tried to stop obsessing over what Oliver had said earlier. Could he have really seen Michael walking with some little boy in Hong Kong? Nick sank into the chair next to her, dexterously balancing two steaming cups of tea with one hand and holding a plate of half-eaten chocolate chiffon cake with the other. He handed the cup with smoked lychee tea to Astrid, knowing it was her favorite, and offered some cake to Rachel. “You’ve got to try this — it’s one of our cook Ah Ching’s greatest hits.”

“Alamak, Nicky, get her a proper piece of her own,” Astrid scolded, temporarily snapping out of her funk.

“It’s okay, Astrid. I’ll just eat most of his, like always,” Rachel explained with a laugh. She tasted the cake, her eyes widening instantly. It was the perfect combination of chocolate and cream, with an airy melt-in-your-mouth lightness. “Hmmm. I like that it isn’t too sweet.”

“That’s why I can never eat other chocolate cakes. They’re always too sweet, too dense, or have too much frosting,” Nick said.

Rachel reached over for another bite. “Just get the recipe and I’ll try making it at home.”

Astrid arched her eyebrows. “You can try, Rachel, but trust me, my cook has tried, and it never comes out quite this good. I suspect Ah Ching’s withholding some secret ingredient.”

As they sat in the courtyard, the tightly rolled red petals of the tan huas unfurled like a slow-motion movie to reveal a profusion of feathery white petals that kept expanding into an explosive sunburst pattern. “I can’t believe how big these flowers are getting!” Rachel observed excitedly.

“It always reminds me of a swan ruffling its wings, about to take flight,” Astrid remarked.

“Or maybe about to go into attack mode,” Nick added. “Swans can get really aggressive.”

“My swans were never aggressive,” Great-aunt Rosemary said as she walked up, overhearing Nick’s comment. “Don’t you remember feeding the swans in my pond when you were a little boy?”

“I remember being rather afraid of them actually,” Nick replied. “I would break off little bits of bread, throw them into the water, and then run for cover.”

“Nicky was a little wimp,” Astrid teased.

“Was he?” Rachel asked in surprise.

“Well, he was so tiny. For the longest time everyone was afraid that he would never grow — I was so much taller than him. And then suddenly he shot up,” Astrid said.

“Hey, Astrid, stop discussing my secret shame,” Nick said with a mock frown.

“Nicky, you have nothing to be embarrassed about. After all, you’ve grown up to be quite the strapping specimen, as I’m sure Rachel would agree,” Great-aunt Rosemary said saucily. The women all laughed.

As the flowers continued to transform before her eyes, Rachel sat sipping lychee tea from a red porcelain cup, entranced by everything around her. She watched the sultan taking pictures of his two wives in front of the blossoms, their jewel-embroidered kebayas reflecting shards of light every time the camera flash went off. She observed the cluster of men sitting in a circle with Astrid’s father, who was engrossed in a heated political debate, and she looked at Nick, now crouched beside his grandmother. She was touched to see how caring Nick seemed to be with his grandmother, holding the old lady’s hands as he whispered into her ear.

“Is your friend having a nice time tonight?” Su Yi asked her grandson in Cantonese.

“Yes, Ah Ma. She’s having a lovely time. Thank you for inviting her.”

“She seems to be quite the talk of the town. Everyone is either trying delicately to ask me about her or trying delicately to tell me things about her.”

“Really? What have they been saying?”

“Some are wondering what her intentions are. Your cousin Cassandra even called me from England, all flustered up.”

Nick was surprised. “How does Cassandra even know about Rachel?”

“Aiyah, only the ghosts know where she gets her information! But she is very concerned for you. She thinks you are going to get trapped.”

“Trapped? I’m just on holiday with Rachel, Ah Ma. There is nothing to be concerned about,” Nick said defensively, annoyed that Cassandra had been gossiping about him.

“That’s exactly what I told her. I told her that you are a good boy, and that you would never do anything without my blessing. Cassandra must be bored out of her mind in the English countryside. She’s letting her imagination run as wild as her silly horses.”

“Would you like me to bring Rachel over, Ah Ma, so that you can get to know her better?” Nick ventured.

“You know I won’t be able to stand all the craning necks if that happens. Why don’t you both just come to stay next week? It’s so silly to be staying at a hotel when your bedroom is waiting right here.”

Nick was thrilled to hear these words from his grandmother. He had her seal of approval now. “That would be wonderful, Ah Ma.”

In a corner of the darkened billiard room, Jacqueline was in the midst of a heated phone conversation with her daughter, Amanda, in New York. “Stop making excuses! I don’t give a damn what you told the press. Do what you have to do, but just make sure you’re back next week,” she fumed.

Jacqueline ended her call, looking out the window at the moonlit terrace. “I know you’re there, Oliver,” she said sharply, not turning around. Oliver emerged from the shadowy doorway and approached slowly.

“I can smell you from a mile away. You need to lay off the Blenheim Bouquet — you’re not the Prince of Wales.”

Oliver arched his eyebrows. “Aren’t we getting testy! Anyway, it’s quite clear to me that Nicholas is completely smitten. Don’t you think it’s a little too late for Amanda?”

“Not at all,” Jacqueline replied, carefully rearranging her hair. “As you yourself have often said, timing is everything.”

“I was talking about investing in art.”

“My daughter is an exquisite piece of art, is she not? She belongs only in the finest collection.”

“A collection you failed to become part of.”

“Fuck you, Oliver.”

“Chez toi ou chez moi?” Oliver naughtily arched an eyebrow as he sauntered out of the room.

In the Andalusian courtyard, Rachel allowed her eyes to close for a moment. The strums of the Chinese zither created a perfect melody with the trickling waters, and the flowers in turn seemed to be choreographing their bloom to the mellifluous sounds. Every time a breeze blew, the copper lanterns strung against the evening sky swayed like hundreds of glowing orbs adrift in a dark ocean. Rachel felt like she was floating along with them in some sybaritic dream, and she wondered if life with Nicholas would always be like this. Soon, the tan huas began to wilt just as swiftly and mysteriously as they had bloomed, filling the night air with an intoxicating scent as they shriveled into spent, lifeless petals.

5 Astrid and Michael

SINGAPORE

Whenever her grandmother’s parties ran late, Astrid would normally opt to spend the night at Tyersall Park. She preferred not to wake Cassian if he was sleeping soundly, and she would head for the bedroom (just opposite from Nick’s) that had been set aside for her frequent visits since she was a little girl. Her adoring grandmother had created an enchanted emporium for her, commissioning whimsical hand-carved furniture from Italy and walls painted with scenes from her favorite fairy tale, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Astrid still loved the occasional night spent in this childhood bedroom, cosseted by the most fantastical dolls, stuffed animals, and tea sets that money could buy.

Tonight, however, Astrid was determined to get home. Even though it was well past midnight, she swept Cassian into her arms, buckled him into his child seat, and headed for her apartment. She was desperate to know if Michael was back “from work” yet. She was kidding herself in thinking she could just look the other way while Michael carried on. She was not like those wives. She was not going to be a victim, like Eddie’s wife, Fiona. All these weeks of speculation and uncertainty had become a crushing weight on her, and she had to resolve this issue once and for all. She needed to see her husband with her own eyes. She needed to smell him. She needed to know whether there truly was another woman. Although, if she was being brutally honest with herself, she had known the truth ever since those four simple words flashed across his iPhone screen. This was the price she had to pay for falling for Michael. He was a man whom all women found irresistible.

SINGAPORE, 2004

The first time Astrid laid eyes on Michael, he was in a camouflage-print speedo. The sight of anyone over the age of ten in one of these banana hammocks was usually repellant to Astrid’s aesthetic sensibilities, but when Michael strutted down the runway in his Custo Barcelona speedo, his arm around an Amazonian girl clad in a sheer black Rosa Cha bathing suit and emerald necklace, Astrid was transfixed.

She had been dragged to Churchill Club for a charity fashion show organized by one of her Leong cousins and had sat bored stiff throughout the proceedings. For someone used to a front-row seat at Jean Paul Gaultier’s elaborate flights of stagecraft, this hastily constructed catwalk lit with yellow gels, fake palm fronds, and flashing strobe lights seemed like underfunded community theater.

But then Michael appeared, and suddenly everything went into slow motion. He was taller and bigger than most Asian men, with a gorgeous nut-brown tan that wasn’t the sort you could spray on at a salon. His severe military buzz cut served to accentuate a hawklike nose that seemed so incongruous to the rest of his face, it took on an overtly sexual quality. Then there were those piercing, deep-set eyes and the washboard abs rippling along his lean torso. He was only on the runway for less than thirty seconds, but she immediately recognized him a few weeks later at Andy Ong’s birthday party even though he was fully clothed in a V-neck T-shirt and faded gray jeans.

This time it was Michael who noticed her first. He was leaning against a ledge at the bottom of the garden at the Ong bungalow with Andy and some friends when Astrid appeared on the terrace in a long white linen dress with delicate lace cutouts. Here’s a girl who does not belong at this party, he thought to himself. The girl soon spotted the birthday boy, and made a beeline toward them, giving Andy a big hug. The guys around him stared openmouthed.

“Many happy returns!” she exclaimed, handing over a small present exquisitely wrapped in purple silk fabric.

“Aiyah, Astrid, um sai lah!”[48] Andy said.

“It’s just a little something I thought you’d like from Paris, that’s all.”

“So did you get that city totally out of your system? Back for good now?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Astrid said carefully.

The guys were all jockeying for position, so as reluctant as he was, Andy felt that it would be rude not to introduce them. “Astrid, allow me to introduce Lee Shen Wei, Michael Teo, and Terence Tan. All army buddies.”

Astrid smiled sweetly at everyone before fixing her gaze on Michael. “If I’m not mistaken, I’ve seen you in a speedo,” she said.

The guys were equal parts stunned and baffled by her statement. Michael just shook his head and laughed.

“Er … what is she talking about?” Shen Wei asked.

Astrid peered at Michael’s sculpted torso, which was clearly evident despite his loose T-shirt. “Yes, it was you, wasn’t it? At Churchill Club’s fashion show to benefit juvenile shopaholics?”

“Michael, you modeled in a fashion show?” Shen Wei said in disbelief.

“In a speedo?” Terence added.

“It was for charity. I got dragged into it!” Michael sputtered, his face turning beet red.

“So you don’t model professionally?” Astrid asked.

The guys all started laughing. “He does! He does! He’s Michael Zoolander,” Andy cracked.

“No, I’m serious,” Astrid insisted. “If you ever want to model professionally, I know a few agencies in Paris that would probably love to represent you.”

Michael just looked at her, not knowing how to respond. There was a palpable tension in the air, and none of the guys knew what to say.

“Listen, I’m famished, and I think I have to have some of that delicious-looking mee rebus[49] back at the house,” Astrid said, giving Andy a quick peck on the cheek before striding back toward the house.

“Okay, laeng tsai,[50] what are you waiting for? She was obviously into you,” Shen Wei said to Michael.

“Don’t want to get your hopes up, Teo, but she’s untouchable,” Andy warned.

“What do you mean untouchable?” Shen Wei asked.

“Astrid doesn’t date in our stratosphere. You know who she almost married? Charlie Wu, the tech billionaire Wu Hao Lian’s son. They were engaged, but then she broke it off at the last minute because her family felt that even he wasn’t good enough,” Andy said.

“Well, Teo here is going to prove you wrong. Mike, that was an open invitation if I’ve ever seen one. Don’t be so kiasu,[51] man!” Shen Wei exclaimed.

Michael did not know what to make of the girl sitting across the table from him. First of all, this date should not even be happening. Astrid wasn’t his type. This was the kind of girl he would see shopping at one of those pricey boutiques on Orchard Road or sitting in the lobby café of some fancy hotel having a double decaf macchiato with her banker boyfriend. He wasn’t even sure why he had asked her out. It wasn’t his style to go after girls in such an obvious way. All his life, he had never needed to chase after women. They had always given themselves freely to him, starting with his older brother’s girlfriend when he was fourteen. Technically, Astrid had made the first move, so he didn’t mind going after her. Andy’s talk about her being “out of his league” really irked him, and he thought it would be fun to bed her, just to shove it in Andy’s face.

Michael never expected she would say yes to the date, but here they were, barely a week later, sitting at a restaurant in Dempsey Hill with cobalt-blue glass votives on every table (the trendy sort of place filled with ang mors that he hated) with nothing much to say to each other. They had nothing in common, except for the fact that they both knew Andy. She didn’t have a job, and since all his work was classified, they couldn’t really talk about that. She had been living in Paris for the past few years, so she was out of touch with Singapore. Hell, she didn’t even seem like a true Singaporean — with her Englishy accent and her mannerisms.

Yet he couldn’t help but feel incredibly drawn to her. She was the complete opposite of the type of girls he normally dated. Even though he knew she came from a rich family, she wasn’t wearing brand-name clothes or any jewelry. She didn’t even appear to be wearing makeup, and still she looked smoking hot. This girl wasn’t as seow chieh[52] as he had been led to believe, and she even challenged him to a game of pool after dinner.

She turned out to be pretty lethal at billiards, and it made her even sexier. But this was obviously not the kind of girl he could have a casual fling with. He felt almost embarrassed about it, but all he wanted to do was keep staring at her face. He couldn’t get enough of it. He was sure he lost the game partly because he was just too distracted by her. At the end of the date, he walked her out to her car (surprisingly, just an Acura) and held the door open as she got in, convinced he would never see her again.

Astrid lay in bed later that night, trying to read Bernard-Henri Lévy’s latest tome but having no luck focusing. She couldn’t stop thinking about her disastrous date with Michael. The poor guy really didn’t have much in the way of conversation, and he was hopelessly unsophisticated. Figures. Guys who looked like that obviously did not have to work hard to impress a woman. There was something to him, though, something that imbued him with a beauty that seemed almost feral. He was simply the most perfect specimen of masculinity she had ever seen, and it unleashed a physiological response in her that she did not realize she possessed.

She turned off her bedside lamp and lay in the dark under the mosquito netting of her heirloom Peranakan bed, wishing Michael could read her mind at this very moment. She wanted him to dress up in night camouflage and scale the walls of her father’s house, evading the guards in the sentry house and the German shepherds on patrol. She wanted him to climb the guava tree by her window and enter her bedroom without a sound. She wanted him to stand at the foot of her bed for a while, nothing but a leering black shadow. Then she wanted him to rip off her clothes, cover her mouth with his earthy hand, and ravish her nonstop till dawn.

She was twenty-seven years old, and for the first time in her life, Astrid realized what it really felt like to crave a man sexually. She reached for her cell phone and, before she could stop herself, dialed Michael’s number. He picked up after two rings, and Astrid could hear that he was in some sort of noisy bar. She hung up immediately. Fifteen seconds later, her phone rang. She let it ring about five times before answering.

“Why did you call me and hang up?” Michael said in a calm, low voice.

“I didn’t call you. My phone must have rung your number accidentally while it was in my purse,” Astrid said nonchalantly.

“Uh-huh.”

There was a long pause, before Michael casually added, “I’m at Harry’s Bar now, but I’m going to drive over to the Ladyhill Hotel and check into a room. The Ladyhill is quite near you, isn’t it?”

Astrid was taken aback by his audacity. Who the hell did he think he was? She felt her face go hot, and she wanted to hang up on him again. Instead, she found herself turning on her bedside lamp. “Text me the room number,” she said simply.

SINGAPORE, 2010

Astrid drove along the meandering curves of Cluny Road, her head swimming in thoughts. At the start of the evening at Tyersall Park, she had entertained the fantasy that her husband was at some one-star hotel engaged in a torrid affair with the Hong Kong sexting tramp. Even while she was on conversational autopilot with her family, she envisioned herself bursting in on Michael and the tramp in their sordid little room and flinging every available object at them. The lamp. The water pitcher. The cheap plastic coffeemaker.

After Oliver’s comment, however, a darker fantasy began to consume her. She was now convinced that Oliver had not made a mistake, and that it was indeed her husband he had spotted in Hong Kong. Michael was too distinctive to be mistaken for anyone else, and Oliver, who was equal parts schemer and diplomat, was obviously sending her a coded message. But who was the little boy? Could Michael have fathered another child? As Astrid turned right onto Dalvey Road, she almost didn’t notice the truck parked just a few yards ahead, where a nighttime construction crew stood repairing a tall streetlamp. One of the workers suddenly flung open the truck door, and before Astrid could even gasp, she swerved hard to the right. The windshield shattered, and the last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the complex root system of an ancient banyan tree.

6 Nick and Rachel

SINGAPORE

When Rachel awoke the morning after the tan hua party, Nick was talking softly on the phone in the sitting room of their suite. As her vision slowly came into focus, she lay there silently, looking at Nick and trying to take in everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Last night had been magical, and yet she couldn’t help but feel a burgeoning sense of unease. It was as if she had stumbled into a secret chamber and discovered that her boyfriend had been living a double life. The ordinary life they shared as two young college professors in New York bore no resemblance to the life of imperial splendor that Nick seemed to lead here, and Rachel didn’t know how to reconcile the two.

Rachel was by no means an ingenue in the realms of wealth. After their early struggles, Kerry Chu had landed on her feet and gotten her real estate license right when Silicon Valley was entering the Internet boom. Rachel’s Dickensian childhood was replaced by teenage years growing up in the affluent Bay Area. She went to school at two of the nation’s top universities — Stanford and Northwestern — where she encountered the likes of Peik Lin and other trust-fund types. Now she lived in America’s most expensive city, where she mingled with the academic elite. None of this, though, prepared Rachel for her first seventy-two hours in Asia. The exhibitions of wealth here were so extreme, it was unlike anything she had ever witnessed, and not for a moment would she have fathomed that her boyfriend could be part of this world.

Nick’s lifestyle in New York could be described as modest, if not downright frugal. He rented a cozy alcove studio on Morton Street that didn’t seem to contain anything of value aside from his laptop, bike, and stacks of books. He dressed distinctively but casually, and Rachel (having no reference for British bespoke menswear) never realized just how much those rumpled blazers with the Huntsman or Anderson & Sheppard labels cost. Otherwise, the only splurges she had known Nick to make were on overpriced produce at the Union Square Greenmarket and good seats to a concert if some great band came to town.

But now it was all beginning to make sense. There had always been a certain quality to Nick, a quality Rachel was unable to articulate even to herself, but it set him apart from anyone she had ever known. The way he interacted with people. The way he leaned against a wall. He was always comfortable fading into the background, but in that way, he stood out. She had chalked it up to his looks and his formidable intellect. Someone as blessed as Nick had nothing to prove. But now she knew there was more to it. This was a boy who had grown up in a place like Tyersall Park. Everything else in the world paled by comparison. Rachel longed to know more about his childhood, about his intimidating grandmother, about the people she had met last night, but she didn’t want to start the morning peppering him with a million questions, not when she had the whole summer to discover this new world.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Nick said, finishing his call and noticing that Rachel was awake. He loved the way she looked when she was just waking up, with her long hair so alluringly disheveled, and the sleepy, blissful smile she always gave when she first opened her eyes.

“What time is it?” Rachel asked, stretching her arms against the padded headboard.

“It’s about nine thirty,” he said, striding over and slipping under the sheets, wrapping his arms around her from behind, and pulling her body against his. “Spooning time!” he declared playfully, kissing the nape of her neck several times. Rachel turned around to face him and began to trace a line from his forehead to his chin.

“Did anyone ever tell you …” she began.

“… that I have the most perfect profile?” Nick said, finishing her question with a laugh. “I only hear that every single day from my beautiful girlfriend, who is clearly deranged. Did you sleep well?”

“Like a log. Last night really took it out of me.”

“I’m so proud of you. I know it must have been exhausting having to meet so many people, but you really charmed the socks off everyone.”

“Arggh. That’s what you say. I don’t think that aunt of yours in the Chanel suit felt the same way. Or your uncle Harry — I should have spent a full year studying up on Singapore history, and politics, and art—”

“Come on, no one was expecting you to be a scholar of Southeast Asian affairs. Everyone just enjoyed meeting you.”

“Even your grandmother?”

“Definitely! In fact, she’s invited us to come stay next week.”

“Really?” Rachel said. “We’re going to stay at Tyersall Park?”

“Of course! She liked you, and she wants to get to know you better.”

Rachel shook her head. “I can’t believe I made any sort of impression on her.”

Nick took a stray lock of hair hanging down her forehead and gently tucked it behind her ear. “First of all, you have to realize that my grandmother is exceedingly shy, and sometimes that comes across as being standoffish, but she is an astute observer of people. Second, you don’t need to make any sort of impression on her. Just being yourself is quite enough.”

Based on what she’d gleaned from everyone else, she wasn’t so sure about that, but she decided not to worry about it for the moment. They lay entwined in bed, listening to the sounds of splashing water and children shrieking as they did cannonballs into the pool. Nick suddenly sat up. “You know what we haven’t done yet? We haven’t ordered from room service. You know that’s one of the things I love most about staying in a hotel! Come on, let’s see how good their breakfast is.”

“You read my mind! Hey, does Colin’s family really own this hotel?” Rachel asked, picking up the leather-bound menu by the side of the bed.

“Yes, they do. Did Colin tell you?”

“No, Peik Lin did. I mentioned yesterday that we were going to Colin’s wedding, and her whole family almost had a fit.”

“Why?” Nick asked, momentarily perplexed.

“They were just very excited, that’s all. You didn’t tell me that Colin’s wedding was going to be such a big deal.”

“I didn’t think it was going to be.”

“It’s apparently front-page news in every newspaper and magazine in Asia.”

“You’d think the newspapers would have better things to write about, with everything that’s happening in the world.”

“Come on, nothing sells like a big fancy wedding.”

Nick sighed, rolling onto his back and staring at the wood-beamed ceiling. “Colin is so stressed. I’m really worried about him. A big wedding is the last thing he wanted, but I guess it was unavoidable. Araminta and her mum just took over, and from what I hear, it’s going to be quite a production.”

“Well, thankfully I can just sit in the audience,” Rachel smirked.

“You can, but I’ll be up there in the middle of the three-ring circus. That reminds me, Bernard Tai is organizing the bachelor party, and it seems he’s planned quite the extravaganza. We’re all meeting at the airport and going to some secret destination. Would you mind terribly if I abandoned you for a couple of days?” Nick asked, stroking her arm lightly.

“Don’t worry about me — you do your duty. I’ll do some exploring on my own, and Astrid and Peik Lin both offered to show me around this weekend.”

“Well, here’s another option — Araminta called this morning, and she really does want you to come to her bachelorette party this afternoon.”

Rachel pursed her lips for a moment. “Don’t you think she was only being polite? I mean, we just met. Wouldn’t it be kind of weird if I show up to a party of her close friends?”

“Don’t look at it like that. Colin’s my best friend, and Araminta’s a big social butterfly. I think it’s going to be a large group of girls, so it will be fun for you. Why don’t you call her and talk it over?”

“Okay, but let’s order some of those Belgian waffles with maple butter first.”

7 Eleanor

SHENZHEN

Lorena Lim was talking on her cell phone in Mandarin when Eleanor entered the breakfast room. She sat down across from Lorena, taking in the hazy morning view from this glass aerie. Every time she visited, the city seemed to have doubled in size.[53] But like a gangly teenager in the middle of a growth spurt, many of the hastily erected buildings — barely a decade old — were already being torn down to make way for shinier towers, like this place Lorena had recently bought. It was shiny all right, but sorely lacking in the taste department. Every surface in this breakfast room, for instance, was covered in a particularly putrid shade of orange marble. Why did all these Mainland developers think that more marble was a good thing? As Eleanor tried to imagine the countertops in a neutral Silestone, a maid placed a bowl of steaming fish porridge in front of her. “No, no porridge for me. Can I have some toast with marmalade?”

The maid did not appear to understand Eleanor’s attempt at Mandarin.

Lorena finished her call, flipped off her phone, and said, “Aiyah, Eleanor, you’re in China. At least try some of this delicious porridge.”

“Sorry, I can’t eat fish first thing in the morning — I’m used to my morning toast,” Eleanor insisted.

“Look at you! You complain your son is too Westernized, and yet you can’t even enjoy a typical Chinese breakfast.”

“I’ve been married to a Young for too many years,” Eleanor said simply.

Lorena shook her head. “I just spoke to my lobang.[54] We are going to meet him in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton tonight at eight, and he is going to escort us to the person with the inside information about Rachel Chu.”

Carol Tai swept into the breakfast room in a luxuriant lilac peignoir. “Who are these people you are taking Eleanor to meet? Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Aiyah, don’t worry. It will be just fine.”

“So what should we do until then? I think Daisy and Nadine want to go to that enormous mall by the train station,” Eleanor said.

“You’re talking about Luohu. I have an even better place to take all of you first. But it must remain top secret, okay?” Carol whispered conspiratorially.

After the ladies had breakfasted and beautified themselves for the day, Carol took the group to one of the many anonymous office buildings in downtown Shenzhen. A lanky youth standing at the curb of the building, who seemed to be texting away furiously on his cell phone, looked up when he saw the two late-model Mercedes sedans pull up and a bevy of women emerge.

“Are you Jerry?” Carol asked in Mandarin. She squinted at the boy in the scorching noonday sun, noticing that he was playing a computer game on his cell phone.

The young man scrutinized the group of ladies for a minute, making sure they weren’t undercover police. Yes, these were obviously a bunch of rich wives and, judging from the way they looked, they were from Singapore. These Singaporeans dressed in their own distinct hodgepodge of styles and wore less jewelry since they were always so scared of being robbed. Hong Kong women tended to dress alike and sport huge rocks, while the Japanese ladies with their sun visors and fanny packs looked like they were on the way to the golf course. He gave them a big toothy grin and said, “Yes, I’m Jerry! Welcome, ladies, welcome. Follow me, please.”

He led them through the smoked-glass doors of the building, down a long corridor, and through a back door. They were suddenly outdoors again on a side street, across from which stood a smaller office tower that looked like it was either still under construction or about to be condemned. The lobby inside was pitch-black, its only source of light coming from the door that Jerry had just propped open. “Be careful, please,” he warned, as he led them through the dark space littered with boxes of granite tiles, plywood, and construction equipment.

“Are you sure this is safe, Carol? I wouldn’t have worn my new Roger Vivier heels if I knew we were coming to a place like this,” Nadine complained nervously. At any moment she felt like she was going to trip over something.

“Trust me, Nadine, nothing is going to happen. You will be thanking me in a minute,” Carol replied calmly.

A doorway finally led to a dimly lit elevator vestibule, and Jerry jabbed repeatedly at the decayed elevator call button. Finally the service elevator arrived. The ladies all crammed in, cowering together to avoid accidentally brushing against the dusty walls. On the seventeenth floor, the elevator opened to reveal a bright, fluorescent-lit vestibule. There were two steel double doors on either end of the space, and Eleanor couldn’t help but notice two sets of closed-circuit cameras installed on the ceiling. A very skinny girl in her early twenties emerged from one of the doors. “Hello, hello,” she said in English, nodding at the ladies. She inspected them briefly, and then said in a surprisingly stern, staccato tone, “Please turn off phone, no camera allowed.” She moved toward an intercom, which she spoke into in a rapid-fire dialect that none of them could discern, and a set of secure locks clicked open loudly.

The ladies walked through the door and abruptly found themselves in a sumptuously designed boutique. The floor was polished pink marble, the walls upholstered in pale pink moiré fabric, and from where they stood, they could peer down the corridor into some of the adjacent showrooms. Each room was devoted to a different luxury brand, with floor-to-ceiling display cabinets crammed full of the most current handbags and accessories. The designer treasures seemed to glow under the carefully positioned halogen spotlights, and well-attired shoppers filled each showroom, eagerly perusing the merchandise.

“This place is known for the very best fakes,” Carol declared.

“Holy Jesus!” Nadine shrieked excitedly, while Carol glared at her for using the Lord’s name in vain.

“Italy this side, French the other side. What you want?” the skinny girl asked.

“Do you have any handbags by Goyard?” Lorena asked.

“Hiyah! Yes, yes, everybody want Goya right now. We have best Goya,” she said, leading Lorena into one of the showrooms. Behind the counter were rows and rows of the latest must-have Goyard tote bag in every color imaginable, and a Swiss couple stood in the middle of the room testing the wheels on one of the Goyard carry-on suitcases.

Daisy whispered into Eleanor’s ear, “See, the only people shopping here are tourists like us. These days, the Mainlanders only want the real thing.”

“Well, for once I agree with the Mainlanders. I’ve never understood why anyone would want a fake designer handbag. What is the point of pretending to carry one if you can’t afford it?” Eleanor sniffed.

“Aiyah, Eleanor, if you or I carried one of these, who would ever think it was fake?” Carol said. “Everyone knows we can afford the real thing.”

“Well, these are absolutely identical to the real thing. Not even the people who work at Goyard would be able to tell,” Lorena said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Just look at the stitching, the embossing, the label.”

“They look so real because they practically are real, Lorena,” Carol explained. “These are what they call ‘real fakes.’ The factories in China are commissioned by all the luxury brands to manufacture the leather. Say the company places an order for ten thousand units, but they actually make twelve thousand units. Then they can sell the remaining two thousand off the books on the black market as ‘fakes,’ even though they are made with the exact same material as the real ones.”

“Hey ladies, guei doh say, ah![55] These aren’t bargains at all,” Daisy warned, scrutinizing one of the price tags.

“It’s still a bargain. This bag is forty-five hundred in Singapore. Here it’s six hundred, and it looks exactly the same,” Lorena said, feeling the distinctive texture of the bag.

“My God, I want one in every color!” Nadine squealed. “I saw this handbag on British Tatler’s ‘It List’ last month!”

“I’m sure Francesca would want a few of these bags too,” Lorena said.

“No, no, I dare not buy anything for that fussy daughter of mine — Francesca will only carry originals, and they have to be from next season,” Nadine replied.

Eleanor wandered into the next room, which was filled with racks and racks of clothing. She scrutinized a fake Chanel suit, shaking her head in disapproval at the gold buttons with interlocking Cs running up the sleeves of the jacket. She had always felt that wearing a stiffly tailored designer dress of this sort, as women of her age and social milieu might be inclined to do, only served to reinforce one’s age. Eleanor’s style was a deliberate one — she preferred the more youthful, trendy clothes that she found in the boutiques of Hong Kong, Paris, or wherever she happened to be traveling, as this achieved three goals: she always wore something distinctive that no one else in Singapore had, she spent far less money on clothes than the rest of her friends, and she looked at least a decade younger than her real age. She tucked the sleeve of the Chanel suit back into its rack properly and walked into what appeared to be a room devoted to Hermès, finding herself face-to-face with none other than Jacqueline Ling. Speak of age-defying, this one had made some pact with the devil.

“What are you doing here?” Eleanor asked in surprise. Jacqueline was one of her least favorite people, but even she would never have imagined that Jacqueline might carry a designer fake.

“I just flew in this morning and a friend insisted that I come here and pick up one of these ostrich-leather purses for her,” Jacqueline said, a little flustered to be seen by Eleanor at a place like this. “How long have you been here? No wonder I didn’t see you at Tyersall Park last night.”

“I’m here for a spa weekend with some girlfriends. So, you were at my mother-in-law’s for Friday-night dinner?” Eleanor asked, not entirely surprised. Jacqueline was always sucking up to Nicky’s grandmother whenever she visited Singapore.

“Yes, Su Yi decided to have a little party at the last minute because her tan huas were in bloom. She had quite a few people over. I saw your Nicky … and I met the girl.”

“Well, what was she like?” Eleanor asked impatiently.

“Oh, you haven’t met her yet?” Jacqueline thought that Eleanor would surely want to assess the interloper as early as possible. “You know, she’s typical ABC. Overconfident and overfamiliar. I would never have thought that Nicky would go for someone like that.”

“They are just dating, lah,” Eleanor said a little defensively.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you. This girl is already best friends with Astrid and Oliver, and you should have seen the way she was staring openmouthed at everything around the house,” Jacqueline said, even though she had witnessed nothing of the sort.

Eleanor was taken aback by Jacqueline’s comment, but it soon dawned on her that on this score at least, their interests were uniquely aligned. “How is your Mandy doing these days? I hear she’s dating some Jewish banker twice her age.”

“Oh, you know that’s really just idle gossip,” Jacqueline replied quickly. “The press over there is so fascinated by her, and they try to link her with all the eligible men in New York. Anyway, you can ask Amanda yourself — she’ll be back for the Khoo wedding.”

Eleanor looked surprised. Araminta Lee and Amanda Ling were archrivals, and two months ago, Amanda had caused something of a mini-scandal when she told the Straits Times that “she didn’t understand what all the fuss was over the Khoo wedding — she was far too busy to come rushing back to Singapore for every social climber’s wedding.”[56]

At that moment, Carol and Nadine entered the Hermès room. Nadine recognized Jacqueline immediately, having seen her from afar many years ago at a gala movie premiere. Here was her chance to get an introduction. “Look at you, Elle, always running into people you know everywhere you go,” she said cheerily.

Carol, who was much more interested in the fake Hermès Kelly bags, smiled at them from across the room but carried on shopping, while Nadine made a beeline for the ladies. Jacqueline glanced at the woman coming toward her, taken aback by the sheer volume of makeup she was wearing. Oh my God, this was that awful Shaw woman whose pictures were always in the society pages, preening away with her equally vulgar daughter. And Carol Tai was the wife of that scoundrel billionaire. Of course Eleanor would be hanging around with this crowd.

“Jacqueline, so nice to meet you,” Nadine said effusively, extending her hand.

“Well, I must be off,” Jacqueline said to Eleanor, not making eye contact with Nadine and stepping toward the exit nimbly before the woman could claim a proper introduction.

When Jacqueline had left the room, Nadine began to gush. “You never told me you knew Jacqueline Ling! Wow, she still looks stunning! How old must she be by now? Do you think she had a face-lift?”

“Alamak, don’t ask me such things, Nadine! How would I know?” Eleanor said, feeling irritated.

“You seemed to know her quite well.”

“I’ve known Jacqueline for years. I even made a trip to Hong Kong with her a long time ago, where she couldn’t stop making a spectacle of herself, and all these idiotic men kept following us everywhere, proclaiming their love for her. It was a nightmare.”

Nadine wanted to keep talking about Jacqueline, but Eleanor’s mind was already elsewhere. So Amanda had changed her mind and was coming home for Colin’s wedding after all. How very interesting. As much as she detested Jacqueline, she had to admit that Amanda would be a superb match for Nicky. The stars were beginning to align, and she could hardly wait for whatever lay in store with Lorena’s secret informer tonight.

8 Rachel

SINGAPORE

The first hint that Araminta’s bachelorette party was going to be no ordinary affair occurred when Rachel’s taxi dropped her off at the Jet Quay CIP Terminal, which served the private-jet crowd. The second hint came when Rachel walked into the sleek lounge and came face-to-face with twenty girls who looked as if they had spent the last four hours in hair and makeup. Rachel thought that her outfit — a seafoam blue tunic top paired with a white denim skirt — was rather cute, but now it seemed a little shabby compared to the girls in their fresh-off-the-catwalk ensembles. Araminta was nowhere to be seen, so Rachel just stood around smiling at everyone as snippets of conversation drifted her way.

“I searched the world for that handbag, and even L’Eclaireur in Paris couldn’t get it for me …”

“It’s a three-bedroom in that old complex on Thompson Road. I have a gut feeling it’s going to go en bloc and I’ll triple my money …”

“OMG, I found the best new place for chili crab, you won’t believe where …”

“I like the Lanesborough’s suites more than Claridge’s, but really, the Calthorpe is where you want to be …”

“Nonsense, lah! No Signboard Seafood still has the best chili crab …”

“This isn’t cashmere, you know. It’s baby vicuña …”

“Did you hear Swee Lin sold her Four Seasons flat for seven-point-five mil? A young Mainland Chinese couple, paid in cash …”

Yep, this was definitely not her crowd. Suddenly an overly tan girl with fake blond hair extensions came into the lounge, shouting, “Araminta just pulled up!” The room got quiet as everyone craned their necks toward the sliding glass door. Rachel hardly recognized the girl who entered. In place of the schoolgirl in pajama pants of a few nights ago was a woman in a matte-gold jumpsuit with gold stiletto boots, her wavy dark brown hair piled into a loose beehive. With a light dusting of expertly applied makeup, her girlish features were transformed into that of a supermodel. “Rachel, I’m so glad you made it!” Araminta said excitedly, giving her a big hug. “Come with me,” she said, taking Rachel by the hand and leading her to the center of the room.

“Hello, everyone! First things first — I want to introduce all of you to my fabulous new friend Rachel Chu. She’s visiting from New York, as the guest of Colin’s best man, Nicholas Young. Please give her a very warm welcome.” All eyes were on Rachel, who flushed a little and could do nothing but smile politely at the assembled crowd that was now dissecting every inch of her. Araminta continued. “You are all my dearest friends, so I wanted to give you a special treat.” She paused for effect. “Today we’re heading to my mum’s private island resort in eastern Indonesia!” There were gasps of astonishment from the crowd. “We’re going to dance on the beach tonight, feast on delish low-calorie cuisine, and pamper ourselves silly with spa treatments all weekend! Come on, girls, let’s get this party started!”

Before Rachel could fully process what Araminta had said, they were ushered on board a customized Boeing 737–700, where she found herself in a dramatically chic space with streamlined white saddle-stitched leather sofas and glistening shagreen console tables.

“Araminta, this is just too much! Is this your dad’s new plane?” one of the girls asked incredulously.

“Actually it’s my mum’s. Bought from some oligarch in Moscow who needed to lower his profile and go into hiding, from what I hear.”

“Well, let’s hope no one blows this plane up by mistake, then,” the girl joked.

“No, no, we had it repainted. It used to be cobalt blue, and of course my mom had to do her Zen makeover thing. She had it repainted three times before she was satisfied with the right shade of glacier white.”

Rachel wandered into the next cabin and encountered two girls chattering animatedly.

“Told you it was her!”

“She’s not at all what I was expecting. I mean, her family is supposed to be one of the richest in Taiwan, and she shows up looking like some—”

Upon noticing Rachel, the girls abruptly went silent and smiled sheepishly at her before fleeing down the corridor. Rachel hadn’t paid any attention to their exchange — she was far too distracted by the dove-gray leather banquettes and handsome polished-nickel reading lamps extending down from the ceiling. One wall was lined with a bank of flat-screen televisions, while the other consisted of silver ladder racks hung with the latest fashion magazines.

Araminta entered the cabin, leading some girls on a tour. “Here is the library-slash-media room. Don’t you love how cozy it is? Now let me show you my favorite space on the plane, the yoga studio!” Rachel followed the group into the next room, in utter disbelief that there were people rich enough to install a state-of-the-art Ayurvedic yoga studio with inlaid pebble walls and heated pine floors in their private jet.

A group of girls came in squealing with laughter. “Alamak, Francesca has already cornered that hunky Italian steward and commandeered the master bedroom!” the overly bronzed girl exclaimed in her singsongy accent.

Araminta frowned in displeasure. “Wandi, tell her the bedroom is off-limits, and so is Gianluca.”

“Maybe we should all get inducted into the mile-high club with these Italian stallions,” one of the giggly girls said.

“Who needs to be inducted? I’ve been a member since I was thirteen,” Wandi boasted, tossing back her blond-streaked hair.

Rachel, at a loss for words, decided to buckle herself into the nearest armchair and prepare for takeoff. The demure-looking girl sitting beside her smiled. “You’ll get used to Wandi. She’s a Meggaharto, you know. I don’t think you need me to tell you how that family is. By the way, I’m Parker Yeo. I know your cousin Vivian!” she said.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have a cousin named Vivian,” Rachel replied in amusement.

“Aren’t you Rachel Chu?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t your cousin Vivian Chu? Doesn’t your family own Taipei Plastics?”

“Afraid not,” Rachel said, trying not to roll her eyes. “My family is originally from China.”

“Oh sorry, my mistake. So what does your family do?”

“Um, my mother is a real estate agent in the Palo Alto area. Who are these Taipei Plastics people everyone keeps talking about?”

Parker simply smirked. “I’ll tell you, but excuse me for just one moment.” She unbuckled her seat belt and made a beeline for the back cabin. It was the last time Rachel would see her during the entire flight.

“Girls, I have the scoop of all scoops!” Parker burst in on the girls crowded into the master cabin. “I was just sitting next to that Rachel Chu girl, and guess what? She isn’t related to the Taipei Chus! She hasn’t even heard of them!”

Francesca Shaw, lounging in the middle of the bed, gave Parker a withering look. “Is that all? I could have told you that months ago. My mother is best friends with Nicky Young’s mother, and I know enough about Rachel Chu to sink a ship.”

“Come on, lah—give us all the dirt!” Wandi pleaded, bouncing up and down on the bed in anticipation.

After a dramatic landing on a perilously short runway, Rachel found herself on a sleek white catamaran, the salty ocean breeze whipping through her hair as they sped toward one of the more remote islands. The water was an almost blinding shade of turquoise, interrupted by tiny islands dropped onto the calm surface here and there like dollops of fresh cream. Soon the catamaran made a sharp turn toward one of the bigger islands, and as they approached, a striking series of wooden buildings with undulating thatched canopies came into view.

This was the paradise dreamed up by Araminta’s hotelier mother, Annabel Lee, who spared no expense in creating the ultimate retreat according to her exacting vision of what chic, modern luxury should be. The island, actually just a quarter-mile-long spit of coral, consisted of thirty villas built on stilts that extended out over the shallow coral reefs. As the boat pulled up to the jetty, a line of waiters in saffron-colored uniforms stood stiffly at attention holding Lucite trays of mojitos.

Araminta was helped out of the boat first, and when all the girls were assembled on the dock with cocktails in hand, she announced, “Welcome to Samsara! In Sanskrit, the word means ‘to flow on’—to pass through states of existence. My mum wanted to create a special place where you could experience rebirth, where you could pass through different levels of bliss. So this island is ours, and I hope you will find your bliss with me this weekend. But first, I’ve arranged a shopping spree at the resort’s boutique! Girls, as a gift from my mum, each of you can pick out five new outfits. And to make this just a little more fun, and also because I don’t want to miss cocktails at sunset, we’re going to make this a challenge. I’m giving you only twenty minutes to shop. Grab whatever you can, because in twenty minutes, the boutique closes!” The girls shrieked in excitement and began a mad dash down the jetty.

With its soothing mother-of-pearl varnished walls, Javanese teak floors, and windows overlooking a lagoon, the Samsara Collection was normally a haven of civilized tranquillity. Today it was like Pamplona during the running of the bulls as the girls charged in and ransacked the place in search of outfits that would outdo one another. A fashionista tug-of-war broke out as they began clawing over the most coveted pieces.

“Lauren, let go of this Collette Dinnigan skirt before you tear it to pieces!”

“Wandi, you bitch, I saw that Tomas Maier top first and you’ll never fit into it with your new boobs!”

“Parker, put down those Pierre Hardy flats or I’ll poke your eyes out with these Nicholas Kirkwood stilettos!”

Araminta perched on a counter savoring the scene, adding more tension to her little game by calling out the remaining time at one-minute intervals. Rachel tried to steer clear of the rampage, taking refuge at a rack overlooked by the rest of the girls, probably because there weren’t any quickly recognizable labels on any of the garments. Francesca stood at a nearby rack picking through the clothes as if she was surveying medical photos of genital deformities. “This is impossible. Who are all these no-name designers?” she called out to Araminta.

“What do you mean ‘no-name’? Alexis Mabille, Thakoon, Isabel Marant — my mum personally selects the hottest designers for this boutique,” Araminta said defensively.

Francesca tossed back her long, wavy black locks and sniffed. “You know I only wear six designers: Chanel, Dior, Valentino, Etro, my dear friend Stella McCartney, and Brunello Cucinelli for country weekends. I wish you’d told me we were coming here, Araminta. I could have brought my latest Chanel resort wear — I bought this season’s entire collection at Carol Tai’s Christian Helpers fashion benefit.”

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to slum it for two nights without your Chanel,” Araminta retorted. She gave Rachel a conspiratorial wink and whispered, “When I first met Francesca in Sunday school, she had a plumpish round face and was wearing hand-me-downs. Her grandpa was a famous miser, and the whole family lived crammed together in an old shop house on Emerald Hill.”

“That’s hard to picture,” Rachel said, glancing over at Francesca’s perfectly executed makeup and ruffled emerald-green wrap dress.

“Well, her grandpa had a massive stroke and went into a coma, and her parents finally got control of all the money. Almost overnight, Francesca got herself new cheekbones and a wardrobe from Paris — you won’t believe how fast she and her mother transformed themselves. Speaking of fast, the minutes are running out, Rachel — you should be shopping!”

Even though Araminta had invited everyone to pick out five pieces, Rachel didn’t feel comfortable taking advantage of her generosity. She picked out a cute white linen blouse with tiny ruffles along the sleeves and came across a couple of summery cocktail dresses made out of the lightest silk batiste, which reminded her of the simple shift dresses Jacqueline Kennedy wore in the sixties.

As Rachel was trying on the white blouse in the dressing room, she overheard two girls in the next dressing room chatting away.

“Did you see what she was wearing? Where did she get that cheap-looking tunic top — Mango?”

“How can you expect her to have any style? Think she gets it from reading American Vogue? Hahaha.”

“Actually, Francesca says that she’s not even ABC — she was born in Mainland China!”

“I knew it! She’s got that same desperate look that all my servants have.”

“Well here’s a chance for her to get some decent clothes at last!”

“Just you watch, with all that Young money she’s going to upgrade pretty damn quick!”

“We’ll see — all the money in the world can’t buy you taste if you weren’t born with it.”

Rachel realized with a start that the girls were talking about her. Shaken, she rushed out of the dressing room, almost colliding into Araminta.

“Are you okay?” Araminta asked.

Rachel quickly recovered. “Yes, yes, just trying not to get caught up in the panic, that’s all.”

“It’s the panic that makes it so much fun! Let’s see what you found,” Araminta said excitedly. “Ooh, you have a great eye! These are done by a Javanese designer who hand-paints all of the dresses.”

“They’re so lovely. Let me pay for these — I can’t possibly accept your mom’s generosity. I mean, she doesn’t even know me,” Rachel said.

“Nonsense! They are yours. And my mum is so looking forward to meeting you.”

“Well, I have to hand it to her — she’s created quite a shop. Everything is so unique, it reminds me of the way Nick’s cousin dresses.”

“Ah, Astrid Leong! ‘The Goddess,’ as we used to call her.”

“Really?” Rachel laughed.

“Yes. All of us absolutely worshipped her when we were schoolgirls — she always looked so fabulous, so effortlessly chic.”

“She did look amazing last night,” Rachel mused.

“Oh, you saw her last night? Tell me exactly what she was wearing,” Araminta asked eagerly.

“She had on this white sleeveless top with the most delicately embroidered lace panels I’ve ever seen, and a pair of skinny Audrey Hepburn-esque gray silk pants.”

“Designed by …?” Araminta prodded.

“I have no idea. But oh, what really stood out were these show-stopping earrings she had on — they sort of looked like Navajo dream catchers, except that they were made entirely of precious gems.”

“How fabulous! I wish I knew who designed those,” Araminta said intently.

Rachel smiled, as a cute pair of sandals at the bottom of a Balinese cupboard suddenly caught her eye. Perfect for the beach, she thought, walking over to take a better look. They were slightly too big, so Rachel returned to her section, only to discover that two of her outfits — the white blouse and one of the hand-painted silk dresses — had vanished. “Hey, what happened to my—” she began to ask.

“Time’s up, girls! The boutique is now closed!” Araminta declared.

Relieved that the shopping spree was finally over, Rachel went in search of her room. Her card read “Villa No. 14,” so she followed the signs down the central jetty that wound into the middle of the coral reef. The villa was an ornate wood-crafted bungalow with pale coral walls and airy white furnishings. At the back, a set of wooden screen doors opened onto a deck with steps leading straight into the sea.

Rachel sat on the edge of the steps and dipped her toes into the water. It was perfectly cool and so shallow she could sink her feet into the pillowy white sand. She could hardly believe where she was. How much must this bungalow cost per night? She always wondered if she would be lucky enough to visit a resort like this once in her life — for her honeymoon, perhaps — but never did she expect to find herself here for a bachelorette party. She suddenly missed Nick, and wished he could be here to share this private paradise with her. It was because of him that she had suddenly been thrust into this jet-set lifestyle, and she wondered where he could be at this very moment. If the girls went to an island resort in the Indian Ocean, where in the world did the boys go?

9 Nick

MACAU

“Please tell me we’re not riding in one of those,” Mehmet Sabançi grimaced to Nick as they disembarked from the plane and saw the fleet of matching white stretch Rolls-Royce Phantoms awaiting them.

“Oh, this is typical Bernard,” Nick smiled, wondering what Mehmet, a classics scholar who hailed from one of Istanbul’s most patrician families, made of the sight of Bernard Tai emerging from a limo in a mint-green chalk-striped blazer, orange paisley ascot, and yellow suede loafers. The only son of Dato’ Tai Toh Lui, Bernard was famed for his “brave sartorial statements” (as Singapore Tattle so diplomatically put it) and for being Asia’s biggest bon vivant, perpetually hosting wild parties at whatever louche jet-set resort was in fashion that year — always with the hippest DJs, the chillest drinks, the hottest babes, and, many whispered, the best drugs. “Niggas in Macauuuuw!” Bernard exulted, raising his arms rapper style.

“B. Tai! I can’t believe you made us fly in this old sardine can! Your G5 had a time-to-climb I could grow a beard in! We should have taken my family’s Falcon 7X,” Evan Fung (of the Fung Electronics Fungs) complained.

“My dad’s waiting for the G650 to launch into service, and then you can kiss my ass, Fungus!” Bernard retorted.

Roderick Liang (of the Liang Finance Group Liangs) chimed in, “I’m a Bombardier man myself. Our Global 6000 has such a big cabin, you can do backflips down the aisle.”

“Can you ah guahs[57] stop comparing the size of your planes and let’s hit the casinos, please?” Johnny Pang (his mother is an Aw, of those Aws) cut in.

“Well guys, hold on to your balls, because I have a very special treat arranged for all of us!” Bernard declared.

Nick climbed wearily into one of the tanklike cars, hoping that Colin’s bachelor weekend would proceed without incident. Colin had been on edge all week, and heading to the gambling capital of the world with a group of testosterone-and-whiskey-fueled guys was a recipe for disaster.

“This wasn’t the Oxford reunion I was expecting,” Mehmet said to Nick in a low voice.

“Well, aside from his cousin Lionel and the two of us, I don’t think Colin knows anyone here either,” Nick remarked wryly, glancing at some of the other passengers. The lineup of Beijing princelings and Taiwanese trust-fund brats was definitely more Bernard’s crowd.

As the convoy of Rolls-Royces sped along the coastal highway that skirted the island, gigantic billboards flashing the names of casinos could be seen from miles away. Soon the gaming resorts came into view like small mountains — behemoth blocks of glass and concrete that pulsated with lurid colors in the midafternoon haze. “It’s just like Vegas, except with an ocean view,” Mehmet remarked in awe.

“Vegas is the kiddie pool. This is where the real high rollers come to play,” Evan remarked.[58]

As the Rolls squeezed through the narrow lanes of Felicidade in Macau’s old town, Nick admired the colorful rows of nineteenth-century Portuguese shop houses, thinking that this could be a nice place to bring Rachel after Colin’s wedding. The limos finally pulled up in front of a row of dingy shops on rua de Alfandega. Bernard led the group into what appeared to be an old Chinese apothecary with scratched glass cabinets selling ginseng root, edible bird nests, dried shark fins, fake rhino tusks, and all manner of herbal curiosities. A few elderly ladies sat clustered in front of a small television set, watching a Cantonese soap opera, while a rail-thin Chinese man in a faded Hawaiian shirt leaned against the back counter eyeing the group with a bored look.

Bernard looked at the man and asked brashly, “I’m here to buy ginseng royal jelly.”

“What type you want?” the fellow said disinterestedly.

“Prince of Peace.”

“What size jar?”

“Sixty-nine ounces.”

“Let me see if we have some. Follow me,” the man said, his voice suddenly shifting into a rather unexpected Aussie accent. The group followed him toward the back of the shop and through a dim storeroom lined from floor to ceiling with neatly stacked rows of cardboard cartons. Every carton was stamped “China Ginseng for Export Only.” The man pushed lightly against a stack of wide boxes in the corner, and the whole section seemed to collapse backward effortlessly, revealing a long passageway glowing with cobalt-blue LED lights. “Straight through here,” he said. As the guys wandered down the passageway, the muffled roar became louder and louder, and at the end of the hall, smoked-glass doors parted automatically to reveal an astonishing sight.

The space, which resembled a sort of indoor gymnasium with bleachers on both sides of a sunken pit, was packed standing room only with a boisterous cheering crowd. Though they could not see past the audience, they could hear the blood-curdling growls of dogs tearing into each other’s flesh.

“Welcome to the greatest dogfighting arena in the world!” Bernard proudly announced. “They only use Presa Canario mastiffs here — they are a hundred times more vicious than pit bulls. This is going to be damn shiok,[59] man!”

“Where do we place the bets?” Johnny asked excitedly.

“Er … isn’t this illegal?” Lionel asked, peering nervously at the main fighting cage. Nick could tell Lionel wanted to look away but found himself curiously drawn to the scene of two huge dogs, all muscle and sinew and fangs, rolling viciously in a pit smeared with their own blood.

“Of course it’s illegal!” Bernard answered.

“I don’t know about this, Bernard. Colin and I cannot risk being caught at some illegal dogfight right before the wedding,” Lionel continued.

“You are such a typical Singaporean! So damn scared of everything! Don’t be so fucking boring,” Bernard said contemptuously.

“That’s not the point, Bernard. This is just plain cruel,” Nick interjected.

“Alamak, are you a member of Greenpeace? You’re witnessing a great sporting tradition! These dogs have been bred for centuries in the Canary Islands to do nothing but fight,” Bernard huffed, squinting his eyes.

The chanting of the crowd became deafening as the match reached its grisly climax. Both dogs had clamped tightly onto each other’s throats, locked in a Sisyphean chokehold, and Nick could see that the skin around the brown dog’s throat was half torn off, flapping against the snout of the other dog. “Well I’ve seen enough,” he grimaced, turning his back on the fight.

“Come on, lah. This is a BACHELOR PARTY! Don’t shit on my fun, Nickyboy,” Bernard shouted over the chanting. One of the dogs gave a piercing shriek as the other mastiff snapped into the soft of its belly.

“There’s nothing fun about this,” Mehmet said firmly, nauseated by the sight of the fresh warm blood squirting everywhere.

“Ay, bhai singh,[60] isn’t goat-fucking a tradition in your country? Don’t you all think goat pussy is the closest thing to real vag?” Bernard countered.

Nick’s jaw tightened, but Mehmet just laughed. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

Bernard flared his nostrils, trying to figure out whether he should feel insulted.

“Bernard, why don’t you stay? Those who don’t want to be here can head to the hotel first, and we can all meet up later,” Colin suggested, trying to play the diplomat.

“Suits me fine.”

“Okay, then, I’ll take the group to the hotel and we’ll meet up at—”

“Wah lan![61] I organized this specially for you, and you’re not staying?” Bernard sounded frustrated.

“Er … to be honest, I don’t care for this either,” Colin said, trying to look apologetic.

Bernard paused for a moment, supremely conflicted. He wanted to enjoy the dogfights, but at the same time he wanted everyone to witness the profuse ass-kissing he would receive from hotel management the minute they pulled up to the resort.

“ ’Kay lah, it’s your party,” Bernard muttered sulkily.

The sumptuous lobby of the Wynn Macau boasted a huge gilt mural on the ceiling that featured animals of the Chinese zodiac, and at least half the assembled group were relieved to be someplace where the animals were covered in twenty-two-carat gold instead of blood. At the reception desk, Bernard was having one of the classic fits he was renowned for the world over.

“What the fuck! I’m a VVIP here, and I booked the most expensive suite in this entire hotel almost a week ago. How can it not be ready?” Bernard raged to the manager.

“I do apologize, Mr. Tai. Checkout time for the Presidential Penthouse is four o’clock, so the previous guests have not yet vacated the room. But as soon as they do, we’ll have the suite serviced and turned around for you in no time at all,” the manager said.

“Who are these bastards? I’ll bet they’re Hongkies! Those ya ya[62] Hongkies always think they own the world!”

The manager never broke his smile throughout Bernard’s tirade. He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the business of Dato’ Tai Toh Lui’s son — the boy was such a bloody brilliant loser at the baccarat tables. “Some of the grand salon suites reserved for your party are ready. Please allow me to escort you there with a few bottles of your favorite Cristal.”

“I’m not going to dirty my Tod’s setting foot in one of those rat holes! I want my duplex or nothing,” Bernard said petulantly.

“Bernard, why don’t we visit the casino first?” Colin calmly suggested. “It’s what we would have done anyway.”

“I’ll go to the casino, but you guys need to give us the best private VVIP gambling salon right now,” Bernard demanded of the manager.

“Of course, of course. We always have our most exclusive gaming salon available to you, Mr. Tai,” the manager said deftly.

Just then, Alistair Cheng wandered into the lobby, looking slightly disheveled.

“Alistair, so glad you found us!” Colin greeted him heartily.

“Told you it wouldn’t be a problem. Hong Kong’s just thirty minutes away by hydrofoil, and I know Macau like the back of my hand — I used to skip school and come here all the time with my classmates,” Alistair said. He caught sight of Nick and went over to give him a hug.

“Aiyoh, how sweet. Is this your boyfriend, Nickyboy?” Bernard said mockingly.

“Alistair’s my cousin,” Nick replied.

“So you guys played with each other’s cocks while growing up,” Bernard taunted, laughing at his own joke.

Nick ignored him, wondering how it was possible that Bernard hadn’t changed one bit since they were in primary school. He turned back to his cousin and said, “Hey, I thought you were coming to visit me in New York this spring. What happened?”

“A girl happened, Nick.”

“Really? Who’s the lucky girl?”

“Her name’s Kitty. She’s an amazingly talented actress from Taiwan. You’ll meet her next week — I’m bringing her to Colin’s wedding.”

“Wow, I can’t wait to meet the girl who finally stole the heart-breaker’s heart,” Nick teased. Alistair was just twenty-six, but his baby-face good looks and laid-back persona had already made him renowned for leaving a trail of broken hearts all over the Pacific Rim. (Aside from ex-girlfriends in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Taipei, Shanghai, and one summer fling in Vancouver, a diplomat’s daughter at his college in Sydney famously became so obsessed that she attempted to overdose on Benadryl just to get his attention.)

“Hey, I heard you brought your girlfriend to Singapore too,” Alistair said.

“Word travels fast, doesn’t it?”

“My mum heard it from Radio One Asia.”

“You know, I’m beginning to suspect that Cassandra has me under surveillance,” Nick said wryly.

The group entered the sprawling casino where the gaming tables seemed to glow with a peachy, golden light. Colin crossed the opulent sea anemone-patterned carpet and approached the Texas hold ’em table. “Colin, the VIP salons are this way,” Bernard said, trying to steer Colin toward the sumptuous salons reserved for high rollers.

“But it’s more fun to play five-dollar poker,” Colin argued.

“No, no, we’re moguls, man! I created that whole scene with the manager just so we could score the best VIP room. Why would you want to mix with all these smelly Mainlanders out here?” Bernard said.

“Let me just play a couple of rounds here and then we’ll go to the VIP room, okay?” Colin pleaded.

“I’ll join you, Colin,” Alistair said, sliding into a seat.

Bernard smiled tightly, looking like a rabid Boston terrier. “Well I’m going to our VIP room. I can’t play at these kiddie tables — I only get hard when I’m betting at least thirty thousand per hand,” he said with a sniff. “Who’s with me?” Most of Bernard’s entourage peeled off with him, with the exception of Nick, Mehmet, and Lionel. Colin’s face clouded over.

Nick took the other seat beside Colin. “I have to warn you guys, two years in New York has made me quite a cardsharp. Prepare to be schooled by the master … Colin, remind me what game this is?” he said, trying to lighten the mood. As the dealer began to expertly flick the cards across the table, Nick quietly fumed. Bernard had always been a troublemaker. Why should things be any different this weekend?

SINGAPORE, 1986

It all happened so fast, the next thing Nick remembered was the feeling of cold damp mud against his neck and a strange face looking down on him. Dark skin, freckles, a shock of brownish-black hair.

“Are you okay?” the dark boy asked.

“I think so,” Nick said, his vision coming back into focus. His entire back was soaked in muddy water from being pushed into the ditch. He got up slowly and looked around to see Bernard leering at him, red-faced, arms crossed like an angry old man.

“I’m going to tell your mum that you hit me!” Bernard shouted at the boy.

“And I’m going to tell your mum that you’re a bully. Plus, I didn’t hit you — I just pushed you away,” the boy replied.

“It was none of your bloody business! I’m trying to teach this little dick here a lesson!” Bernard seethed.

“I saw the way you shoved him into the ditch. You could have really hurt him. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” the boy replied calmly, not the least intimidated by Bernard.

At that point, a metallic-gold Mercedes limousine pulled up to the driveway outside the school. Bernard glanced at the car briefly, and then turned back to Nick. “This isn’t over. Get ready for part two tomorrow — I’m really going to hun tum[63] you!” He got into the backseat of the car, slammed the door, and was driven away.

The boy who had come to Nick’s rescue looked at him and said, “You okay? Your elbow’s bleeding.”

Nick looked down and noticed the bloody scrape on his right elbow. He wasn’t sure what to do about it. At any moment, one of his parents could arrive to pick him up, and if it happened to be his mother, he knew she would get all gan cheong[64] if she saw him bleeding like this. The boy took a white, perfectly folded handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Nick. “Here, use this,” he said.

Nick took the handkerchief from his rescuer and held it to his elbow. He had seen this boy around. Colin Khoo. He had transferred in this semester, and he was hard to miss, with his deep-caramel skin and wavy hair with the strange light brown streak in the front. They weren’t in the same class, but Nick had noticed during PE that the boy had swim practice alone with Coach Lee.

“What did you do to piss off Bernard so much?” Colin asked.

Nick had never heard someone use the term “piss off” before, but he knew what it meant. “I caught him trying to cheat off my maths test, so I told Miss Ng. He got in trouble and was sent to Vice Principal Chia’s office, so now he wants to pick a fight.”

“Bernard tries to pick a fight with everyone,” Colin said.

“Are you good friends with him?” Nick asked carefully.

“Not really. His father does business with my family, so I’m told I have to be nice to him,” Colin said. “But to tell you the truth, I can’t really stand him.”

Nick smiled. “Whew! For a second I thought Bernard actually had one friend!”

Colin laughed.

“Is it true you’re from America?” Nick asked.

“I was born here, but I moved to Los Angeles when I was two.”

“What’s LA like? Did you live in Hollywood?” Nick asked. He had never met anyone his age who had lived in America.

“Not Hollywood. But we weren’t very far — we lived in Bel Air.”

“I’d like to visit Universal Studios. Did you ever see famous movie stars?”

“All the time. It’s no big deal when you live there.” Colin looked at Nick, as if assessing him for a moment, before continuing. “I’m going to tell you something, but first you have to swear not to tell anyone.”

“Okay. Sure,” Nick replied earnestly.

“Say, ‘I swear.’ ”

“I swear.”

“Have you heard of Sylvester Stallone?”

“Of course!”

“He was my neighbor,” Colin said, almost in a whisper.

“Come on, that’s bullshit,” Nick said.

“I’m not bullshitting you. It’s the truth. I have a signed photo from Stallone in my bedroom,” Colin said.

Nick jumped up onto the metal guardrail in front of the ditch, balancing himself nimbly on the thin railing as he moved back and forth like a tightrope walker.

“Why are you here so late?” Colin inquired.

“I’m always here late. My parents are so busy, sometimes they forget to pick me up. Why are you here?”

“I had to take a special test in Mandarin. They don’t think I’m good enough, even though I took classes every day in LA.”

“I suck at Mandarin too. It’s my least favorite subject.”

“Join the club,” Colin said, jumping up onto the railing with him. Just then, a large black vintage car pulled up. Ensconced in the backseat was the most curious woman Nick had ever seen. She was rotund with the most immense double chin, probably in her sixties, dressed entirely in black with a black hat and a black veil over her face, which was powdered an extreme shade of white. She looked like an apparition straight out of a silent film.

“Here’s my ride,” Colin said excitedly. “See you later.” The uniformed chauffeur got out and opened the door for Colin. Nick noticed that the car door opened opposite from the way other cars normally did — outward from the end nearest to the driver’s door. Colin climbed in beside the woman, who bent down to kiss him on the cheek. He looked out of the window at Nick, clearly embarrassed that Nick had witnessed this scene. The woman pointed at Nick, talking to Colin while the car idled. A moment later, Colin jumped out of the car again.

“My grandma wants to know if you need a ride home,” Colin asked.

“No, no, my parents are on their way,” Nick replied. Colin’s grandmother rolled down the window and beckoned Nick to come closer. Nick approached hesitantly. The old lady looked pretty scary.

“It’s almost seven o’clock. Who’s coming to fetch you?” she asked in concern, noticing that it was already getting dark.

“Probably my dad,” Nick said.

“Well, it’s far too late for you to be waiting here all by yourself. What is your daddy’s name?”

“Philip Young.”

“Good gracious, Philip Young — James’s boy! Is Sir James Young your grandfather?”

“Yes, he is.”

“I know your family very well. I know all your aunties — Victoria, Felicity, Alix — and Harry Leong’s your uncle. Why, we’re practically family! I’m Winifred Khoo. Don’t you live at Tyersall Park?”

“My parents and I moved to Tudor Close last year,” Nick replied.

“That’s very close to us. We live on Berrima Road. Come, let me call your parents just to make sure they are on their way,” she said, reaching for the car phone on the console in front of her. “Do you know your telephone number, dearie?”

Colin’s grandmother made fast work of it, and soon discovered from the maid that Mrs. Young had unexpectedly jetted off to Switzerland that afternoon, while Mr. Young was held up by a work emergency. “Please call Mr. Young at work and tell him that Winifred Khoo is going to be sending Master Nicholas home,” she said. Before Nick knew what was happening, he found himself inside the Bentley Mark VI, sandwiched between Colin and the well-cushioned lady in the black veiled hat.

“Did you know your mother was going away today?” Winifred asked.

“No, but she does that a lot,” Nick replied softly.

That Eleanor Young! So irresponsible! How on earth Shang Su Yi ever allowed her son to marry one of those Sung girls, I will never understand, Winifred thought. She turned to the boy and smiled at him. “What a coincidence! I’m so glad that you and Colin are friends.”

“We just met,” Colin interjected.

“Colin, don’t be rude! Nicholas is a classmate of yours, and we’ve known his family for a long time. Of course you are friends.” She looked at Nick, smiled her gum-baring smile, and continued. “Colin has made so few friends since moving back to Singapore, and he’s rather lonely, so we must arrange for you to play together.”

Colin and Nick sat there completely mortified, but in their own ways rather relieved. Colin was astonished by how friendly his normally disapproving grandmother was being toward Nick, especially since she had previously forbidden any guests at their house. He had recently tried to invite a boy from St. Andrew’s over after a swim meet and had been disappointed when his grandmama told him, “Colin, we can’t have just anyone over, you know. We must know who the family is first. This isn’t like California — you have to be so very careful about what sort of people you associate with here.”

As for Nick, he was just glad to be getting a ride home and excited that he might soon discover whether Colin really had an autographed photo of Rambo.

10 Eddie, Fiona, and the Children

HONG KONG

Eddie sat on the fleur-de-lis-patterned carpet of his dressing room, carefully unwrapping the tuxedo that had just arrived from Italy, which he had ordered especially for Colin’s wedding. He took extra care to peel off the embossed sticker from the tissue-like wrapping paper that covered the large garment box, as he liked to save all the stickers and labels from his designer clothes in his Smythson leather scrapbook, and slowly eased the garment bag out of its box.

The first thing he did was try on the midnight-blue trousers. Fucky fuck, they were too tight! He tried fastening the button at the waist, but no matter how much he sucked his gut in, the damn thing wouldn’t button. He took the trousers off in a huff and scrutinized the size label sewn into the lining. It read “90,” which seemed correct, since his waistline was thirty-six inches. Could he have put on so much weight in just three months? No way. Those fucking Italians must have screwed up the measurements. So bloody typical. They made beautiful things, but there was always some problem or other, like the Lamborghini he once had. Thank God he got rid of that pile of cow dung and bought the Aston Martin. He would call Felix at Caraceni first thing tomorrow and tear him a new asshole. They needed to fix this before he left for Singapore next week.

He stood by the mirrored wall in nothing but his white dress shirt, black socks, and white briefs, and gingerly put on the double-breasted tuxedo jacket. Thank God, at least the jacket fit nicely. He buttoned the top button of the jacket and found to his dismay that the fabric pulled a little against his belly.

He walked over to the intercom system, pushed a button, and bellowed, “Fi! Fi! Come to my dressing room now!” A few moments later, Fiona entered the room, wearing just a black slip and her padded bedroom slippers. “Fi, is this jacket too tight?” he asked, buttoning the jacket again and moving his elbows around like a goose flapping its wings to test the sleeves.

“Stop moving your arms and I’ll tell you,” she said.

He put his arms down but kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other, impatiently awaiting her verdict.

“It’s definitely too tight,” she said. “Just look at the back. It’s pulling at the center seam. You’ve put on weight, Eddie.”

“Rubbish! I’ve hardly gained a pound in the last few months, and definitely not since they took my measurements for this suit back in March.”

Fiona just stood there, not wanting to argue with him over the obvious.

“Are the children ready for inspection?” Eddie asked.

“I’m trying to get them dressed right now.”

“Tell them they have five more minutes. Russell Wing is coming over at three to take some family pictures of us in the wedding clothes. Orange Daily might do a feature on our family attending the wedding.”

“You didn’t tell me Russell is coming over today!”

“I just remembered. I called him only yesterday. You can’t expect me to remember everything when I have much more important matters on my mind, can you?”

“But you need to give me more time to prepare for a photo shoot. Don’t you remember what happened the last time when they shot us for Hong Kong Tattle?”

“Well, I’m telling you now. So stop wasting time and go get ready.”

Constantine, Augustine, and Kalliste stood obediently in a straight line in the middle of the sunken formal living room, all dressed up in their new outfits from Ralph Lauren Kids. Eddie sprawled on the plush velvet brocade sofa, inspecting each of his children, while Fiona, the Chinese maid, and one of the Filipino nannies hovered close by. “Augustine, I think you should wear your Gucci loafers with that outfit and not those Bally moccasins.”

“Which ones?” Augustine asked, his little voice almost a whisper.

“What? Speak up!” Eddie said.

“Which ones do I wear?” Augustine said again, not much louder.

“Sir, which pair of Gucci loafers? He has two,” Laarni, the Filipino nanny interjected.

“The burgundy ones with the red-and-green band, of course,” Eddie said, giving his six-year-old son a withering look. “Nay chee seen, ah? You can’t seriously think you can wear black shoes with khaki trousers, can you?” Eddie scolded. Augustine’s face reddened, close to tears. “Okay, that covers the tea ceremony. Now, go and change into your wedding outfits. Hurry up, I’m going to give you five minutes.” Fiona, the nanny, and the maid quickly ushered the children back to their bedrooms.

Ten minutes later, when Fiona came down the spiral stairs in a minimalist gray off-the-shoulder gown with one asymmetrical sleeve, Eddie could hardly believe his eyes. “Yau moh gau chor?[65] What on earth is that?”

“What do you mean?” Fiona asked.

“That dress! You look like you’re in mourning!”

“It’s Jil Sander. I love it. I showed you a picture and you approved.”

“I don’t remember seeing a picture of this dress. I never would have approved it. You look like some spinster widow.”

“There’s no such thing as a spinster widow, Eddie. Spinsters are unmarried,” Fiona said drily.

“I don’t care. How can you look like death warmed over when the rest of us look so good? See how nice and colorful your children look,” he said, gesturing to the kids, who cowered in embarrassment.

“I will be wearing my diamond-and-jade necklace with it, and the jade art deco earrings.”

“It will still look like you are going to a funeral. We’re going to the wedding of the year, with kings and queens and some of the richest people in the world and all my relatives. I don’t want people thinking that I can’t afford to buy my wife a proper dress.”

“In the first place, Eddie, I bought it with my own money, since you never pay for my clothes. And this is one of the most expensive dresses I’ve ever bought.”

“Well, it doesn’t look expensive enough.”

“Eddie, you are always contradicting yourself,” Fiona said. “First you tell me you want me to dress more expensively like your cousin Astrid, but then you criticize everything I buy.”

“Well, I criticize you when you’re wearing something that looks so cheap. It’s a disgrace to me. It’s a disgrace to your children.”

Fiona shook her head in exasperation. “You don’t have any idea what looks cheap, Eddie. Like that shiny tux you’re wearing. That looks cheap. Especially when I can see the safety pins holding your pants on.”

“Nonsense. This tux was six thousand euros. Everyone can see how expensive the fabric is and how well tailored it is, especially when they fix it properly. The pins are temporary. I’m going to button the jacket for the pictures and no one will see them.”

The doorbell made an elaborate, symphonically excessive chime.

“That must be Russell Wing. Kalliste, take off your glasses. Fi, go and change your dress — now.”

“Why don’t you just go to my closet and pick out whatever you want me to wear?” Fiona said, not wanting to argue with him anymore.

At that moment, the celebrity photographer Russell Wing entered the living room.

“Look at you Chengs! Wah, gum laeng, ah!”[66] he said.

“Hello Russell,” Eddie said, smiling broadly. “Thank you, thank you, we only look stylish for you!”

“Fiona, you look stunning in that dress! Isn’t it Raf Simons for Jil Sander, from next season? How in the world did you get your hands on it? I just photographed Maggie Cheung in this dress last week for Vogue China.”

Fiona said nothing.

“Oh, I always make sure my wife has the very best, Russell. Come, come, have some of your favorite cognac before we begin. Um sai hak hei,”[67] Eddie said cheerily. He turned to Fiona and said, “Darling, where are your diamonds? Go and put on your beautiful art deco diamond-and-jade necklace and then Russell can start his photo shoot. We don’t want to take up too much of his time, do we?”

As Russell was taking some of the final shots of the Cheng family posed in front of the huge bronze sculpture of a Lipizzan stallion in the front foyer, another worrying thought entered Eddie’s head. As soon as Russell was out the door with his camera equipment and a gift bottle of Camus Cognac, Eddie called his sister Cecilia.

“Cecilia, what colors will you and Tony be wearing at Colin’s wedding ball?”

“Nay gong mut yeah?”[68]

“The color of your dress, Cecilia. The one you’re wearing to the ball.”

“The color of my dress? How should I know? The wedding is a week away — I haven’t begun to think about what I’m going to wear, Eddie.”

“You didn’t buy a new dress for the wedding?” Eddie was incredulous.

“No, why should I?”

“I can’t believe it! What is Tony going to wear?”

“He will probably wear his dark blue suit. The one he always wears.”

“He’s not wearing a tux?”

“No. It’s not like it’s his wedding, Eddie.”

“The invitation says white tie, Cecilia.”

“It’s Singapore, Eddie, and no one there takes those things seriously. Singaporean men have no style, and I guarantee you half the men won’t even be in suits — they’ll all be wearing those ghastly untucked batik shirts.”

“I think you’re mistaken, Cecilia. It’s Colin Khoo and Araminta Lee’s wedding — all of high society will be there and everyone will be dressed to impress.”

“Well, you go right ahead, Eddie.”

Fucky fuck, Eddie thought. His whole family was going to show up looking like peasants. So bloody typical. He wondered if he could convince Colin to change his seating so that he didn’t have to be anywhere near his parents and siblings.

“Do you know what Mummy and Daddy are wearing?”

“Believe it or not, Eddie, I don’t.”

“Well — we still need to color coordinate as a family, Cecilia. There’s going to be a lot of press there, and I want to make sure we don’t clash. Just be sure you don’t wear anything gray to the main event. Fiona is wearing a gray Jil Sander ball gown. And she’s wearing a deep lavender Lanvin dress to the rehearsal dinner, and a champagne-colored Carolina Herrera to the church ceremony. Can you call Mummy and tell her?”

“Sure, Eddie.”

“Do you need me to SMS you the color scheme again?”

“Sure. Whatever. I have to go now, Eddie. Jake is having another nosebleed.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. What is Jake going to wear? My boys will all be wearing Ralph Lauren tuxedos with dark purple cummerbunds—”

“Eddie, I really have to go. Don’t worry, Jake is not going to wear a tuxedo. I’ll be lucky if I can get him to tuck in his shirt.”

“Wait, wait, before you go, have you talked to Alistair yet? He’s not still thinking of bringing that Kitty Pong, is he?”

“Too late. Alistair left yesterday.”

“What? No one told me he was planning to go early.”

“He was always planning to leave on Friday, Eddie. If you kept up with us more, you’d know that.”

“But why did he go to Singapore so soon?”

“He didn’t go to Singapore. He went to Macau for Colin’s bachelor party.”

“WHAAAT? Colin’s bachelor party is this weekend? Who the hell invited Alistair to his bachelor party?”

“Do you really need me to answer that?”

“But Colin is better friends with ME!” Eddie screamed, the pressure building in his head. And then he felt a strange draft from behind. His pants had split open at the ass.

11 Rachel

SAMSARA ISLAND

The bachelorettes were enjoying a sunset dinner at a long table set under a pavilion of billowing orange silk on the pristine white sand, surrounded by glowing silver lanterns. With dusk transforming the gentle waves into an emerald froth, it could have been a photo shoot straight out of Condé Nast Traveler, except that the dinner conversation put a damper on that illusion. As the first course of baby Bibb lettuce with hearts of palm in a coconut-milk dressing was served, the cluster of girls to Rachel’s left were busy skewering into the heart of another girl’s boyfriend.

“So you say he just made senior vice president? But he’s on the retail side, not the investment banking side, right? I spoke to my boyfriend Roderick, and he thinks that Simon probably makes between six to eight hundred thou base salary, if he’s lucky. And he doesn’t get millions in bonuses like the I-bankers,” sniffed Lauren Lee.

“The other problem is his family. Simon’s not even the eldest brother. He’s the second youngest of five,” Parker Yeo pontificated. “My parents know the Tings very well, and let me tell you, as respected as they are, they are not what you or I would consider rich — my mum says they have maybe two hundred million, max. You split that five ways and you’ll be lucky if Simon gets forty mil at the end of the day. And that won’t be for a loooong time — his parents are still quite young. Isn’t his father going to run for parliament again?”

“We just want what’s best for you, Isabel,” Lauren said, patting her hand sympathetically.

“But … but I really think I love him—” Isabel stammered.

Francesca Shaw cut in. “Isabel, I’m going to tell it to you like it is, because everyone here is wasting your time being polite. You can’t afford to fall in love with Simon. Let me break it down for you. Let’s be generous and assume that Simon is making a measly eight hundred thousand a year. After taxes and CPF,[69] his take-home is only about half a million. Where are you going to live on that kind of money? Think about it — you have to factor a million dollars per bedroom, and you need at least three bedrooms, so you are talking three mil for an apartment in Bukit Timah. That’s a hundred and fifty thousand a year in mortgage and property taxes. Then say you have two kids, and you want to send them to proper schools. At thirty thousand a year each for school fees that’s sixty thousand, plus twenty thousand a year each on tutors. That’s one hundred thousand a year on schooling alone. Servants and nannies — two Indonesian or Sri Lankan maids will cost you another thirty thousand, unless you want one of them to be a Swedish or French au pair, then you’re talking eighty thousand a year spent on the help. Now, what are we going to do about your own upkeep? At the very least, you’ll need ten new outfits per season, so you won’t be ashamed to be seen in public. Thank God Singapore only has two seasons — hot and hotter — so let’s just say, to be practical, you’ll only spend four thousand per look. That’s eighty thousand a year for wardrobe. I’ll throw in another twenty thousand for one good handbag and a few pairs of new shoes every season. And then there is your basic maintenance — hair, facials, mani, pedi, brazilian wax, eyebrow wax, massage, chiro, acupuncture, Pilates, yoga, core fusion, personal trainer. That’s another forty thousand a year. We’ve already spent four hundred and seventy thousand of Simon’s salary, which leaves just thirty thousand for everything else. How are you going to put food on the table and clothe your babies with that? How will you ever get away to an Aman resort twice a year? And we haven’t even taken into account your membership dues at Churchill Club and Pulau Club! Don’t you see? It’s impossible for you to marry Simon. We wouldn’t worry if you had your own money, but you know your situation. The clock is ticking on your pretty face. It’s time to cut your losses and let Lauren introduce you to one of those eligible Beijing billionaires before it’s too late.”

Isabel was reduced to a puddle of tears.

Rachel couldn’t believe what she had just heard — this crowd made Upper East Side girls look like Mennonites. She tried to shift her attention back to the food. The second course had just been served — a surprisingly tasty langoustine and calamansi lime geleé terrine. Unfortunately, the girls on her right seemed to be loudly fixating on some couple named Alistair and Kitty.

“Aiyah, I don’t understand what he sees in her,” Chloé Ho lamented. “With the fake accent and fake breasts and fake everything.”

“I know exactly what he sees in her. He sees those fake breasts, and that’s all he needs to see!” Parker cackled.

“Serena Oh told me that she ran into them at Lung King Heen last week, and Kitty was in Gucci, head to toe. Gucci purse, Gucci halter top, Gucci satin mini-shorts, and Gucci python boots,” Chloé said. “She kept her Gucci sunglasses on all through dinner, and apparently even made out with him at the table with her sunglasses on.”

“Alamaaaaak, how tacky can you get!” Wandi hissed, patting her diamond-and-aquamarine tiara.

Parker suddenly addressed Rachel from across the table. “Wait a minute, have you met them yet?”

“Who?” Rachel asked, since she was trying to tune the girls out rather than listen in on their salacious gossip.

“Alistair and Kitty!”

“Sorry, I wasn’t really following … who are they?”

Francesca glanced at Rachel and said, “Parker, don’t waste your time — it’s obvious Rachel doesn’t know anybody.”

Rachel didn’t understand why Francesca was being so icy toward her. She decided to ignore the comment and took a sip of her Pinot Gris.

“So Rachel, tell us how you met Nicholas Young,” Lauren asked loudly.

“Well, it’s not a very exciting story. We both teach at NYU, and we were set up by a colleague of mine,” Rachel answered, noticing that all eyes at the table were fixed on her.

“Oh, who is the colleague? A Singaporean?” Lauren asked.

“No, she’s Chinese American, Sylvia Wong-Swartz.”

“How did she know Nicholas?” Parker asked.

“Um, they met on some committee.”

“So she didn’t know him very well?” Parker continued.

“No, I don’t think so,” Rachel replied, wondering what these girls were getting at. “Why the interest in Sylvia?”

“Oh, I love setting up my friends too, so I was just curious to know what motivated your friend to set the two of you up, that’s all.” Parker smiled.

“Well, Sylvia’s a good friend, and she was always trying to set me up. She just thought Nick was cute and a total catch …” Rachel began, instantly regretting her choice of words.

“It sure sounds like she did her homework on that, didn’t she?” Francesca said with a sharp laugh.

After dinner, while the girls took off for the disco marquee precariously erected on a jetty, Rachel headed alone to the beach bar, a picturesque gazebo overlooking a secluded cove. It was empty except for the tall, strapping bartender who grinned broadly when she entered. “Signorina, can I make you something special?” he asked in an almost comically seductive accent. Hell, did Araminta’s mother only hire dashing Italians?

“I’ve actually been craving a beer. Do you have any beer?”

“Of course. Let’s see, we have Corona, Duvel, Moretti, Red Stripe, and my personal favorite, Lion Stout.”

“That’s one I’ve never heard of.”

“It’s from Sri Lanka. It’s creamy and bittersweet, with a rich tan head.”

Rachel couldn’t help giggling. It sounded like he was describing himself. “Well if it’s your favorite, then I have to try it.”

As he poured the beer into a tall frosted glass, a girl whom Rachel hadn’t previously noticed strolled into the bar and slipped onto the stool next to her.

“Thank God there’s someone else here who drinks beer! I am so sick of all those pissy low-cal cocktails,” the girl said. She was Chinese, but spoke with an Australian accent.

“Cheers to that,” Rachel replied, tipping her glass at the girl. The girl ordered a Corona, and grabbed the bottle from the bartender before he could pour it into a glass. He looked personally wounded as she tilted her head back and downed her beer in full-bodied gulps. “Rachel, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. But if you’re looking for the Taiwanese Rachel Chu, you’ve got the wrong girl,” Rachel shot back preemptively.

The girl smiled quizzically, a little baffled by Rachel’s response. “I’m Astrid’s cousin Sophie. She told me to look out for you.”

“Oh, hi,” Rachel said, disarmed by Sophie’s friendly smile and deep dimples. Unlike the other girls sporting the latest resort fashions, she was dressed plainly in a sleeveless cotton shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. She had a no-nonsense pageboy haircut, and wore no makeup or jewelry except for a plastic Swatch on her wrist.

“Were you on the plane with us?” Rachel asked, trying to remember her.

“No, no, I flew in on my own and just arrived a little while ago,”

“You have your own plane too?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” Sophie laughed. “I’m the lucky one who flew Garuda Airlines, economy class. I had some hospital rounds to do, so I couldn’t get away until later this afternoon.”

“You’re a nurse?”

“Pediatric surgeon.”

Once again, Rachel was reminded that one could never judge a book by its cover, especially in Asia. “So you’re Astrid and Nick’s cousin?”

“No, just Astrid’s, on the Leong side. Her father is my mum’s brother. But of course I know Nick — we all grew up together. And you grew up in the States, right? Where did you live?”

“I spent my teenage years in California, but I’ve lived in twelve different states. We moved around quite a bit when I was younger.”

“Why did you move around so much?”

“My mom worked in Chinese restaurants.”

“What did she do?”

“She usually started out as a hostess or a waitress, but she always managed to get promoted quickly.”

“So she took you everywhere with her?” Sophie asked, genuinely fascinated.

“Yes — we lived the Gypsy life until my teenage years, when we settled down in California.”

“Was it lonely for you?”

“Well, it was all I knew, so it seemed normal to me. I got to know the back rooms of suburban strip-mall restaurants very well, and I was pretty much a bookworm.”

“And what about your father?”

“He died soon after I was born.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sophie said quickly, regretting that she had asked.

“That’s fine — I never knew him.” Rachel smiled, trying to put her at ease. “And anyway, it wasn’t all bad. My mom put herself through night school, got a college degree, and has been a successful real estate agent for many years now.”

“That’s amazing,” Sophie said.

“Not really. We’re actually one of the many clichéd ‘Asian immigrant success stories’ that politicians love to trot out every four years during their conventions.”

Sophie chuckled. “I can see why Nick likes you — you both have the same dry wit.”

Rachel smiled, looking away toward the disco marquee on the jetty.

“Am I keeping you from the dance party? I hear Araminta flew in some famous DJ from Ibiza,” Sophie said.

“I’m enjoying this, actually. It’s the first real conversation I’ve had all day.”

Sophie glanced at the girls — most of whom were now writhing wildly with several of the Italian waiters to the pounding eurotrance-disco music — and shrugged. “Well, with this crowd, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Aren’t these your friends?”

“A few, but most of these girls I don’t know. I recognize them, of course.”

“Who are they? Are some of them famous?”

“In their own minds, perhaps. These are the more social girls, the type that are always appearing in the magazines, attending all the charity galas. Far too glamorous a crowd for me. I’m sorry, but I work twelve-hour shifts and don’t have the time to go to benefit parties in hotels. I have to benefit my patients first.”

Rachel laughed.

“Speaking of which,” Sophie added, “I’ve been up since five, so I’m going to turn in now.”

“I think I will too,” Rachel said.

They walked down the jetty toward their bungalows.

“I’m in the villa at the end of this walkway if you need anything,” Sophie said.

“Good night,” Rachel said. “It’s been lovely talking with you.”

“Likewise,” Sophie said, flashing that deep-dimpled smile again.

Rachel entered her villa, gladly returning to some peace and quiet after a draining day. None of the lights were on in the suite, but the bright silvery moonlight glimmered through the open screen doors, casting serpentine ripples along the walls. The sea was so still that the sound of the water lapping slowly against the wood stilts had a hypnotic effect. It was the perfect setting for a night swim in the ocean, something she’d never done. Rachel padded toward the bedroom for her bikini. As she passed the vanity table, she noticed that the leather satchel she’d left hanging on the chair seemed to be leaking some sort of liquid. She walked toward the bag and saw that it was completely drenched, with brownish water dripping out of the corner into a large puddle on the bedroom floor. What the hell happened? She turned on the lamp by the table and opened the front flap of her bag. She screamed, jerking backward in horror and knocking over the table lamp.

Her bag was filled with a large fish that had been badly mutilated, blood seeping out from its gills. Violently scrawled on the vanity mirror above the chair in fish blood were the words “CATCH THIS, YOU GOLD-DIGGING CUNT!”

12 Eleanor

SHENZHEN

“Thirty thousand yuan? That’s ridiculous!” Eleanor seethed at the man in the poly-blend gray jacket seated across from her in the lounge off the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton. The man looked around to make sure that Eleanor’s outburst wasn’t attracting too much attention.

“Trust me, it will be worth your money,” the man said quietly in Mandarin.

“Mr. Wong, how can we be sure your information has any value when we don’t even know what it is exactly?” Lorena asked.

“Listen, your brother explained to Mr. Tin what the situation was, and Mr. Tin and I go way back — I have worked for him for more than twenty years. We are the best at this sort of thing. Now, I’m not sure what exactly you’re planning, and I don’t want to know, but I can assure you that this information will be extremely beneficial to whoever possesses it,” Mr. Wong said confidently. Lorena translated his response for Eleanor.

“Who does he think we are? There isn’t any sort of information that’s worth thirty thousand yuan to me. Does he think I’m made of money?” Eleanor was indignant.

“How about fifteen thousand?” Lorena asked.

“Okay, for you, twenty thousand,” Mr. Wong countered.

“Fifteen thousand, and that’s our last offer,” Lorena insisted again.

“Okay, seventeen thousand five hundred, but that’s my last offer,” the man said, getting frustrated by all the bargaining. Mr. Tin had told him that these ladies were millionaires.

“No — ten thousand, or I leave,” Eleanor suddenly declared in Mandarin. The man glared at her as if she had insulted all of his ancestors. He shook his head in dismay.

“Lorena, I’m done with this extortion,” Eleanor huffed, getting up from her red velvet club chair. Lorena stood up as well, and both women began to walk out of the lounge into the soaring three-story atrium lobby, where there was a sudden traffic jam of men in tuxedos and women in black, white, and red ball gowns. “Must be some sort of big function going on,” Eleanor noted, scrutinizing a woman ablaze with diamonds around her neck.

“Shenzhen is not Shanghai, that’s for sure — all these women are dressed in fashions from three years ago,” Lorena observed wryly as she tried to navigate her way through the crowd. “Eleanor, I think you’ve gone too far with your bargaining tactics this time. I think we’ve lost this guy.”

“Lorena, trust me — keep walking and don’t turn around!” Eleanor instructed.

Just as the ladies reached the front entrance of the hotel, Mr. Wong suddenly came running out of the lounge. “Okay, okay, ten thousand,” he said breathlessly. Eleanor beamed in triumph as she followed the man back to the table.

Mr. Wong made a quick phone call on his cell, and then said to the ladies, “Okay, my informer will be here very soon. Until then, what would you ladies like to drink?”

Lorena was a little surprised to hear this — she had assumed that they would be taken to some other place to meet the informer. “Is it safe to meet right here?”

“Why not? This is one of the best hotels in Shenzhen!”

“I mean, it’s so public.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll see that it will be just fine,” Mr. Wong said, grabbing a handful of macadamia nuts from the silver bowl on the table.

A few minutes later, a man entered the bar, walking with trepidation toward their table. Eleanor could tell just by looking at him that he was from some rural area and that it was the first time he had set foot in a hotel as fancy as this. He wore a striped polo shirt and ill-fitting dress pants, and carried a metallic-silver briefcase. It looked to Lorena like he had just picked up the suitcase an hour ago from one of those cheap luggage stalls at the train station, to make himself seem more professional. He looked nervously at the women as he approached the table. Mr. Wong had a short exchange with him in a dialect that neither woman could understand, and the man set his briefcase onto the granite-top table. He fiddled with the combination and clicked the locks on each side in unison before opening the briefcase lid ceremoniously.

The man took out three items from the suitcase and placed them on the table in front of the ladies. There was a small rectangular paper box, a manila envelope, and one photocopy of a newspaper clipping. Lorena opened the manila envelope and fished out a yellowed piece of paper, while Eleanor opened the box. She peered into it, and then looked at the piece of paper Lorena was holding. She only read very basic Mandarin, so she was mystified by it. “What does all this mean?”

“Just give me a minute to finish, Elle,” Lorena said, scanning the last document up and down. “Oh my God, Elle,” she exclaimed, suddenly staring at Mr. Wong and the informer. “Are you sure this is completely accurate? There will be big trouble for all of you if it isn’t.”

“I swear on the life of my firstborn son,” the man replied haltingly.

“What is it? What is it?” Eleanor asked urgently, hardly able to contain herself. Lorena whispered into Eleanor’s right ear. Her eyes grew large, and she looked up at Mr. Wong.

“Mr. Wong, I’ll give you thirty thousand yuan in cash if you can take me right now,” Eleanor commanded.

13 Rachel

SAMSARA ISLAND

Sophie was splashing some water on her face when she heard an urgent rapping. She went to the door and found Rachel standing there, her lips white and her whole body shaking.

“What’s wrong? Are you cold?” Sophie asked.

“I … think … I think I’m in shock,” Rachel stuttered.

“WHAT? What happened?”

“My room … I can’t describe it. Go see for yourself,” Rachel said numbly.

“Are you okay? Should I call for help?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. I’m just shaking involuntarily.”

Sophie immediately slipped into doctor mode, grabbing hold of Rachel’s wrist. “Your pulse is a bit elevated,” she noted. She grabbed the cashmere throw on her chaise lounge and handed it to Rachel. “Sit down. Take long, slow breaths. Wrap this around yourself and wait right here,” she instructed.

A few minutes later, Sophie returned to the villa, ablaze in anger. “I can’t believe it! This is outrageous!”

Rachel nodded slowly, having calmed down a little by this point. “Can you call hotel security for me?”

“Of course!” Sophie headed for the phone and scanned the list on it, looking for the right button to press. She turned back to Rachel and gave her a thoughtful look. “Actually, I’m wondering whether it’s the best idea to call security. What exactly could they do?”

“We can find out who did this! There are security cameras everywhere, and surely they must have footage of who went into my room,” Rachel said.

“Well … what would that really achieve?” Sophie ventured. “Hear me out for a second … No one’s committed any real crime. I mean, I feel bad for the fish, and it was certainly traumatizing for you, but if you think about it, this was just a nasty prank. We’re on an island. We know it had to be one of these girls, or maybe even a group of them. Do you really care who did it? Are you going to confront someone and make a scene? They’re just trying to mess with you — why give them more fuel? I’m sure they’re on the beach right now just waiting for you to go hysterical and ruin Araminta’s bachelorette party. They wanted to provoke you.”

Rachel considered what Sophie had said for a moment. “You know, you’re right. I’m sure these girls are just dying for some drama so they can talk about it back in Singapore.” She got up from the sofa and paced around the room, not quite sure what to do next. “But there must be something we can do.”

“Doing nothing can sometimes be the most effective form of action,” Sophie remarked. “If you do nothing, you’ll be sending a clear message: that you’re stronger than they think you are. Not to mention a lot classier. Think about it.”

Rachel mulled it over for a few minutes and decided that Sophie was right. “Did anyone ever tell you how brilliant you are, Sophie?” she said with a sigh.

Sophie smiled. “Here, I saw some verveine tea in the bathroom. Let me make some. It’ll calm both our nerves.”

With warm cups of tea nestled on their laps, Rachel and Sophie sat on a pair of lounge chairs on the deck. The moon hung like a giant gong in the sky, lighting the ocean so brightly that Rachel could see the tiny schools of fish shimmering as they darted around the wooden piers of the bungalow.

Sophie looked intently at Rachel. “You weren’t prepared for any of this, were you? Astrid was so perceptive when she asked me to look out for you. She was a little worried about you tagging along with this particular crowd.”

“Astrid is so sweet. I guess I just never expected to encounter this kind of viciousness, that’s all. The way these girls are acting, it’s as if Nick is the last man in all of Asia! Look, I get it now — his family’s rich, he’s considered a good catch. But isn’t Singapore supposed to be filled with other rich families like his?”

Sophie sighed sympathetically. “First of all, Nick is so inordinately good-looking, most of these girls have had mad crushes on him since childhood. Then you have to understand something about his family. There’s a certain mystique that surrounds them because they are so intensely private. Most people don’t even realize they exist, but for the small circle of old families that do, they inspire a level of fascination that’s hard to describe. Nick is the scion of this noble clan, and for some of these girls, that’s all that matters. They may not know the first thing about him, but they are all vying to become Mrs. Nicholas Young.”

Rachel took it all in quietly. It felt like Sophie was talking about some character of fiction, someone who bore no resemblance to the man she knew and had fallen in love with. It was as if she were Sleeping Beauty — only, she never asked to be awakened by a prince.

“You know, Nick has told me very little about his family. I still don’t know much about them,” Rachel mused.

“That’s the way Nick was raised. I’m sure he was taught from a very young age never to talk about his family, where he lived, that sort of thing. He was brought up in such a cloistered environment. Can you imagine growing up in that house with no other kids around — no one but your parents, grandparents, and all those servants? I remember going over there as a child, and Nick always seemed so grateful whenever there were other kids to play with.”

Rachel gazed at the moon. Suddenly the rabbit-like figure on the moon reminded her of Nick, a little boy stuck up there in that glittering palace all by himself. “Do you want to know the craziest part of all this?”

“Tell me.”

“I just came for a summer vacation. Everyone here assumes that Nick and I are a done deal, that we’re going to run off and tie the knot tomorrow or something. Nobody knows that marriage is something we’ve never even discussed.”

“Really, you haven’t?” Sophie asked in surprise. “But don’t you ever think about it? Don’t you want to marry Nick?”

“To be completely honest, Nick is the first guy I’ve dated who I could imagine being married to. But I was never raised to believe that marriage was supposed to be my life’s goal. My mother wanted me to get the best education first. She never wanted me to end up having to wash dishes in a restaurant.”

“That’s not the case over here. No matter how advanced we’ve become, there’s still tremendous pressure for girls to get married. Here, it doesn’t matter how successful a woman is professionally. She isn’t considered complete until she is married and has children. Why do you think Araminta is so eager to get married?”

“Do you think Araminta shouldn’t be getting married, then?”

“Well, that’s a difficult question for me to answer. I mean, she is about to become my sister-in-law.”

Rachel looked at Sophie in surprise. “Wait a minute … Colin is your brother?”

“Yes.” Sophie giggled. “I thought you knew that all along.”

Rachel stared at her with renewed wonder. “I had no idea. I thought you were Astrid’s cousin. So … the Khoos are related to the Leongs?”

“Yes, of course. My mother was born a Leong. She was Harry Leong’s sister.”

Rachel noticed that Sophie used the past tense in talking about her mother. “Is your mother no longer around?”

“She passed away when we were kids. She had a heart attack.”

“Oh,” Rachel said, realizing why she felt a connection with the girl she had met only hours earlier. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I understand now why you’re so different from the other girls.”

Sophie smiled. “Growing up with only one parent — especially in a place where everyone goes to such great lengths to present a picture-perfect family — really sets you apart. I was always the girl whose mother died too young. But you know, it had its advantages. It allowed me to get away from the frying pan. After my mum died, I was sent to school in Australia, and I stayed there all through uni. I suppose that’s what makes me a little different.”

“A lot different,” Rachel corrected. She thought of another thing that made her like Sophie. Her candor and complete lack of pretension reminded her so much of Nick. Rachel peered up at the moon, and this time, the rabbit boy didn’t look so alone anymore.

14 Astrid and Michael

SINGAPORE

The minute Harry Leong’s Armani-suited security men entered her hospital room and did their usual sweep, Astrid knew that she had been found out. Minutes later, her parents rushed into the room in a huff. “Astrid, are you okay? How’s Cassian? Where is he?” her mother asked anxiously.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Michael is with Cassian in the children’s ward, signing his release forms.”

Astrid’s father eyed the elderly Chinese woman a few feet away vigorously rubbing Tiger Balm onto her ankle. “Why did they bring you to a public hospital, and why on earth are you not in your own room? I’m going to tell them to move you immediately,” Harry whispered irritatedly.

“It’s okay, Daddy. I had a slight concussion, so they just put me in this ward for monitoring. Like I said, we’re about to get released. How did you know I was here?” Astrid demanded, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

“Aiyoh, you’ve been in the hospital for two days without telling us, and all you care about is how we found out!” Felicity sighed.

“Don’t get so kan cheong, Mum. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened? Cassandra called up at seven this morning from England. She scared us half to death, making it sound like you were Princess Diana in that tunnel in Paris!” Felicity lamented.

“Just be glad she didn’t call the Straits Times,” Harry added.

Astrid rolled her eyes. Radio One Asia had struck again. How in the world did Cassandra know about her accident? She had specifically told the ambulance driver to take her to General Hospital — not one of the private hospitals like Mount Elizabeth or Gleneagles — so that she might avoid being recognized. Of course, that hadn’t worked.

“This is it. You are no longer allowed to drive. You are going to get rid of that lousy Japanese car of yours and I am going to assign Youssef to you from now on. He can use one of the Vanden Plas,” Harry declared.

“Stop treating me like a six-year-old, Daddy! It was such a minor accident. My concussion was from the air bag, that’s all.”

“The fact that your air bag deployed means that the accident was more serious than you think. If you don’t value your life, do as you wish. But I’m not going to let you put my grandson’s life in danger. What’s the use of having all these drivers when no one uses them? Youssef will drive Cassian from now on,” Harry insisted.

“Daddy, Cassian only got a few cuts.”

“Aiyoh, a few cuts!” Felicity sighed, shaking her head in dismay just as Michael entered the room with Cassian. “Oh, Cassian, my poor darling,” she exclaimed, rushing toward the child, who was happily clutching a red balloon.

“Where the hell were you on Friday night?” Harry barked at his son-in-law. “If you were doing your proper duty escorting her, this wouldn’t have happened—”

“Daddy, stop it!” Astrid cut in.

“I was working late, sir,” Michael said as calmly as possible.

“Working late, working late. You’re always working late these days, aren’t you?” Harry muttered contemptuously.

“Enough, Daddy, we’re leaving now. Come on, Michael, I want to go home,” Astrid insisted, getting out of the bed.

The minute they arrived home, Astrid put into motion the plan she had spent the past two days devising. She went into the kitchen and gave the cook and the maid the day off. Then she instructed Evangeline to take Cassian to play at the beach house in Tanah Merah. Michael was surprised by the sudden flurry of activity, but he assumed that Astrid just wanted some peace and quiet for the rest of the day. As soon as everyone was out of the flat and Astrid heard the elevator doors shut, she fixed her gaze on Michael. They were completely alone now, and she could suddenly hear her heartbeat fill her eardrums. She knew that if she didn’t say the words she had carefully rehearsed in her head RIGHT NOW, she would lose her nerve.

“Michael, I want you to know what happened on Friday night,” she began.

“You already told me, Astrid. It doesn’t matter — I’m just glad that you and Cassian are okay,” Michael said.

“No, no,” Astrid said. “I want you to know the real reason I got into the car wreck.”

“What are you talking about?” Michael asked, confused.

“I’m talking about how I became so distracted that I almost got our son killed,” Astrid said, a note of anger hanging in her voice. “It was my fault. It was far too late, and too dark, especially those narrow lanes around the Botanic Gardens. I shouldn’t have been driving, but I was. And all I could think about was where you were and what you were doing.”

“What do you mean? I was home,” Michael said matter-of-factly. “What were you so worried about?”

Astrid took a deep breath, and before she could stop herself, the words came tumbling out. “I know you think I’m some sort of delicate creature, but I’m a lot tougher than you think. I need you to be honest with me, completely honest. I saw a text message on your phone last month, Michael. The dirty one. I know you’ve been in Hong Kong when you were supposed to be in northern China — I found your dinner receipt from Petrus. And I know all about the charm bracelet you bought from Stephen Chia.”

Michael sat down, the color draining from his face. Astrid watched him slump into the sofa, his body language speaking volumes. He was guilty as hell. She felt a surge of confidence that compelled her to ask the question she never imagined she would ever ask: “Have you been … are you having an affair?”

Michael sighed and shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry to have hurt you and Cassian. You’re right — the car accident was my fault.”

“Just tell me everything, Michael, and I … and I will try to understand,” Astrid said softly, sitting down on the ottoman across from him, a calmness coming over her. “No more lies, Michael. Tell me, who is this woman you’ve been seeing?”

Michael could not bring himself to look up at his wife. He knew the time had finally come to say what he had been struggling to say for so long. “I’m so sorry, Astrid. I don’t want to cause you any more pain. I’ll go.”

Astrid looked at him in surprise. “Michael, I’m asking you to tell me what happened. I want to know everything, so we can put this all behind us.”

Michael got up from the sofa abruptly. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“Why not?”

Michael turned away from Astrid and stared past the sliding glass doors of the balcony. He stared out at the trees lining Cavenagh Road, looking like giant bushy stalks of broccoli from up here. The trees marked the perimeter of the grounds that surrounded Istana, and beyond that, Fort Canning Park, River Valley Road, and then the Singapore River. He wished he had the power to fly off the balcony, to fly toward the river and away from this pain. “I … I’ve hurt you too much, and now I don’t know if I can stop myself from hurting you even more,” he finally said.

Astrid was silent for a moment, trying to decipher what he meant. “Is it because you’re in love with this woman?” she asked, her eyes brimming with tears. “Or is it because you had another child with her?”

Michael smiled mysteriously. “What, does your father have me under surveillance or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. A friend just happened to see you in Hong Kong, that’s all. Who is the boy? And who is this woman you’ve been seeing?”

“Astrid, the boy and the woman are beside the point. You and I … it isn’t working for us anymore. It hasn’t really ever worked. We’ve just been pretending it has,” Michael said emphatically, feeling that these were his first truly honest words to her in a very long time.

Astrid stared at him, stunned. “How can you say that?”

“Well, you want me to be honest, so I’m being honest. Your father was right — I haven’t been doing my duty as a husband. I have been too consumed with my job, working my ass off trying to get this company off the ground. And you — you are consumed by your family obligations and traveling around the world fifty times a year. What kind of marriage do we have? We’re not happy,” Michael declared.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I’ve been happy. I was very happy until the day I discovered that damn text message,” Astrid insisted, getting up and pacing around the room.

“Are you sure about that? Are you sure you’ve truly been happy? I think you’re deceiving yourself, Astrid.”

“I see what you’re doing, Michael. You’re just trying to find an easy way out of this. You’re trying to blame me, to make this all about me, when you’re the one who’s guilty. Look, I’m not the one who broke our wedding vows. I’m not the one who cheated,” Astrid seethed, her shock transforming into rage.

“Okay, I’m guilty. I admit it. I admit that I am a cheater. Happy now?”

“I’m not happy, and it will take me some time, but I’ll learn to deal with it,” Astrid said matter-of-factly.

“Well, I can’t deal with it anymore!” Michael moaned. “So I’m going to pack.”

“What’s all this packing business? Who’s asking you to leave? Do you think I want to kick you out of the house just because you cheated on me? Do you think I’m that simpleminded, that I think I’m the first woman whose husband ever had an affair? I’m not going anywhere, Michael. I’m standing right here, trying to work through this with you, for the sake of our marriage. For the sake of our son.”

“Astrid, when have you ever really done anything for the sake of your son? I think Cassian will be much better off growing up with two parents who are happy, rather than with parents who are trapped in a bad marriage,” Michael argued.

Astrid was perplexed. Who was this man standing in front of her? Where had he suddenly procured all this psychobabble? “It’s because of that woman, isn’t it? I see … you don’t want to be part of this family anymore. You want to live with this … this whore, don’t you?” she cried.

Michael took a deep breath before answering. “Yes. I don’t want to live with you anymore. And I think that for both our sakes I should move out today.” He knew that if he was ever going to leave, this was his chance. He began to walk toward the bedroom. Where was his large suitcase?

Astrid stood helplessly by the doorway to the bedroom, wondering what had just happened. This was not how it was supposed to go. She watched numbly as Michael began to grab his clothes and throw them haphazardly into his black Tumi suitcase. She had wanted to buy him a suite of Loewe luggage when they were in Barcelona last year, but he insisted on something cheaper and more practical. Now she had the distinct feeling of being trapped in a dream. None of this could really be happening. The fight they just had. The car accident. Michael’s philandering. None of it. Her husband wasn’t really leaving. There was no way he was leaving. This was just a nightmare. She hugged herself, pinching the flesh around her elbow repeatedly, willing herself to wake up.

15 Nick

MACAU

Nick ran his fingers along the leather-bound spines perfectly arranged on the neoclassical mahogany bookcase. Lieutenant Hornblower. Islands in the Stream. Billy Budd. All nautical-themed titles. He picked out a volume by Knut Hamsun that he had never heard of, August, and settled into one of the overstuffed club chairs, hoping he would be undisturbed for a while. Cracking open the stiff embossed cover, he could tell at once that its pages, like most of the others here, had probably never seen the light of day. Hardly surprising, considering that this sumptuous library was tucked away on the lower deck of a 388-foot yacht that boasted such distractions as a ballroom, a karaoke lounge for Bernard’s dad, a chapel for his mother, a casino, a sushi bar complete with a full-time sushi chef from Hokkaido, two swimming pools, and an outdoor bowling alley on the uppermost deck that also converted into a runway for fashion shows.

Nick glanced at the door in dismay as footsteps could be heard coming down the spiral staircase just outside the library. If he’d been smarter, he would have locked the door behind him. Much to Nick’s relief, it was Mehmet who peered in. “Nicholas Young — why am I not surprised to find you in the only intellectually inclined room on this entire vessel?” Mehmet remarked. “Mind if I join you? This looks to be the quietest place on the boat, and if I have to hear another Hôtel Costes remix, I think I’m going to jump overboard and swim for the nearest buoy.”

“You’re most welcome here. How are the natives doing?”

“Incredibly restless, I would say. I left the pool deck just as the ice-cream-sundae contest began.”

“They’re making sundaes?” Nick cocked an eyebrow.

“Yes. On a dozen nude Macanese girls.”

Nick shook his head wearily.

“I tried to rescue Colin, but he got trapped. Bernard anointed Colin the Whipped Cream King.”

Mehmet slouched into a club chair and closed his eyes. “Colin should have listened to me and come to Istanbul for a relaxing getaway before the wedding. I told him to invite you too.”

“Now that would have been nice.” Nick smiled. “I would much rather be at your family’s summer palace on the banks of the Bosphorus than on this boat.”

“You know, I’m surprised Colin had a bachelor party in the first place. It didn’t strike me as his sort of thing.”

“It’s not, but I think Colin felt like he couldn’t refuse Bernard, what with Bernard’s father being the largest minority shareholder in the Khoo Organization,” Nick explained.

“Bernard’s doing a fine job, isn’t he? He truly thinks Colin enjoys being part of the biggest drug and drinking binge I’ve witnessed since spring break in Cabo,” Mehmet murmured.

Nick stared at him in surprise, never expecting to hear those words come out of Mehmet’s mouth. Mehmet opened one eye and grinned. “Just kidding. I’ve never been to Cabo — I just always wanted to say that.”

“You scared me for a second!” Nick laughed.

Just then, Colin stumbled into the library and plopped down on the nearest chair. “God help me! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat another maraschino cherry again!” He moaned, massaging his temples.

“Colin, did you actually eat off one of the girls?” Mehmet asked incredulously.

“Nooo! Araminta would kill me if she found out I ate a hot fudge sundae off some girl’s pu … er, crotch. I only took one cherry, and then I told Bernard I really needed to go to the bathroom.”

“Where did all these girls come from in the first place?” Mehmet asked.

“Bernard hired them from that brothel he forced all of us to go to last night,” Colin mumbled through his pounding headache.

“You know, I think he was genuinely shocked when we turned down the girls he had procured for the night,” Mehmet remarked.

“Poor bastard. We’ve completely ruined his bachelor weekend, haven’t we? We didn’t want to go to the dogfights, we didn’t want to make sex videos with prostitutes, and we turned up our noses at his fancy Peruvian cocaine.” Nick laughed.

Screams could be heard from the upper deck, followed by much panicked yelling. “I wonder what’s happening now,” Nick said. But none of them could muster up the effort to get out of the plush club chairs. The yacht began to slow, and several crewmen could be heard running along the lower decks.

Alistair strolled into the room, carefully balancing a white cup and saucer with what appeared to be a very frothy cappuccino.

“What’s all the screaming on the deck?” Colin asked with a groan.

Alistair simply rolled his eyes and sat down in one of the chairs by the Regency drum table. “One of the girls slipped overboard during the oil-wrestling contest. Not to worry, her breasts make an excellent flotation device.”

He began sipping his coffee, but then made a face. “The Aussie bartender lied to me. He told me he could make the perfect flat white, and this isn’t even close. This is just a lousy latte!”

“What is a flat white?” Mehmet asked.

“It’s a kind of cappuccino that they only do down in Oz. You use the steamed, frothy milk from the bottom of the jug, holding back the foam at the top so that you get this smooth, velvety texture.”

“And that’s good?” Mehmet continued, a little intrigued.

“Oh, it’s the best. I had to have at least two a day back in my uni days in Sydney,” Alistair said.

“God, now I’m craving one too!” Colin sighed. “This is a fucking nightmare. I just wish we could get off this boat and go have a decent cup of coffee somewhere. I know this is supposed to be one of the coolest new yachts in the world and I should be so grateful, but frankly, it feels like a floating prison to me.” His face darkened, and Nick looked at him uneasily. Nick could sense that Colin was slipping fast into one of his deep funks. An idea began to take shape in his head. He whipped out his cell phone and began scrolling through his contacts, leaning over to Mehmet and whispering in his ear. Mehmet grinned and nodded eagerly.

“What are the two of you whispering about?” Alistair asked, leaning over curiously.

“I just had an idea. Colin, are you ready to bail out of this pathetically lame bachelor party?” Nick asked.

“I would like nothing more, but I don’t think I can risk offending Bernard and, more important, his father. I mean, Bernard pulled out all the stops to entertain us in grand style this weekend.”

“Actually, Bernard pulled out all the stops to entertain himself,” Nick retorted. “Look how miserable you are. How much more of this do you want to endure, just so the Tais won’t be offended? It’s your last weekend as a single man, Colin. I think I have an exit strategy that won’t offend anyone. If I can make it happen, will you play along?”

“Okay … why not?” Colin said a little trepidatiously.

“Hear, hear!” Alistair cheered.

“Quick, quick, we have a medical emergency. I need you to stop this boat, and I need our precise coordinates right now,” Nick demanded as he rushed into the yacht’s pilothouse.

“What’s the matter?” the captain asked.

“My friend is suffering from acute pancreatitis. We have a doctor below, who thinks he might have begun bleeding internally. I’m on the line with the life-flight rescue chopper,” Nick said, holding up his cell phone anxiously.

“Wait a minute, just wait a minute — I’m the captain of this ship. I’m the one who decides whether we call for medical evacuations. Who’s the doctor below? Let me go see the patient,” the captain gruffly demanded.

“Captain, with all due respect, we don’t have a moment to waste. You can come look at him all you want, but right now, I just need the coordinates from you.”

“But who are you speaking to? Macau Coast Guard? This is highly irregular protocol. Let me talk to them,” the captain sputtered in confusion.

Nick put on his most condescendingly posh accent — honed from all his years at Balliol — and glowered at the captain. “Do you have any idea who my friend is? He’s Colin Khoo, heir to one of the biggest fortunes on the planet.”

“Don’t get snooty with me, young chap!” the captain bellowed. “I don’t care who your friend is, there are maritime emergency protocols I MUST FOLLOW, AND—”

“AND RIGHT NOW, my friend is below deck on your ship, quite possibly hemorrhaging to death, because you won’t let me call for an emergency evacuation!” Nick interrupted, raising his voice to match the captain’s. “Do you want to take the blame for this? Because you will, I can guarantee that. I’m Nicholas Young, and my family controls one of the world’s largest shipping conglomerates. Please just give me the fucking coordinates now, or I promise you I’ll personally see to it that you won’t even be able to captain a piece of Styrofoam after today!”

Twenty minutes later, as Bernard sat in the diamond-shaped Jacuzzi on the uppermost deck while a half-Portuguese girl tried to swallow both of his testicles under the bubbly water jets, a white Sikorsky helicopter appeared out of the sky and began to descend onto the yacht’s helipad. At first he thought he was hallucinating from all the booze. Then he saw Nick, Mehmet, and Alistair emerge onto the helipad, holding a stretcher on which lay Colin, tightly bundled up in one of the yacht’s silk Etro blankets. “What the fuck is happening?” he said, getting out of the water, pulling on his Vilebrequin trunks and rushing up the steps toward the helipad.

He ran into Lionel in the corridor. “I was just coming to tell you — Colin is feeling horribly sick. He’s been doubled over in pain for the past hour and throwing up uncontrollably. We think it’s alcohol poisoning, from all of his boozing over the past two days. We’re getting him off the boat and straight to the hospital.”

They ran to the helicopter, and Bernard looked in at Colin, who was groaning softly, his face locked in a grimace. Alistair sat beside him, mopping his forehead with a damp towel.

“But, but, why the hell didn’t anyone tell me sooner? I had no idea Colin was feeling this sick. Kan ni na! Now your family is going to blame me. And then it’s going to get into all the gossip columns, all the papers,” Bernard complained, suddenly becoming alarmed.

“Nothing’s going to leak. No gossip, no newspapers,” Lionel said solemnly. “Colin doesn’t want you to get any blame, which is why you have to listen to me now — we’re going to take him to the hospital, and we won’t tell anyone in the family what’s happening. I’ve had alcohol poisoning before — Colin just needs to get detoxed and rehydrated. He’ll be fine in a few days. You and the other guys need to keep pretending that nothing’s wrong and keep partying, okay? Don’t call the family, don’t say a word to anyone, and we’ll see you back in Singapore.”

“Okay, okay,” Bernard nodded rapidly, feeling relieved. Now he could get back to his blow job without feeling guilty.

As the helicopter lifted off from the yacht, Nick and Alistair began laughing uncontrollably at the figure of Bernard, his baggy swimming trunks whipping around his pale damp thighs, staring up at them in bewilderment.

“I don’t think it even occurred to him that this isn’t a medical helicopter but a chartered one.” Mehmet chuckled.

“Where are we going?” Colin asked excitedly, throwing off the purple-and-gold paisley blanket.

“Mehmet and I have chartered a Cessna Citation X. It’s all fueled up and waiting for us in Hong Kong. From there, it’s a surprise,” Nick said.

“The Citation X. Isn’t that the plane that flies at six hundred miles per hour?” Alistair asked.

“It’s even faster when we’re just five people with no luggage.” Nick grinned.

A mere six hours later, Nick, Colin, Alistair, Mehmet, and Lionel found themselves sitting on canvas chairs in the middle of the Australian desert, taking in the spectacular view of the glowing rock.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Ayers Rock. Or Uluru, or whatever they call it now,” Colin said.

“It’s so quiet,” Mehmet said softly. “This is a very spiritual place, isn’t it? I can really feel its energy, even from this distance.”

“It’s considered to be the most sacred site for the Aboriginal tribes,” Nick answered. “My father brought me here years ago. Back in those days, we were still allowed to climb the rock. They stopped letting you do that a few years ago.”

“Guys, I can’t thank you enough. This was the perfect escape from a very misguided bachelor party. I’m sorry I put all of you through Bernard’s bullshit. This is really all I ever hoped for — to be someplace amazing with my best friends.”

A man in a white polo shirt and khaki shorts approached with a large tray from the luxury eco-resort nearby. “Well, Colin, Alistair — I thought that the only way to get you coffee snobs to stop bitching and moaning was to get you a decent flat white, one hundred percent made in Australia,” Nick said, as the waiter put the tray down on the reddish earth.

Alistair brought the cup to his nose and inhaled the rich aroma deeply. “Nick, if you weren’t my cousin, I’d kiss you right now,” he joked.

Colin took a long sip of his coffee, its perfect velvety foam leaving a white frothy mustache on his upper lip. “This has got to be the best coffee I’ve ever tasted. Guys, I’ll never forget this.”

It was just past sunset, and the sky was shifting rapidly from shades of burnt orange into a deep violet blue. The men sat in awed silence, as the world’s largest monolith glowed and shimmered a thousand indescribable shades of crimson.

16 Dr. Gu

SINGAPORE

Wye Mun sat at his desk, studying the piece of paper his daughter had just handed him. The ornate desk was a replica of the one Napoleon used at the Tuileries, with a satinwood veneer and ormolu legs of lions’ heads and torsos that descended into elaborate claws. Wye Mun loved to sit in his burgundy velvet Empire chair and rub his socked feet against the bulbous golden claws, a habit his wife constantly scolded him for. Today, it was Peik Lin who substituted for her mother. “Dad, you’re going to rub off all the gold if you don’t stop doing that!”

Wye Mun ignored her and kept scratching his toes compulsively. He stared at the names Peik Lin had written down during her phone conversation a few days ago with Rachel: James Young, Rosemary T’sien, Oliver T’sien, Jacqueline Ling. Who were these people behind that mysterious old gate on Tyersall Road? Not recognizing any of these names bothered him more than he was willing to admit. Wye Mun couldn’t help but remember what his father always said: “Never forget we are Hainanese, son. We are the descendants of servants and seamen. We always have to work harder to prove our worth.”

Even from a young age, Wye Mun had been made aware that being the Chinese-educated son of a Hainanese immigrant put him at a disadvantage to the aristocratic Straits Chinese landowners or the Hokkiens that dominated the banking industry. His father had come to Singapore as a fourteen-year-old laborer and built a construction business out of sheer sweat and tenacity, and as their family business blossomed over the decades into a far-flung empire, Wye Mun thought that he had leveled the playing field. Singapore was a meritocracy, and whoever performed well was invited into the winner’s circle. But those people — those people behind the gates were a sudden reminder that this was not entirely the case.

With his children all grown up now, it was time for the next generation to keep conquering new territory. His eldest son, Peik Wing, had done well by marrying the daughter of a junior MP, a Cantonese girl who was brought up a Christian, no less. P.T. was still fooling around and enjoying his playboy ways, so the focus now was on Peik Lin. Out of his three children, Peik Lin took after him the most. She was his smartest, most ambitious, and — dare he admit it — most attractive child. She was the one he felt confident would surpass all of them and make a truly brilliant match, linking the Gohs with one of Singapore’s blue-blooded families. He could sense from the way his daughter spoke that she was onto something, and he was determined to help her dig deeper. “I think it’s time we paid a visit to Dr. Gu,” he said to his daughter.

Dr. Gu was a retired doctor in his late eighties, an eccentric who lived alone in a small, dilapidated house at the bottom of Dunearn Road. He was born in Xian to a family of scholars, but moved to Singapore in his youth for schooling. In the natural order of how Singapore society worked, Wye Mun and Dr. Gu might never have crossed paths had it not been for Dr. Gu’s maddening stubbornness some thirty-odd years ago.

Goh Developments had been building a new complex of semidetached houses along Dunearn Road, and Dr. Gu’s little plot of land was the sole obstruction to the project getting under way. His neighbors had been bought out under extremely favorable terms, but Dr. Gu refused to budge. After all of his lawyers had failed in their negotiations, Wye Mun drove to the house himself, armed with his checkbook and determined to talk some sense into the old fart. Instead, the brilliant old curmudgeon convinced him to alter his entire scheme, and the revised development turned out to be even more of a success because of his recommendations. Wye Mun now found himself visiting his new friend to offer him a job. Dr. Gu refused, but Wye Mun would keep coming back, enthralled by Dr. Gu’s encyclopedic knowledge of Singapore history, his acute analysis of the financial markets, and his wonderful Longjing tea.

Wye Mun and Peik Lin drove over to Dr. Gu’s house, parking Wye Mun’s shiny new Maserati Quattroporte just outside the rust-corroded metal gate.

“I can’t believe he still lives here,” Peik Lin said, as they walked down the cracked cement driveway. “Shouldn’t he be in a retirement home by now?”

“I think he manages okay. He has a maid, and also two daughters, you know,” Wye Mun said.

“He was smart not to sell out to you thirty years ago. This little piece of land is worth even more of a fortune now. It’s the last undeveloped plot on Dunearn Road, we can probably even build a very sleek, narrow apartment tower here,” Peik Lin commented.

“I tell you lah, he intends to die in this shack. Did I tell you what I heard from my stockbroker Mr. Oei many years ago? Dr. Gu is sitting on one million shares of HSBC.”

“What?” Peik Lin turned to her father in amazed shock. “One million shares? That’s more than fifty million in today’s dollars!”

“He started buying HSBC shares in the forties. I heard this tidbit twenty years ago, and the stock has split how many times since then? I tell you, old Dr. Gu is worth hundreds of millions by now.”

Peik Lin stared with renewed wonder as the man with a shock of unruly white hair came hobbling out onto his porch in a brown polyester short-sleeve shirt that looked like it had been tailored in pre-Castro Havana and a pair of dark green pajama bottoms. “Goh Wye Mun! Still wasting money on expensive cars, I see,” he bellowed, his voice surprisingly robust for a man of his age.

“Greetings, Dr. Gu! Do you remember my daughter, Peik Lin?” Wye Mun said, patting the old man on the back.

“Aiyah, is this your daughter? I thought this pretty girl must surely be your latest mistress. I know how all you property tycoons are.”

Peik Lin laughed. “Hello, Dr. Gu. My father wouldn’t be standing here if I was his mistress. My mum would castrate him!”

“Oh, but I thought she did that a long time ago already.” Everyone laughed, as Dr. Gu led them to a few wooden chairs arranged in his small front garden. Peik Lin noticed that the grass was meticulously mowed and edged. The fence that fronted Dunearn Road was covered in thick intertwining vines of morning glories, screening the bucolic little patch from the traffic along the busy thoroughfare. There isn’t a single place like this left along this entire stretch, Peik Lin thought.

An elderly Chinese servant came out of the house with a large round wooden tray. On it was a ceramic teapot, an old copper kettle, three clay teacups, and three smaller snifter cups. Dr. Gu held the well-burnished kettle high above the teapot and began pouring. “I love watching Dr. Gu do his tea ritual,” Wye Mun said to his daughter quietly. “See how he pours the water from high up. This is known as xuan hu gao chong—‘rinsing from an elevated pot.’ ” Then, Dr. Gu began to pour the tea into each of the three cups, but instead of offering it to his guests, he flung the light caramel-colored tea dramatically from each cup onto the grass behind him, much to Peik Lin’s surprise. He then refilled the teapot with a fresh batch of hot water.

“See, Peik Lin, that was the first rinse of the leaves, known as hang yun liu shui—‘a row of clouds, running water.’ This second pouring from a lower height is called zai zhu qing xuan—‘direct again the pure spring,’ ” Wye Mun continued.

“Wye Mun, she could probably care less about these old proverbs,” Dr. Gu said, before launching into a clinically precise explanation. “The first pouring was done from a height so that the force of water rinses the Longjing leaves. The hot water also helps to acclimate the temperature of the teapot and the cups. Then you do a second pouring, this time slowly and near the mouth of the pot, to gently coax the flavor out of the leaves. Now we let it steep for a while.”

The sound of screeching truck brakes just beyond the fence interrupted the serenity of Dr. Gu’s tea ritual. “Doesn’t all this noise bother you?” Peik Lin asked.

“Not at all. It reminds me that I am still alive, and that my hearing is not deteriorating as quickly as I had planned,” Dr. Gu replied. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to hear all the nonsense that comes out of politicians’ mouths!”

“Come on, lah, Dr. Gu, if it weren’t for our politicians, do you think you would be able to enjoy this nice garden of yours? Think of how they’ve transformed this place from a backward island to one of the most prosperous countries in the world,” Wye Mun argued, always on the defensive whenever anyone criticized the government.

“What rubbish! Prosperity is nothing but an illusion. Do you know what my children are doing with all this prosperity? My eldest daughter started a dolphin research institute. She is determined to rescue the white dolphins of the Yangtze River from extinction. Do you know how polluted that river is? This bloody mammal is already extinct! Scientists haven’t been able to locate a single one of these creatures for years now, but she is determined to find them. And my other daughter? She buys old castles in Scotland. Not even the Scottish want those crumbling old pits, but my daughter does. She spends millions restoring them, and then no one comes to visit her. Her wastrel son, my only grandson and namesake, is thirty-six years old. Do you want to know what he does?”

“No … I mean, yes,” Peik Lin said, trying not to giggle.

“He has a rock-and-roll band in London. Not even like those Beatles, who at least made money. This one has long oily hair, wears black eyeliner, and makes horrible noises with home appliances.”

“Well, at least they are being creative,” Peik Lin offered politely.

“Creatively wasting all my hard-earned money! I’m telling you, this so-called ‘prosperity’ is going to be the downfall of Asia. Each new generation becomes lazier than the next. They think they can make overnight fortunes just by flipping properties and getting hot tips in the stock market. Ha! Nothing lasts forever, and when this boom ends, these youngsters won’t know what hit them.”

“This is why I force my kids to work for a living — they are not going to get a single cent out of me until I am six feet underground,” Wye Mun said, winking at his daughter.

Dr. Gu peeked into the teapot, finally satisfied with the brew. He poured the tea into the snifter cups. “Now this is called long feng cheng xiang, which means ‘the dragon and phoenix foretells good fortune,’ ” he said, placing a teacup over the smaller snifter cup and inverting the cups deftly, releasing the tea into the drinking cup. He presented the first cup to Wye Mun, and the second cup to Peik Lin. She thanked him and took her first sip. The tea was bracingly bitter, and she tried not to make a face while swallowing it.

“So, Wye Mun, what really brings you here today? Surely you didn’t come to hear an old man rant.” Dr. Gu eyed Peik Lin. “Your father is very cunning, you know. He only comes calling when he needs to get something out of me.”

“Dr. Gu, your roots go deep in Singapore. Tell me, have you ever heard of James Young?” Wye Mun asked, cutting to the chase.

Dr. Gu looked up from pouring his own tea with a start. “James Young! I haven’t heard anyone utter that name in decades.”

“Do you know him, then? I met his grandson recently. He’s dating a good friend of mine,” Peik Lin explained. She took another sip of the tea, finding herself appreciating its silky bitterness more and more with each sip.

“Who are the Youngs?” Wye Mun asked eagerly.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in these people?” Dr. Gu queried.

Wye Mun considered the question carefully before he answered. “We are trying to help my daughter’s friend, since she is quite serious about the boy. I’m not familiar with the family.”

“Of course you wouldn’t know them, Wye Mun. Hardly anybody does these days. I have to admit that my own knowledge is very outdated.”

“Well, what can you tell us?” Wye Mun pressed on.

Dr. Gu took a long sip of his tea and leaned into a more comfortable position. “The Youngs are descended, I believe, from a long line of royal court physicians, going all the way back to the Tang dynasty. James Young — Sir James Young, actually — was the first Western-educated neurologist in Singapore, trained at Oxford.”

“He made his fortune as a doctor?” Wye Mun asked, rather surprised.

“Not at all! James was not the sort of person who cared about making a fortune. He was too busy saving lives in World War II, during the Japanese occupation,” Dr. Gu said, staring at the crisscrossing patterns of ivy on his fence as they suddenly seemed to transform into diamond-like patterns, reminding him of a chain-link fence from a long time ago.

“So you knew him during the war?” Wye Mun asked, jarring Dr. Gu out of his recollection.

“Yes, yes, that’s how I knew him,” Dr. Gu said slowly. He hesitated for a few moments, before continuing. “James Young was in charge of an underground medical corps that I was briefly involved with. After the war, he set up his clinic in the old section of Chinatown, specifically to serve the poor and elderly. I heard that for years he charged his patients practically nothing.”

“So how did he make his money?”

“There you go again, Wye Mun, always chasing after the money,” Dr. Gu chided.

“Well, where did that huge house come from?” Wye Mun asked.

“Ah, I see the true nature of your interest now. You must be referring to the house off Tyersall Road.”

“Yes. Have you been there?” Peik Lin asked.

“Goodness, no. I only heard about it. Like I said, I really did not know James very well; I would never have been invited.”

“I dropped my friend off at the house last week, and I could hardly believe it when I saw the place.”

“You must be joking! Is the house still there?” Dr. Gu said, looking quite shocked.

“Yes,” Peik Lin replied.

“I would have thought that the place was long gone. I must say I’m quite impressed that the family never sold out in all these years.”

“Yes, I’m quite shocked that there’s a property this large on the island,” Wye Mun cut in.

“Why should you be? The whole area behind the Botanic Gardens used to be full of great estates. The Sultan of Johore had a palace over there called Istana Woodneuk that burned to the ground many years ago. You say you were there last week?” Dr. Gu queried.

“Yes, but I did not go in.”

“A pity. It would be a rare treat to see one of those houses. So few are left, thanks to all the brilliant developers,” Dr. Gu said, glaring in mock anger at Wye Mun.

“So if James Young never made any money, how did—” Wye Mun began.

“You don’t listen, Wye Mun! I said that James Young wasn’t interested in making money, but I never said he didn’t have any. The Youngs had money, generations of money. Besides, James married Shang Su Yi. And she, I can tell you for a fact, comes from a family so unfathomably rich, it would make your eyes water, Wye Mun.”

“Who is she, then?” Wye Mun asked, his curiosity piqued to boiling point.

“All right, I will tell you and shut you up once and for all. She is the daughter of Shang Loong Ma. Never heard that name, either, right? He was an enormously wealthy banker in Peking, and before the Qing dynasty fell, he very smartly moved his money to Singapore, where he made an even greater fortune in shipping and commodities. The man had his tentacles in every major business in the region — he controlled all the shipping lines from the Dutch East Indies to Siam, and he was the mastermind behind uniting the early Hokkien banks in the thirties.”

“So Nick’s grandmother inherited all of that,” Peik Lin surmised.

“She and her brother, Alfred.”

“Alfred Shang. Hmm … another fellow I’ve never heard of,” Wye Mun huffed.

“Well, that’s not surprising. He moved to England many decades ago, but he is still — very quietly — one of the most influential figures in Asia. Wye Mun, you have to realize that before your generation of fat cats, there was an earlier generation of tycoons who made their fortunes and moved on to greener pastures. I thought most of the Youngs had long since dispersed from Singapore. The last time I heard any news, it was that one of the daughters had married into the Thai royal family.”

“Sounds like a pretty well-connected bunch,” Peik Lin said.

“Oh, yes indeed. The eldest daughter, for instance, is married to Harry Leong.”

“Harry Leong, the fellow who is director of the Institute of ASEAN Affairs?”

“That’s just a title, Wye Mun. Harry Leong is one of the kingmakers in our government.”

“No wonder I always see him in the prime minister’s box at National Day celebrations. So this family is close to the center of power.”

“Wye Mun, they are the center of power,” Dr. Gu corrected, turning to Peik Lin. “You say your friend is dating the grandson? She’s a fortunate girl, then, if she marries into this clan.”

“I was beginning to think the same thing myself,” Peik Lin said quietly.

Dr. Gu considered Peik Lin thoughtfully for a moment, and then he peered straight into her eyes, saying, “Remember, every treasure comes with a price.” She caught his gaze for a moment, before looking away.

“Dr. Gu, it’s always good to see you. Thank you for all your help,” Wye Mun said, getting up. He was starting to get a backache from the rickety wooden chair.

“And thank you for the wonderful tea,” Peik Lin said, helping Dr. Gu up from his seat.

“Will you ever accept my invitation and come over for dinner? I have a new cook who makes amazing Ipoh hor fun,[70] Dr. Gu.”

“You’re not the only one who has a good cook, Goh Wye Mun,” Dr. Gu said wryly, walking them to their car.

As Wye Mun and Peik Lin merged into the early-evening traffic on Dunearn Road, Wye Mun said, “Why don’t we invite Rachel and her boyfriend to dinner next week?”

Peik Lin nodded. “Let’s take them somewhere classy, like Min Jiang.”

Dr. Gu stood by his gate, watching as their car disappeared. The sun was setting just over the treetops, a few rays of light penetrating through the branches and glaring into his eyes.

He awoke with a start in the blinding sun to find his bleeding wrists bound tightly against the rusty chain-link fence. A group of officers walked by, and he noticed one uniformed man staring at him intently. Did he look familiar somehow? The man went up to the commanding officer and pointed directly at him. Curse to the gods. This was it. He looked at them, trying to muster up as much hate as he could in his expression. He wanted to die defiant, with pride. The man said calmly, in a British-accented English, “There’s been a mistake. That one over there in the middle is just a poor idiot servant. I recognize him from my friend’s farm, where he rears the pigs.” One of the Japanese soldiers translated to the commanding officer, who sneered in disgust before barking out a few curt orders. He was cut loose, and brought to kneel in front of the soldiers. Through his bleary eyes, he suddenly recognized the man who had pointed him out. It was Dr. Young, who had taught one of his surgical classes when he was a medical trainee. “See, this is not a man of importance. He’s not even worth your bullets. Let him go back to the farm where he can feed the dirty pigs,” Dr. Young said, before walking off with the other soldiers. More arguing between the soldiers ensued, and before he knew what was happening, he found himself on a transport truck bound for the work farms in Geylang. Months later, he would run into Dr. Young at a meeting in the secret room hidden behind a shop house on Telok Ayer Street. He began thanking him profusely for saving his life, but Dr. Young brushed him off quickly. “Nonsense — you would have done the same for me. Besides, I couldn’t let them kill yet another doctor. There are too few of us left,” he said plainly.

As Dr. Gu walked slowly back into his house, he felt a sudden pang of regret. He wished he hadn’t said so much about the Youngs. Wye Mun, as usual, had steered him toward the stories about money, and he had missed the chance to tell them the real story, about a man whose greatness had nothing to do with wealth or power.

17 Rachel

SINGAPORE

“I’ve been trying to reach you for days! Where have you been? Did you get all the messages I left at the hotel?” Kerry asked her daughter in rapid-fire Mandarin.

“Mom, I’m sorry — I was away all weekend and only just got back,” Rachel replied, raising her voice as she always did whenever she was talking to anyone long distance, even though she could hear her mother perfectly well.

“Where did you go?”

“I went to a remote island in the Indian Ocean for a bachelorette party.”

“Huh? You went to India?” her mother asked, still confused.

“No, not India. It’s an ISLAND in the INDIAN OCEAN, off the coast of Indonesia. It’s an hour plane ride from Singapore.”

“You took a plane trip just for two days? Hiyah, what a waste of money!”

“Well, I wasn’t paying, and besides, I flew on a private plane.”

“You flew on a private plane? Whose plane?”

“The bride’s.”

“Wah! So lucky, ah. Is the bride very rich?”

“Mom, these people …” Rachel began, before discreetly lowering her voice. “Both the bride and the groom come from very wealthy families.”

“Really? What about Nick’s family? Are they rich too?” Kerry asked.

How did she know this would be the next question out of her mom’s mouth?

Rachel glanced toward the bathroom. Nick was still in the shower, but she decided to step out of the room anyway. She walked into the garden toward the quiet, shadier side of the pool. “Yes, Mom, Nick comes from a wealthy family,” Rachel said, sitting down on one of the lounge chairs by the pool.

“You know, this is something I suspected all along. He’s so well brought up. I can tell just by looking at how he behaves during dinner. Such lovely manners, and he always offers me the best part of the meat, like the fish cheek or the juiciest piece of duck.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter, Mom, because it seems like everyone here is rich. I think I’m still in a bit of a culture shock, or maybe it’s cash shock. The way these people spend money — the houses and the planes and the dozens of maids — you need to see it with your own eyes. It’s as if the recession isn’t happening here. Everything is ultramodern and sparkling clean.”

“That’s all I hear from friends who visit Singapore. That it’s clean, too clean.” Kerry paused for a moment, her voice taking on a tone of concern. “Daughter, you need to watch out.”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“I know how those families can be, and you don’t want to give them the impression that you are after Nick’s money. From now on, you need to be extra-careful how you present yourself.”

Too late for that, Rachel thought. “I’m just being myself, Mom. I’m not going to change how I behave.” She wanted so much to tell her mother about the dreadful weekend, but she knew it would only worry her needlessly. She had done the same thing with Nick, sharing only the vaguest details. (Besides, they had spent most of the afternoon in a marathon lovemaking session, and she hadn’t wanted to spoil their postcoital bliss with any horror stories.)

“Is Nick being good to you?” her mother asked.

“Of course, Mom. Nick is a sweetheart, as always. He’s just rather distracted right now with his friend’s wedding coming up. It’s going to be the biggest wedding Asia has ever seen, Mom. All the newspapers have been covering it.”

“Really? Should I get one of the Chinese newspapers when I go into San Francisco tomorrow?”

“Sure, you can try. The bride is Araminta Lee, and the groom is Colin Khoo. Look out for their names.”

“What are Nick’s parents like?”

“I don’t know. I’m meeting them tonight.”

“You have been there for almost one week and you still haven’t met his parents?” Kerry remarked, warning lights flashing in her head.

“They were out of the country last week, Mom, and then we were away this weekend.”

“So you are going to meet his parents today?”

“Yes, dinner at their house.”

“But why aren’t you staying with them?” Kerry asked, her concern growing. There were so many little signs that her Americanized daughter did not understand.

“Mom, stop overanalyzing this. Nick’s friend owns the hotel, so we’re staying here during the wedding period for the convenience. But we’re moving to his grandmother’s house next week.”

Kerry didn’t buy her daughter’s explanation. In her mind, it still made no sense that the only son of a Chinese family would be staying in a hotel with his girlfriend instead of at his parents’ house. Unless he was ashamed of Rachel. Or even worse, maybe the parents had forbidden him to bring her home.

“What are you bringing to his parents? Did you get the Estée Lauder gifts like I told you to?”

“No, I figured it would be too personal to give Nick’s mom cosmetics without having even met her. There’s a terrific florist in the hotel, and—”

“No, daughter, never bring flowers! Especially not those white ones you love. White flowers are only for funerals. You should bring them a big basket of mandarin oranges, and hand it to them with both hands. And make sure that you bow your head very deeply when you greet his mother and father for the first time. These are all gestures of respect.”

“I know, Mom. You’re acting like I’m five years old. Why are you suddenly getting so worried?”

“This is the first time you have been serious with a Chinese man. There is so much you don’t know about the proper etiquette with these families.”

“I didn’t realize you could be so old-fashioned,” Rachel teased. “Besides, Nick’s family doesn’t seem really Chinese at all. They seem more British if anything.”

“It doesn’t matter. You are Chinese, and you still need to behave like a properly brought-up Chinese girl,” Kerry said.

“Don’t worry, Mom. It’s just dinner,” Rachel said lightly, even though her anxiety was beginning to build.

18 The Youngs

SINGAPORE

With its prime position atop Cairnhill Road, the Residences at One Cairnhill was a striking marriage of architectural preservation and real estate wizardry. Originally the home of prominent banker Kar Chin Kee and built during the late-Victorian period, the house had long been a landmark. But as land values skyrocketed over the decades, all the other big houses gave way to the developers and high-rise towers sprang up around the graceful mansion like overgrown bamboo. By the time the great man died in 2006, the house was deemed far too historic to tear down, yet far too valuable to remain a single residence. So Kar Chin Kee’s heirs decided to preserve the original structure, converting it into the base of a sleek thirty-story glass tower where Nick’s parents now lived (when they were in Singapore, that is).

As the taxi climbed the hill toward the imposing Corinthian-columned portico, Nick explained its history to Rachel. “Uncle Chin Kee was a friend of my grandmother’s, so we used to visit every Chinese New Year, and I would be made to recite some elaborate poem in Mandarin. Then the old man, who reeked of cigars, would give me a hong bao[71] stuffed with five hundred dollars.”

“That’s insane!” Rachel exclaimed. “The biggest hong bao I ever got in my life was fifty dollars, and that was from this asshole dating my mom who was really trying to win me over. What did you do with all that money?”

“Are you kidding? My parents kept it, of course. They kept all my New Year money — I never saw a cent of it.”

Rachel looked at him in horror. “That’s just wrong! Hong baos are as sacred as Christmas presents.”

“Don’t get me started on what they did with my presents on Christmas morning!” Nick laughed. As they entered the elevator, Rachel inhaled deeply as she prepared to meet Nick’s parents — these hong bao snatchers — for the first time.

“Hey, don’t forget to breeeeathe,” Nick said, massaging her shoulders gently. On the thirtieth floor, the elevator opened directly into the penthouse’s foyer and they were greeted by an enormous pane of glass that framed a panoramic view of the Orchard Road shopping district. “Wow!” Rachel whispered, marveling at the deep purple dusk settling over the skyline.

A woman appeared from around the corner and said, “Aiyah, Nicky, why is your hair so long? You look like a ruffian! You better get it cut short before Colin’s wedding.”

“Hi, Mum,” Nick said simply. Rachel was still reeling from the abruptness of this encounter when Nick continued, “Mum, I’d like you to meet Rachel Chu, my girlfriend.”

“Oh, hello,” Eleanor said, as if she had no idea who the girl might be. So this is the girl. She looks better than in that school yearbook picture obtained by the detective.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Young,” Rachel found herself saying, although her mind was still trying to accept the notion that this woman could actually be Nick’s mother. Rachel had been expecting an imperious grande dame with a powdered white face and a tight perm dressed in some Hillary Clinton-esque pantsuit, but before her stood a striking woman in a trendy scoop-neck top, black leggings, and ballet flats, looking far too young to have a thirty-two-year-old son. Rachel bowed her head and presented her gift of oranges.

“How lovely! Aiyah, you really shouldn’t have!” Eleanor replied graciously. Why in the world did she bring mandarin oranges — does she think it’s Chinese New Year? And why is she bowing like some stupid Japanese geisha? “Have you been enjoying Singapore so far?”

“Yes, very much,” Rachel replied. “Nick’s taken me to have the most fantastic hawker food.”

“Where did you take her?” Eleanor looked at her son dubiously. “You’re practically a tourist yourself — you don’t know all the secret holes-in-the-wall like I do.”

“We’ve been to Lau Pa Sat, Old Airport Road, Holland Village—” Nick began.

“Alamak! What is there to eat in Holland Village?” Eleanor exclaimed.

“Plenty! We had the best rojak for lunch,” Nick said defensively.

“Nonsense! Everyone knows that the only place to go for rojak is that stall on the top floor of Lucky Plaza.”

Rachel laughed, her nerves quickly dissipating. Nick’s mother was so funny — why had she been so nervous?

“Well, this is it,” Eleanor said to her son, gesturing at the space.

“I don’t know what you were talking about, Mum, the place looks perfect.”

“Alamak, you don’t know how much of a headache this flat has caused me! We had to re-stain the floors six times to get the right finish.” Nick and Rachel stared down at the beautiful gleaming white oak floors. “And then some of the custom furniture in the guest bedrooms had to be redone, and the automatic blackout curtains in my bedroom aren’t dark enough. I’ve had to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms on the other side of the flat for more than a month now because the curtains are on back order from France.”

The entry foyer opened into a great room with thirty-foot ceilings and a grid-like pattern of skylights that drenched the room with light. The space was made even more dramatic by a sunken oval pit in the center, with sleek Hermès-orange sofas perfectly contoured around both sides of the oval. From the ceiling, a spiral chandelier of sculptured gold and glass teardrops pirouetted down until it almost touched the oval driftwood coffee table. Rachel could hardly believe that Nick’s parents lived in such a space — it looked more like the lobby of some impossibly hip hotel. A phone rang in another room, and a maid peered out of a doorway to announce, “It’s Mrs. Foo and Mrs. Leong.”

“Oh, Consuelo, please send them up,” Eleanor said. At last, the reinforcements are here.

Nick looked at his mother in surprise. “You invited other people? I thought we were going to have a quiet family dinner.”

Eleanor smiled. We would have, if it were just our family. “It’s only the regular crowd, lah. The cook made laksa, and it’s always better to have more people for that. Besides, everyone wants to see you, and they can’t wait to meet Rachel!”

Nick smiled at Rachel in an attempt to cover up his dismay. He had wanted his parents to give their undivided attention to Rachel, but his mother was always springing last-minute surprises like this.

“Go wake your father, Nick — he’s napping in his media room down that hall,” Eleanor instructed.

Nick and Rachel walked toward the media room. The sounds of gunfire and explosions could be heard from within. As they approached the open door, Rachel could see Nick’s father asleep on a Danish ergonomic recliner while Battlestar Galactica played on the flat-screen television built into the sandblasted oak wall. “Let’s not disturb him,” Rachel whispered, but Nick entered anyway.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said softly.

Nick’s father opened his eyes and looked up at Nick in surprise. “Oh, hello. Is it dinnertime?”

“Yes, Dad.”

Nick’s father got up from the chair and looked around, spotting Rachel standing shyly in the doorway.

“You must be Rachel Chu,” he said, smoothing down the back of his hair.

“Yes,” Rachel replied, coming into the room. Nick’s father extended his hand. “Philip Young,” he said with a smile, shaking her hand firmly. Rachel liked him instantly, and she could at last see where her boyfriend got his looks. Nick’s large eyes and elegantly shaped mouth were exactly like his mother’s, but the thin nose, prominent jawline, and thick jet-black hair were unmistakably his father’s.

“When did you get in?” Nick asked his father.

“I caught the morning flight from Sydney. I wasn’t planning to come until later in the week, but your mum insisted that I fly up today.”

“Do you work in Sydney, Mr. Young?” Rachel asked.

“Work? No, I moved to Sydney not to work. It’s far too beautiful a place for work. You get distracted by the weather and the sea, the long walks and the good fishing.”

“Oh, I see,” Rachel said. She noticed that his accent was a unique fusion of British, Chinese, and Australian.

Just then, there was a knock on the door, and Astrid peeked in. “I’m under strict orders to corral all of you,” she announced.

“Astrid! I didn’t know you were coming tonight,” Nick said.

“Well, your mum wanted it to be a surprise. Surprise!” Astrid said, fluttering her fingers and giving him an ironic smile.

Everyone made their way back to the living room, where Nick and Rachel were surrounded by a flurry of dinner guests. Lorena Lim and Carol Tai shook Rachel’s hand, while Daisy Foo embraced Nick. (It did not escape Rachel that Daisy was the first person who had hugged him all night.)

“Aiyah, Nicky, why have you been hiding your beautiful girlfriend for so long?” Daisy said, greeting Rachel with an effusive hug as well. Before Rachel could respond, she felt someone grabbing her arm. She looked down at the bing-cherry-size ruby ring and long red manicured claws before looking up in shock at a woman with teal-green eye shadow and rouge painted heavier than a drag queen’s.

“Rachel, I’m Nadine,” the woman said. “I’ve heard so much about you from my daughter.”

“Really? Who’s your daughter?” Rachel asked politely. Just then, she heard a high-pitched squeal right behind her. “Nicky! I’ve missed you!” a distinctive voice exclaimed. A chill came over Rachel. It was Francesca Shaw, greeting Nick with a tight bear hug and a kiss on the cheek. Before she could react, Francesca put on her biggest smile and swooped down on Rachel with another double-cheek kiss. “Rachel, lovely to see you so soon again!”

“Oh, were you at Araminta’s bachelorette party?” Nick asked.

“Of course I was. We all had such a gloooorious time, didn’t we, Rachel? Such a beautiful island, and wasn’t the food marvelous? I heard you particularly enjoyed the fish course.”

“Yes, it was quite an experience,” Rachel replied slowly, stunned by Francesca’s remarks. Was she admitting responsibility for the mutilated fish? She noticed that Francesca’s lipstick had left a bright red imprint on Nick’s cheek.

“I’m not sure if you remember my cousin Astrid,” Nick said to Francesca.

“Of course!” Francesca rushed to greet her with a hug. Astrid stiffened up, taken aback by how familiar Francesca was being. Francesca scrutinized Astrid from head to toe. She was wearing a white drape-front silk georgette dress with navy blue trim. The cut is so perfect, it must be couture. But who’s the designer?

“What a fantastic dress!” Francesca said.

“Thank you. You look lovely in red,” Astrid responded.

“Valentino, of course,” Francesca replied, pausing to wait for Astrid to reveal the designer of her outfit. But Astrid did not reciprocate. Without missing a beat, Francesca turned to Nick’s mother and gushed, “What a fabulous place, Auntie Elle! I want to move in right now. It’s all so Morris Lapidus, so Miami Modern! It makes me want to throw on a Pucci caftan and order a whiskey sour.”

“Wah, Francesca, you hit it right on the head,” Eleanor said in delight. “Everybody, we’re going to do something different tonight — we’re all going to makan in my little kitchen,” she announced as she led her guests into a kitchen that to Rachel seemed anything but little. The cavernous space looked like a gourmand’s idea of what heaven might be — a gleaming temple of white Calacatta marble, stainless-steel surfaces, and state-of-the-art appliances. A chef in white uniform stood by the commercial-grade Viking stove, busy monitoring bubbling copper pots, while three kitchen maids scurried around making final preparations. At the far end was an alcove with an art deco diner-style banquette.

As they took their seats, Carol glanced over at the chef deftly ladling crimson broth into large white clay soup bowls. “Wah, Eleanor — I feel like I’m dining at the chef’s table of some chichi restaurant,” she said.

“Isn’t it fun?” Eleanor said merrily. She looked at Rachel and said, “I was never allowed to set foot in the kitchen at my mother-in-law’s house. Now I get to eat in my own kitchen, and actually watch the food being cooked!” Rachel smiled in amusement — here was a woman who obviously had never cooked a meal in her life but seemed to relish the novelty of being inside a kitchen.

“Well, I love to cook. I can only dream of one day having a kitchen as beautiful as yours, Mrs. Young,” Rachel said.

Eleanor smiled graciously. I’m sure you can — with my son’s money.

“Rachel is an amazing cook. Without her, I’d probably be eating ramen noodles every night,” Nick added.

“That would be just like you,” Daisy commented. She looked at Rachel and said, “I used to call Nicky my ‘Noodle Boy’—he was always so crazy over noodles as a kid. We would take him to the top restaurants in Singapore, and all he ever wanted was a plate of fried noodles with extra gravy.”

As she said this, three maids entered the dining alcove and placed large steaming bowls of laksa noodle soup in front of each guest. Rachel marveled at the beautiful composition of butterfly shrimp, fried fish cake, pillowy tofu puffs, and hard-boiled egg halves beautifully arranged over the thick rice vermicelli and fiery soup. For a few minutes, the room lapsed into silence as everyone slurped down the distinctive noodles and savored the rich broth.

“I can taste the coconut milk in the soup, but what gives it the slightly tart, spicy kick? Is it Kaffir?” Rachel asked.

Show-off, Eleanor thought.

“Good guess. It’s tamarind,” Daisy answered. This girl wasn’t bullshitting — she does know how to cook.

“Rachel, it’s so impressive that you know your way around a spice rack,” Francesca chirped, her fake-friendly tone barely masking her disdain.

“Apparently not as well as you know how to gut a fish,” Rachel commented.

“You girls went fishing?” Philip looked up from his laksa in surprise.

“Oh, yes, we did. One of the girls even caught a bigger, endangered fish. We tried to convince her to put it back in the water, but she wouldn’t, and it ended up biting her very hard. There was blood squirting all over the place,” Francesca said, biting the head off her jumbo prawn and spitting it onto the side of the bowl.

“Serves her right, lah! Our oceans are getting so overfished, and we must respect all of God’s creatures,” Carol declared.

“Yes, I agree. You know, when you’re just a tourist, you need to learn to respect the environment you’re in,” Francesca said, glaring at Rachel for a split second before shifting her gaze onto Astrid. “Now Astrid, when can I get you to join one of my committees?”

“What sort of committees?” Astrid asked more out of politeness than any real curiosity.

“Take your pick — I’m on the boards of the Singapore History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Heritage Society, the Pulau Club, the Cultural Arts Advisory Board at SBC, the steering committee of Singapore Fashion Week, the Singapore Zoo, the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum’s Selection committee, the Wine Connoisseurs Society, Save the Shahtoosh, the junior committee of Christian Helpers, and, of course, the Shaw Foundation.”

“Well, my three-year-old boy keeps me pretty busy—” Astrid began.

“Once he’s in kindergarten and you have nothing to do, you really should consider joining one of my charities. I could fast-track you onto a committee. I think you’d be a natural.”

“So Rachel, I hear you teach at NYU with Nick?” Lorena cut in. This Francesca is getting on my nerves. We’re here to interrogate RACHEL, not Astrid.

“Yes, I do,” Rachel replied.

“Which department?” Nadine asked, fully knowing the answer, since Eleanor had read the entire dossier on Rachel Chu to all the ladies while they were getting hour-long reflexology massages in Shenzhen.

“I’m in the Department of Economics, and I teach at the under-grad level.”

“And how much do you get paid a year?” Nadine inquired.

Rachel was dumbstruck.

“Aiyah, Mummy, to Americans, it’s very rude to ask how much somebody makes,” Francesca said at last, clearly delighting in seeing Rachel squirm.

“Oh, is it? I was just curious to know how much a college teacher in America could possibly earn,” Nadine said in her most innocent tone.

“Would you ever consider working in Asia?” Daisy asked.

Rachel paused. It seemed like a pretty loaded question, and she figured that the group would dissect whatever answer she gave. “Of course, if the right opportunity came along,” she finally replied.

The ladies exchanged furtive looks, while Philip slurped on his soup.

After dinner, as the group adjourned to the living room for coffee and dessert, Astrid abruptly announced that she had to leave.

“Are you okay?” Nick asked. “You seem a little out of sorts tonight.”

“I’m fine … I just got a text from Evangeline that Cassian is staging a coup and refusing to sleep, so I better dash off.” In reality, Evangeline had informed her that Michael had stopped by and was reading Cassian a bedtime story. DO NOT LET HIM LEAVE, Astrid frantically texted back.

Nick and Rachel decided to seize this opportunity to make an exit as well, pleading fatigue from a long day of travel.

As soon as the elevator had closed on them, Eleanor announced, “Did you see the way that girl was staring at everything around the flat?”

“Darling, you’ve spent a year decorating. Of course people are going to stare — isn’t that the whole point?” Philip interjected as he helped himself to a large slice of chocolate banana cake.

“Philip, that little economist brain of hers was busy calculating the value of everything. You could see her adding everything up with her big bulging eyes. And all that talk about cooking for Nick. What rot! As if that’s going to impress me, knowing that she puts her rough peasant hands all over his food!”

“Well, you’re in fine form tonight, darling,” Philip said. “Frankly, I found her to be very pleasant, and her features quite nice.” He was careful to emphasize the word quite, knowing that his wife would fly into even more of a jealous fit at the thought of another woman in her vicinity being unequivocally proclaimed a beauty.

“I have to agree with Philip. She was really quite pretty. Whether you care to admit it, Eleanor, your son at least has good taste,” Daisy said, as she scrutinized the maid pouring her caffe latte.

“Really? You think she’s as pretty as Astrid?” Eleanor asked.

“Astrid is a sultry, tempestuous beauty. This one is totally different. She has a simpler, more placid beauty,” Daisy observed.

“But don’t you think she’s a little flat-chested?” Eleanor said.

Philip sighed. There was just no winning with his wife. “Well, good night everyone. It’s time for my CSI: Miami,” he said, getting up from the sofa and making a beeline for his media room. Francesca waited for him to round the corner before she spoke.

“Well, I for one think you are completely right about this girl, Auntie Elle. I spent the whole weekend with Rachel, and I saw her true colors. First of all, she picked out the most expensive dresses from the resort boutique when she found out that Araminta was paying. She was wearing one of them tonight.”

“That plain lilac dress? Alamak, she has no taste!” Nadine exclaimed.

Francesca continued her assault. “Then, she spent all of yesterday taking different classes at the resort — yoga, Pilates, Nia, you name it. It was as if she was trying to avoid us and get her money’s worth at the spa. And you should have heard her at dinner — she boldly announced that she went after Nicky because he is such a catch. Actually, I think her exact words were ‘he’s a TOTAL catch.’ ”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, can you imagine!” Nadine said, shuddering openly.

“LeaLea, what are you going to do now that you’ve met her?” Carol asked.

“I think this girl needs to be sent packing. All you have to do is say the word, Auntie Elle, and as I told you, it would be my pleasure to help,” Francesca said, giving Eleanor a meaningful look.

Eleanor took a few moments to answer, stirring her decaf cappuccino purposefully. She had been in a state of panic for weeks, but now that she had finally met this Rachel Chu, a preternatural calm had settled over her. She could see what needed to be done, and she knew she had to proceed covertly. She had witnessed firsthand the scars that blatant parental interference could inflict; why, even those assembled here were a reminder of that — Daisy’s relationship with her sons was tenuous at best, while Lorena’s eldest daughter no longer spoke to her after immigrating to Auckland with her Kiwi husband.

“Thank you, Francesca. You are always so helpful,” Eleanor finally said. “For now, I don’t think we need to do anything. We should all just sit back and watch, because things are about to get interesting.”

“You’re right, Elle — there’s no need to rush into anything. Besides, after Shenzhen, all the cards are in your hand,” Lorena said gleefully as she scraped away the frosting from her cake.

“What happened in Shenzhen?” Francesca asked eagerly.

Eleanor ignored Francesca’s question and smiled. “I might not even have to play the Shenzhen card. Let’s not forget, all the Youngs and the Shangs are about to descend on Singapore for the Khoo wedding.”

“Oh-ho! Who wants to bet she doesn’t even last through the weekend?” Nadine cackled.