by Kevin Kwan
Nick paused for a moment, before saying decisively, “I’m not coming back.”
“Nicky, don’t talk nonsense! You must come home! Everyone is coming back—your father is already on his way from Sydney, Uncle Alfred arrives in a few days, Auntie Alix and Uncle Malcolm are flying in from Hong Kong, and even Auntie Cat is coming down from Bangkok. And get this—supposedly all your Thai cousins are coming too! Can you believe that? Those high-and-mighty royal cousins of yours never deign to come down to Singapore, but I’m telling you”—Eleanor paused, glancing at her driver before cupping her hands over the cell phone and whispering rather indiscreetly—“they all sense that this is the end. And they want to show their faces at Ah Ma’s bedside just to make sure they’re in the will!”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Only you would say something like that. I’m sure that’s the last thing on anyone’s mind.”
Eleanor laughed derisively. “Oh my goodness, don’t be so naïve. I guarantee you that’s the only thing going through everyone’s mind! The vultures are all circling like mad, so get yourself on the next flight! This is your last chance to make up with your grandmother”—she lowered her voice again—“and if you play your cards right, you still might get Tyersall Park!”
“I think that ship has sailed. Trust me, I don’t think I’ll be welcomed.”
Eleanor sighed in frustration. “You’re wrong about that, Nicky. I know Ah Ma won’t close her eyes until she sees you one last time.”
—
Nick ended the call and quickly updated Rachel on his grandmother’s condition and the Isabel Wu hot-soup incident. Then he perched on the edge of the plaza’s reflecting pool, suddenly feeling drained. Rachel sat beside him and put her arm around his shoulder, not saying anything. She knew how complicated things were between him and his grandmother. They had once been extremely close—Nick being the adored only grandson who bore the Young surname and the only grandchild who had lived at Tyersall Park—but it had now been more than four years since they had last seen or spoken to each other. And it was all because of her.
Su Yi had ambushed them during what was supposed to be a romantic getaway in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, commanding Nick to end his relationship with Rachel. But Nick had not only refused; he had uncharacteristically insulted his grandmother in front of everyone—something that had probably never happened to this revered woman in her entire life. Over the past few years, the gulf had only widened as Nick defiantly married Rachel in California, leaving his grandmother and the majority of his large family off the wedding invitation list.
This girl does not come from a proper family! Rachel still vividly remembered Su Yi’s condemnation, and for a moment, a slight chill went down her spine. But here in New York, Shang Su Yi’s shadow didn’t loom as large, and for the past two years, she and Nick had been blissfully enjoying married life far away from any family interference. Rachel had occasionally tried to see if anything could be done to mend the fences between Nick and his grandmother, but he had stubbornly refused to talk about it. She knew Nick wouldn’t react so angrily if he didn’t care about his grandmother so much.
Rachel looked Nick squarely in the face. “You know, as much as it pains me to admit it, I think your mother’s right—you should go home.”
“New York is my home,” Nick replied flatly.
“You know what I mean. Your grandmother’s situation sounds really precarious.”
Nick stared up at the windows of Rockefeller Center, still lit at this late hour, avoiding Rachel’s eyes. “Look, I’m starving. Where should we go for a late supper? Buvette? Blue Ribbon Bakery?”
Rachel realized it was pointless to push him any further. “Let’s do Buvette. I think their coq au vin is just what we need right now.”
Nick paused for a moment. “Maybe we ought to avoid any place with hot soup tonight!”
* * *
*1 The Royal Suite at Mount Elizabeth Hospital was originally built by the royal family of Brunei for their private use, but is now open to other VVIP patients.
*2 Literally “night market” in Malay, the pasar malam is a traveling outdoor street market where many bargains are sold. In this instance, Eleanor is implying that Felicity Young’s custom-tailored outfit looks like a cheap schmatta from an outdoor street market.
CHAPTER FOUR
MOUNT ELIZABETH HOSPITAL, SINGAPORE
After five hours at the hospital’s intensive care unit, alternately sitting beside her grandmother, managing the visiting dignitaries, managing her mother’s nerves, and managing the caterers from Min Jiang that had set up a buffet*1 in the VIP visitors’ lounge, Astrid needed a break and some fresh air. She took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out to the little grove of palm trees adjacent to the side entrance off Jalan Elok and began texting with Charlie on WhatsApp.
ASTRID LEONG TEO: Sorry I couldn’t talk earlier. No phones allowed in the ICU.
CHARLES WU: No worries. How’s your Ah Ma?
ALT: Resting comfortably at the moment, but the prognosis isn’t good.
CW: So sorry to hear that.
ALT: Are Isabel and the kids all right?
CW: Yes. Their plane landed a couple of hours ago, and thankfully Isabel’s mother managed to keep her calm during the flight. She’s been admitted to Hong Kong Sanatorium and her doctors are attending to her. The kids are okay. Bit shaken up. Chloe’s glued to her phone as usual, and I’m lying here next to Delphine while she sleeps.
ALT: I have to tell you—they were such angels through it all. I could tell they were trying to stay composed during the whole ordeal. Delphine dashed to the side of Mrs. Lee Yong Chien while Chloe tried to help calm Isabel down as she was being restrained.
CW: I am SO SORRY for this.
ALT: Come on, it wasn’t your fault.
CW: It IS my fault. Should have seen this coming. She was supposed to sign off on the divorce settlement this week, and my lawyers were pressuring her. That’s why she snapped. And my security team totally screwed up.
ALT: Wasn’t it the school that screwed up? Letting Isabel walk in and take them out of class in the middle of the school day?
CW: She apparently put on an Oscar-worthy performance. With the way she looked, they really thought there was a family emergency. This is what happens when you donate too much money to a school—they don’t ever question you.
ALT: I don’t think anyone could have anticipated this.
CW: Well, my security team should have! This was an epic fuckup. They never even saw Isabel and the kids exiting—they only had the front entrance under surveillance. Since Izzie went to Diocesan too, she knew all the secret ways to sneak out.
ALT: OMG I didn’t think of that!
CW: She took them out through the laundry-room door and they hopped on the MTR straight to the airport. BTW, we discovered how she knew where to find you. Rosalind Fung tagged you in a Facebook pic from last month’s Christian Fellowship event.
ALT: Really? I’m never on FB. Look at it about once a year.
CW: Isabel’s mum is FB friends with Rosalind. She messaged her three days ago asking if you would be at this event, and Rosalind said yes and even told her you’d be seated at the table of honor!
ALT: So THAT’S how she knew how to find me in that crowd! I was so shocked when she started screaming at me.
CW: I guess the cat’s out of the bag. Everyone must be talking about us now.
ALT: I have no idea. Probably.
CW: What did your mother say? Did she go ballistic when she found out about us?
ALT: Mum’s said nothing so far. I’m not sure she even connected all the dots. When it happened she was too busy dabbing tissues on Mrs. Lee and the Sultana. And then in the midst of all that, Araminta Lee rushed up to us and said, “Haven’t you heard? Your grandmother had a heart attack!”
; CW: You’ve really had the day from hell.
ALT: Not compared to your kids. I’m sorry they had to go through this. Seeing their mother in that state…
CW: They’ve seen it before. It’s just never been this bad.
ALT: I wanted to hug them. I wanted to get them out of there and fly them back to you myself but it was total chaos with everything happening all at once.
CW: YOU need a hug.
ALT: Mmm…would be so nice.
CW: I don’t know how you put up with me and all the shit that keeps happening.
ALT: I could say the same myself.
CW: Your shit ain’t half as crazy as mine.
ALT: Just you wait. With Ah Ma in the condition she’s in, I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore. There’s going to be a family invasion this week, and it’s not going to be pretty.
CW: Is it going to be like “Modern Family”?
ALT: More like “Game of Thrones.” The Red Wedding scene.
CW: Oh boy. Speaking of weddings, does anyone know about our plans?
ALT: Not yet. But I think this might be the perfect opportunity to start prepping my family…letting some of my closer relatives know that I’m divorcing Michael, and there’s a new man in my life…
CW: Is there a new man in your life?
ALT: Yes, his name is Jon Snow.
CW: Hate to break it to you, but Jon Snow is dead.*2
ALT: No he’s not. You’ll see. :-)
CW: Seriously, I’m here if you need me. Do you want me to come down?
ALT: No, it’s fine. Chloe and Delphine need you.
CW: I need you. I can send the plane anytime.
ALT: Let’s see how this week goes with my family and then we can really begin making some plans…
CW: I’ll be counting the minutes…
ALT: Me too…xoxoxo
* * *
*1 Yes, you can be sure Min Jiang’s legendary wood-fired Beijing duck—with a first serving of crispy duck skin dipped in fine granulated sugar, wrapped in homemade pancakes with sweet sauce, shredded leeks, and cucumbers, followed by a second serving of the sliced duck in fried noodles—was part of the impromptu ICU buffet organized by Felicity Leong.
*2 In 2015, the world was most preoccupied about figuring out if the economy would continue to recover, how to keep the Ebola outbreak in Africa from becoming a global pandemic, where ISIS terrorists would strike next after the horrendous Paris attacks, how to help Nepal after its devastating earthquakes, who would be the front-runners in the next U.S. presidential campaign, and whether Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and one of the heroes in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones television series, really died in the season finale.
CHAPTER FIVE
RUE BOISSY D’ANGLAS, PARIS
She stood on a raised mirrored platform in the middle of Giambattista Valli’s elegantly appointed atelier, staring up at the glittering chandelier, trying to hold still as two seamstresses meticulously pinned up the hem of the delicate tulle skirt that she was modeling. Looking out the window, she could see a little boy holding a red balloon walking down the cobblestone street, and she wondered where he was heading.
The man with the string of baroque pearls around his neck smiled at her. “Bambolina, could you please turn for me?”
She twirled around once, and the women surrounding her all oohed and aahed.
“J’adore!” Georgina swooned.
“Oh Giamba, you were right! Just two inches shorter and look how the skirt comes alive. It’s like a flower blooming right before our eyes!” Wandi cooed.
“Like a pink peony!” Tatiana gushed.
“I think for this dress, I was inspired by the ranunculus,” the designer stated.
“I don’t know that flower. But Giamba, you’re a genius! An absolute genius!” Tatiana praised.
Georgina walked around the platform, scrutinizing the dress from every angle. “When Kitty first told me that this couture dress would cost €175,000, I have to confess I was a little surprised, but now I think it’s worth every cent!”
“Yes, I think so too,” Kitty murmured softly, assessing the tea-length gown from its reflection in the rococo mirror leaning against the wall. “Gisele, do you like it?”
“Yes, Mommy,” the five-year-old said. She was getting tired of standing there in the dress with the hot spotlight on her, and she wondered when she could get her reward. Mommy had promised her a big ice-cream sundae if she would stand very still during her fitting.
“Okay then,” Kitty said, looking at Giambattista Valli’s assistant. “We will need three of these.”
“Three?” The tall, gangly assistant looked at Kitty in surprise.
“Of course. I buy everything in threes for myself and Gisele—we need one for each of our closets in Singapore, Shanghai, and Beverly Hills. But this one has to be ready for her birthday party in Singapore on March first—”
“Of course, Signora Bing,” Giambattista cut in. “Now, ladies, I hope you don’t mind if I leave Luka to show you the new collection. I have to rush off to an appointment with the fashion director of Saks.”
The women exchanged air kisses with the departing designer, Gisele was sent off with her nanny around the corner to Angelina for ice cream, and as more Veuve Clicquot and café crèmes were brought into the showroom, Kitty stretched out on the elegant chaise lounge with a contented sigh. It was only their second day here, and already she was having the time of her life. She had come on this Parisian shopping spree with her Singaporean BFFs—Wandi Meggaharto Widjawa, Tatiana Savarin, and Georgina Ting—and somehow, things were so different on this trip.
From the moment she stepped off Trenta, the Boeing 747-81 VIP she had recently refurbished to look exactly like the Shanghai bordello in a Wong Kar-wai movie,*1 she was experiencing heretofore unprecedented levels of sucking up. When their motorcade of Rolls-Royces arrived at the Peninsula Paris, all of the hotel management stood in a perfect line to greet her at the entrance, and the general manager escorted her up to the impressive Peninsula Suite. When they went to dinner at Ledoyen, the waiters were bowing and scraping so frantically that she thought they were going to break into somersaults. And then during her Chanel couture fittings at rue Cambon yesterday, none other than Karl Lagerfeld’s personal assistant came downstairs with a handwritten note from the great man himself!
Kitty knew that all this royal treatment was because she had arrived in Paris this time as MRS. JACK BING. She wasn’t just the wife of some random billionaire anymore, she was the new wife of China’s second-richest man,*2 one of the ten richest men in the world. To think that Pong Li Li, the daughter of sanitation workers in Qinghai, had achieved such great heights at the relatively young age of thirty-four (although she told everyone she was thirty). Not that any of this had been easy—she had worked nonstop her entire life to get to this place.
Her mother had come from an educated middle-class family, but she had been banished with her family to the countryside during Mao’s Great Leap Forward campaign. But she had instilled in Kitty that getting an education was the only way out. All through her youth, Kitty studied extra hard to always be the top in her class, top in her school, top in her state exams, only to see her one chance at a higher education get snatched away when some boy with all the right connections was awarded the only slot to university in their entire district—the slot that was rightfully meant to be hers.
But Kitty didn’t give up, she kept on fighting, moving first to Shenzhen to work at a KTV bar where she had to do unspeakable things, and then to Hong Kong, landing a bit part in a local soap opera, transforming it into a recurring role after becoming the director’s mistress, dating a series of rather inconsequential men until she met Alistair Cheng, that cute, clueless boy who was much too sweet for his own good, going with him to the
Khoo wedding and meeting Bernard Tai, running off to Vegas with Bernard to get married, meeting Jack Bing at Bernard’s father’s funeral, divorcing Bernard, and finally, at long last, marrying Jack, a man who was truly worthy of all her efforts.
And now that she had provided him with his first son (Harvard Bing, born in 2013), she could do anything she damn well pleased. She could fly to Paris on her own private jumbo jet with one French translator, two children, three fabulous girlfriends (all as toned and polished and expensively dressed as she was, and all wives of rich expats in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore), four nannies, five personal maids, and six bodyguards and rent out the entire top floor of the Peninsula Hotel (which she did). She could order the entire Chanel Automne-Hiver couture collection and have every piece made in triplicate (which she did). She could take a personal guided tour of Versailles with the chief curator followed by a special al fresco lunch prepared by Yannick Alléno at Marie Antoinette’s hamlet (which was happening tomorrow, thanks to Oliver T’sien, who set it all up). If someone wrote a book about her, no one would believe it.
Kitty sipped her champagne and glanced at the ball gowns that were being paraded before her, feeling a little bored. Yes, it was so beautiful, but after the tenth dress, it was all beginning to look the same. Was it possible to overdose on too much beauty? She could buy up the whole collection in her sleep and forget she ever owned any of it. She needed something more. She needed to get out of here and look at some Zambian emeralds, maybe.
Luka recognized the look on Kitty’s face. It was the same expression he had seen all too often in some of his most privileged clients—these women who had constant, unlimited access to everything that their hearts ever desired—the heiresses, celebrities, and princesses that had sat in this very spot. He knew he needed to change direction, to shift the energy in the room in order to reinspire his high-spending client.