‘Women are no good at seeing business opportunities,’ Jonny said complacently. ‘That’s why they need men.’
‘I should introduce you to my partner,’ Aunty Lee said. ‘You two can go and talk business opportunities together!’
‘So, you finally got to see Patty’s leng zai?’ was the first thing Helen Chan said to Aunty Lee. ‘What did you think? That one time I saw him, he was gorgeous!’
Helen Chan was the same age as Aunty Lee. They had met in school and stayed friends over the years despite their differences. People might look at Aunty Lee and call her a typical Tai-Tai, as in a married woman of a certain age and certain class who doesn’t have to work for a living. But Helen was the kind of Tai-Tai that people saw at charity fundraising dinners and in magazines like Lady and Singapore Tatler. Helen wore bouffant hair, diamond Rolexes, played mah-jong and was addicted to facials and Korean dramas. And she was a loyal friend.
Aunty Lee had phoned and told her old friend all about meeting up with Patty Kwuan-Loo’s sister and husband. Helen had, of course, insisted on coming over to hear all about it in person. Since Aunty Lee did not want to talk in her own café, where Cherril was trying out yet another new serving system and two huge tubs of curry potatoes waited in the chiller, Helen had come over to collect Aunty Lee then told her driver to bring them to her favourite reflexology spa off Upper Bukit Timah Road. Such places usually discouraged talking during treatment, but at this hour there were no other clients and the staff, clearly used to Mrs Helen Chan, created a cosy corner for them with hotfoot baths and a choice of flower teas.
‘I need a pedicure,’ Helen observed as her feet went into the hot water.
Aunty Lee had not been for a pedicure in years. Who wanted to sit still for so long to get your toenails painted when nobody short enough to see them mattered? But as she leaned back in the luxuriously padded recliner and wriggled her toes in the fragrant water she felt the attractions of the Tai-Tai lifestyle. What if she left the running of the shop to Cherril? It was disheartening to hear that, after all her hard work, people still thought of her restaurant as a ‘cake shop’.
‘So, has he gone old and fat?’ Helen cut into her thoughts. ‘Please tell me he’s bald with a big paunch. I swear I was ready to trade in the old man, given half a chance.’
‘He’s stupid,’ Aunty Lee said crossly. ‘He thinks I run a cake shop.’
‘Well, your cakes are very good, what. Especially your pineapple tarts and your ang ku kueh. Nobody else gets the mix of peanuts and mung beans in the ang ku kueh filling just right. But, he’s still handsome?’
‘If you like the sort,’ Aunty Lee said curtly.
‘Hey, I’m just joking!’
The truth was, Jonny Ho looked like he could have played the lead in one of the Taiwanese or Korean soap operas … the good but falsely maligned son who returns to avenge his foolish father and rescue his true love, who is on the verge of marrying a no-good rich playboy who will drink and gamble away her family fortune. Of course Jonny Ho would also look right playing the no-good rich playboy. Very often the evil villains in these shows were very good-looking too.
‘I couldn’t believe it myself when I heard about it. You know, I thought at first Patty married him out of pity, to get him out of China.’
As Helen spoke two old men greeted them in Mandarin, sat on stools at their feet and started the treatment, wrapping one foot in a warmed towel while expertly massaging the other. Though she thought of them as ‘old men’ compared to the young women at the reception counter, they were probably around the same age as Helen and herself, Aunty Lee thought. She wondered if, like Jonny Ho, Avon and Xuyie, and the Guangs, these old men had recently come from China to rub feet for a living.
‘Shh … ’ Aunty Lee said to Helen.
‘Don’t worry. They don’t mind. There’s nobody else here, after all. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes. I thought Patty was just helping somebody who wanted to get a Singapore PR. Like all those men who marry girls from China and Thailand and Vietnam, and get divorced once they become permanent residents. These countries don’t allow you to adopt babies from them, but you can marry them and get your own babies. Anyway, that’s what I thought when I heard about Patty getting married again. Then when I saw the man I could totally understand. And he was so sweet to her, listening to her, asking if she wanted another drink. Not like the Singapore men we’re used to.’
‘There are a lot of very rich Chinese people coming out of China these days,’ Aunty Lee said, thinking of the Guangs who had bought and extensively renovated the house next to her kesum leaves, ‘buying houses in good estates.’
‘But Jonny Ho isn’t one of them. If he was, people would have been less shocked when Patty married him! Rich people can do funny things and nobody minds. Jonny Ho was one of the very very poor who clawed his way up to just very poor. Patty told me that his mother was a prostitute and pedicurist who lived in an illegal underground apartment in Beijing! She said he didn’t even know who his father was, but someone sent money for him every New Year, so his mother must have known. The only money he has now is what Patty left him!’
‘You were at her first wedding, right? Ken Loo was a respectable guy, but alamak, so boring and so ugly.’
‘But I remember feeling jealous at the time. Wasn’t she one of the first of our batch to get married? But we didn’t really keep in touch after that.’
‘Patty and Ken Loo were childhood sweethearts. They got married right after he graduated. Then the first boy was born barely six months after that. Of course, they had to go around telling people how the baby is so premature, but six pounds eight ounces so premature, meh? Maybe premature baby elephant!’
‘Was that Fabian?’ Aunty Lee winced slightly as her masseuse found a sore area on the outside of her left foot and worked it with gusto. Through the pain, she felt the right side of her neck loosening and relaxing. ‘I remember Fabian. He was such a cute, chubby little boy.’
‘No. The first boy was Roland: the one that fell off the slide and broke his neck. I heard Patty attacked the kindergarten teacher who was supposed to be watching the children. Slashed her with a pair of scissors. That’s why her Fabian was so precious to Patty. No kindergarten parties, no school excursions! But that boy so precious until he don’t know how to study. Cannot get into university here so they had to send him to America to study. Wah, there was such a fuss when they tried to get him to come back for his National Service and he refused to come back. In the end they had to find a doctor to say that he had a weak heart, cannot do NS.’
‘I hear he’s back now, though.’
‘Oh yes. Fabian’s back, and making trouble again.’ Helen said. The relish in her voice might have come from the reflexology points in her feet. ‘He ignored his old, sick mother alone for so many years, then comes back as soon as she dies, expecting her to leave him everything.’
‘But she didn’t? Why not?’
‘Don’t ask!’ Helen said with a knowing laugh designed to have the opposite effect.
Aunty Lee’s eyes opened wide. ‘She was angry with him? He got arrested? No? He became a terrorist? Or worse – an actor? Or one of those naked dancers? No?’
‘Nothing so exciting. If Fabian had done something like that it would be more understandable. But Patty’s will left everything to Jonny Ho. Everything in her bank account and all her assets, including the family house that Fabian expected to inherit. Apparently he kicked up a