‘Look, we’re short of time,’ Selina said. ‘I told Beth that we would bring Nina back to talk to her. Unless that policeman of hers is still hanging around.’
Cherril turned to Nina. ‘Inspector Salim likes curry potatoes, right? We can use these potatoes to make something nice for the people at the station. If they like them, maybe they’ll even offer to pay and order more next time! How many people at his office today? Do you know?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t talk to Inspector Salim.’ Nina kept her eyes and hands focused on scraping thin strips down the length of a cucumber. But her expression hardened, and Selina picked up on this immediately.
‘If that man is still bothering her, it may be just as well to get her away from here for a bit. Nina’s not stupid. But men can be so persistent.’
‘I don’t think Salim will give up so easily,’ Aunty Lee said thoughtfully. ‘He’s not the sort to give up. But good for him to have to work harder to get her. Then he won’t take her for granted!’
If I go away for one week she will see she cannot do without me, Nina thought, then she will have to stop trying to get me married off.
Working for somebody else will show her what a good boss I am, Aunty Lee thought, then she will do what I tell her to do. And maybe spending one week far away from Salim will make Nina appreciate him more. Just to push things a little further she said: ‘You say you don’t want to see Salim any more, just close your eyes, lor. What for you want to go so far away?’
‘Okay, one week,’ Nina said to Selina.
‘Okay your head,’ said Aunty Lee almost amicably. She had turned away from them and was rummaging in one of the cabinets beneath the counter.
Cherril made a sound that was half squeak and half moan. Having been with Aunty Lee far longer than her, Nina was far more efficient at practical cooking than she was.
‘I will help,’ Xuyie told her softly.
‘So can we bring Nina over to meet Beth?’ Mark’s voice was high in his disbelief. ‘Now?’
‘Sure!’
‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Selina all but clapped her hands.
Nina was the only one who was not surprised when Aunty Lee, clutching her bag and two pineapple tarts, led the way to Mark’s car.
‘Wait, Aunty Lee, you’re going too?’ Cherril cried out. ‘What are we going to do with all these potatoes? Throw them away? Such a waste! I should charge them anyway. It’s their fault for not telling me sooner. Can you tell them that we can’t take out the potatoes because without potatoes it won’t be Peranakan Chicken Curry?’
Aunty Lee was nothing if not flexible. Anyone who had tasted her food experiments could testify to that. As far as she was concerned, anything cooked with local ingredients was local food: ‘and since I am Peranakan, everything that I cook is Peranakan food!’ It was the waste nothing, adapt everything spirit of the Peranakan cook that Aunty Lee embodied, rather than any set of recipes. She would find some way to put those potatoes to good use. But not while Cherril was in full emergency mode. Cherril had Avon and Xuyie to help her take care of what Aunty Lee and Nina could have handled between them.
‘Leave them there!’ Aunty Lee called over. ‘Leave them to Nina and me. We’ll come up with something when we come back!’
Beth Kwuan stood at the upstairs window looking down on Jonny Ho talking to the new contractor. She’d had to come up to change for a meeting at the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) which oversees the setting up of child care centres in Singapore. Those bureaucrats had demanded to see her plans for soundproofing and toilet facilities. All the rules and regulations, requirements, and inspections were ridiculous, Beth thought. In the old days all you needed to train children were rattan mats on the floor and a tin potty in the corner. And hadn’t those children turned out much better than the youth of today?
When it was not raining the children played catching and hopscotch and jumped rubber bands outside, and if it rained they played Happy Families or five stones inside. Part of her wanted to throw up this whole idea of running her own preschool. But Jonny had worked on the figures with her. There was no other way she could keep this house. She tugged at the blue and white striped knit dress she had changed into. It was a bit tight on her, like all her late sister’s dresses. But they still looked better on her than any of her own clothes.
Beth knew she should leave soon if she didn’t want to waste money booking a taxi, but still she stayed at the window, watching Jonny Ho wave his arms around as he talked. She wished Jonny would come with her to the ECDA. He was so much better at charming people than she was. And he could impress them with his Mandarin. But Jonny despised Singapore’s rules and regulations. He was convinced their permits were taking so long because Beth was too stingy to hand over the necessary bribes, and refused to believe that was not how things were done in Singapore.
‘That’s how things are done everywhere!’ he had said.
Beth didn’t want to think about how Jonny was managing the renovations. The new batch of foreign contract workers Jonny was working with were all Chinese nationals. He had fired the first lot of men and demanded only Mandarin speakers this time. At least he wasn’t hitting them like he had hit that Indian welder. Jonny got very angry when people didn’t follow his instructions exactly and immediately. He had thought the Indian workers were making fun of his English when they tried to ask him questions. Their first contractor had quit after making a huge fuss about Jonny breaking that welder’s arm. Luckily Jonny was good at handling people like him. After Jonny threatened the contractor with all kinds of things from invented violations to Jonny’s close friends in the permits department to broken legs, the first contractor had quit the job and taken his workers with him. They were already behind schedule, and they left walls half hacked and stacks of child-safe railings propped on piles of padded play area squares. But Beth hardly had time to panic before Jonny announced he had got them a replacement contractor.
‘Even cheaper! The first bugger was trying to swindle us!’
Of course Beth still worried. But then Beth worried all the time about everything. That was how she had always been. It was wonderful to have someone like Jonny Ho around to say: ‘Leave everything to me!’ and take over.
‘Leave the building renovations to me!’ he had told her, and she did. Jonny had so much more business experience. Despite being younger, he had so much more experience in everything, and when he said: ‘Everybody will always try to cheat you if they can. But don’t worry! I will watch out for you!’ Beth knew she could trust him. It was what she had always believed.
That didn’t mean she didn’t worry about him, of course. Beth worried about what Jonny had thought of Julietta, and how he would react to Fabian. Julietta had disappeared after her nephew Fabian turned up at the house and made a scene.
‘If you can’t show some respect to your elders you’ll have to leave!’ Beth had told Fabian. To her relief, he had left. But she had seen Julietta slip out after him. Should she have stopped her? Beth had no idea what Fabian might have said to Julietta; what he might have tried to get her to do.
Well, there was no point wondering about that now. There had been no sign of Julietta, no queries from Julietta’s family members or friends, which Beth took as a good sign. It looked as though Julietta had been in touch with them even if her employer didn’t know where she was.
The only person who kept bringing up the missing woman was that stupid Mrs Selina Lee, who asked: ‘Where is Julietta?’ every time she came by.