‘She’ll probably show up when her boyfriend gets sick of her or she runs out of money,’ Selina had said, making Beth feel almost fond of her. Beth liked Selina’s shy husband, Mark, though the poor man was clearly under his wife’s thumb.
Beth liked having a man around to handle things. If she had her life to live over again, there was only thing she would have done differently. She would have worked harder to get married. She would have liked to have had a man around. One who could earn enough for her not to have to work. It was another thing she blamed her late mother and sister for. The two of them had talked clothes and shoes and make-up together but they had never included her, never shown her what to do. Even though Beth had despised them for being superficial, they should have helped her. Her life would have been so much more comfortable now. Instead she was still the spinster sister. With all her things from her flat, she was squeezed into the small room that had once been her nephew’s while Jonny still occupied the much larger master bedroom he had shared with Patty. He insisted on cleaning the room himself. Though he let Beth do his laundry, he asked her to leave it on the little cupboard at the top of the stairs. Of course Beth had gone into his room to look around when he was not in. She had been half afraid of what she might find … a shrine to her sister, perhaps. But fortunately there was nothing of the sort.
‘What are you doing in here? How dare you spy on my things!’ Jonny had demanded when he came home unexpectedly and found her in his room.
Beth could not tell him that she had been lying on the bed enjoying the scent of his shampoo and aftershave on his pillow. Embarrassment turning into anger; she had lashed back at him: ‘Why shouldn’t I? This is as much my house as yours!’ and, for an instant, she had been certain he was going to hit her. ‘My sister’s dresses,’ Beth had said. ‘I need something to wear to the Ministry. I thought since Patty has so many dresses I could borrow something.’ The lie was convincing because her sister had always had too many dresses.
Jonny had glanced towards the walk-in closet, and the rage that had flamed up in his eyes lowered to a pilot light. ‘You should take all of them,’ he told her. ‘Give me more space.’
And the next day Beth had found all of Patty’s dresses, skirts, blouses, scarves, and winter wear piled on her bed and in heaps on the floor of her bedroom.
The loud grinding of poorly maintained gears drew Beth’s attention outside again. The contractor’s lorry had backed up noisily to the gate, and the new contractor was directing his men to load on what looked like bags of cement. The workers climbed in after, and the lorry groaned off. Why were they leaving? There was still so much work to be done …
‘Jonny!’ Beth shouted. ‘Why are they leaving? Stop them! Don’t let them go!’ Oh no, she thought as she headed for the stairs, had Jonny fired this contractor too?
Jonny Ho was the tour guide assigned to the Kwuan sisters on their tour around China. Beth had arranged everything without any help from her sister. Patty had not even wanted to go, but Beth had insisted. The shopping and sightseeing in China would be good for the new widow, she pointed out. Now her husband was dead, Patty ought not to go on spending so much on designer handbags, scarves, and shoes, and China was the best place to buy fakes.
More importantly, Beth had meant to use the time to persuade Patty to sell her large, inconvenient Jalan Kakatua house and buy an apartment, in both their names, where the two sisters could grow old together. The tour was really to get Patty out of Singapore and away from her friends with their bad advice and, more importantly, away from the demands of Fabian, Patty’s useless, spoiled, son.
Patty wanted to leave the house to her son.
‘Fabian’s not coming back to Singapore! What is he going to do with a house here?’ Beth had demanded.
‘Then he can sell it after I’m dead.’ Patty, always romantic and impractical, had said.
‘And what will happen to me if you die first?’ Beth blurted out her deepest fear of ending up alone and homeless. It was not fair. Beth, who knew the value of money and had worked so hard all her life, could barely afford the payments on her Housing Development Board flat. And Patty, who had drifted through school and life adored by her parents and her husband, knew nothing and had everything.
Of course, that was before Jonny Ho came into their lives.
Through all the wining and dining and flirting, Beth had thought that Jonny Ho was just doing his job exceptionally well. She had taken him aside and explained that the point of their trip was to help her sister get over her husband’s death. She had been pleased to see how much Patty’s mood and temper improved when Jonny was around. Patty stopped, saying: ‘I wish I hadn’t let you talk me into this,’ and ‘We should have gone to India instead!’
Beth had dreamed of making another trip to China. Once she had Patty settled she would go back to China alone and get in touch with Jonny Ho and ask him to show her around the cultural landmarks that Patty had shown no interest in … he would see she was much more interested in history and culture than her sister.
But less than two months after their China tour, Jonny Ho had come to Singapore on a tourist pass. On Patty’s invitation, he had extended his stay and moved in with them. Then Jonny Ho and Patty had announced, so casually, that they had gone to the registry that day and signed papers. They were married.
This had stung Beth painfully. Why hadn’t Patty told her? After all, she was her sister and she would have told her exactly how ridiculous it would look, her marrying a man so much younger and so soon after her husband’s death. It didn’t occur to Beth that that was exactly why Patty had said nothing to her. But it was Jonny Ho she felt most betrayed by. Beth had thought that she and Jonny were a team, working to cheer Patty up and get on with her life. Once Jonny was married to Patty he agreed that she should keep the house: ‘landed property is always more valuable’. At least he had seemed to like the idea of Beth continuing to stay in the house, so Beth did not have to kick out the tenants who had sub-leased her flat.
All these thoughts were far from Beth’s mind as she hurried down the stairs carefully. This was no time to fall and end up with a broken leg.
‘Why are the workers leaving? Why did you let them go? Call your contractor at once and make him bring them back. Do you have his mobile number?’
But Jonny Ho, standing by the dusty wreckage of what had been the wall between the living room and dining room, laughed at her. ‘Why do you worry? Why don’t you trust me? They have another project, big emergency project to fix now. They will earn big extra money and they will come back to finish the work here tonight. No problem. Why do you not trust me? You must trust me, pretty lady!’ He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her against him.
The physical thrill of being so close to him made Beth forget her renovation worries.
‘I just want this to work, that’s all. It’s got to be finished before the building inspectors come.’
‘Of course it is going to work. It is not just going to work; it is going to be a big enormous success!’
Beth wanted to agree with him, to believe him. But the schoolteacher in her surfaced. ‘“Big enormous success” doesn’t sound right.’ She regretted speaking as soon as she started, but once started she had to finish. ‘You should say a “huge success” or just “an enormous success”.’
Jonny Ho’s English was good. Good enough for Beth, who could not stand being around people who spoke English badly. Because of his dream of getting to America or England or Australia, Jonny had worked hard at improving his English for years, long before the opportunity to come to Singapore. But he still used phrases like ‘big enormous success’ that shouted non-native speaker to Beth’s ear.
Beth