“Oooh…I want to have a beautiful mixed-race baby too! Luka, do you know any hot single French counts?” Wandi asked.
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle. The only comte I know is married.”
“Married is fine…I’m married too, but I would dump my boring hubby if I could get a beautiful half-French baby!” Wandi giggled.
“Wandi, careful what you wish for. You never know what sort of baby you’ll get,” Tatiana said.
“No, if you have a baby with a Caucasian man, you’re almost guaranteed it will be attractive. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance it will look like Keanu Reeves. That’s why so many Asian women are desperate to find white husbands.”
“First of all, Keanu isn’t half white. He’s like three-quarters—his mother is only part Hawaiian and his father is American.*5 And not to burst your bubble, but I have seen some rather unfortunate-looking mixed-raced babies,” Georgina insisted.
“Yes, but it’s very rare. And soooo tragic when that happens! OMG—did you hear about that man in China who sued his wife because all their children came out looking so ugly? He had purposely married this beautiful woman, but it turns out she’d had tons of plastic surgery before she met him! So the children all looked like her before the surgery!” Wandi giggled.
“That story was a lie!” Tatiana insisted. “I remember when it went viral, but it turned out the newspaper made up the whole thing and did a fake photo shoot with two models posing with a bunch of ugly kids.”
Finding the topic of unattractive children to be appallingly distasteful, Luka tried to steer the conversation in another direction. “I think Monsieur Lucas and Mademoiselle Colette will have beautiful children. She’s so pretty, and he’s very handsome, you know.”
“Well, good for them,” Kitty said in a merry tone. “Now, all this baby talk has made me want to look at some daytime outfits for Gisele. Can we do that? And do you have anything fun and unisex I can dress Harvard in?”
“Oui, madame.” As he headed back into the main showroom, Georgina took him by the arm. “Tell me, Luka, do you live on the second floor?”
Without missing a beat, Luka replied with a grin, “Yes, mademoiselle, I think you’ve seen me before.”
Wandi and Tatiana stood by the doorway watching as Kitty lingered for a moment longer by the dress. As she turned to leave, she grabbed the back of the precious Klimt-inspired skirt and gave it one quick, forceful tug—ripping it clear down the middle.
* * *
*1 See Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster. I much prefer Wong’s In the Mood for Love to this film, but the set design was amazing.
*2 Or third or fourth or seventh richest, depending on which financial tabloid you trust.
*3 Kitty has only lived part-time in Singapore for two years, but like so many other immigrants from Mainland China has taken to referring to it as home.
*4 Mandarin for “second-generation rich,” this label is akin to “trust-fund kids” and carries all the scorn and envy it implies.
*5 Actually, Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to an English mother and a father of Hawaiian, Chinese, and English ancestry.
CHAPTER SIX
11 NASSIM ROAD, SINGAPORE
Winding through the heart of Bukit Timah, Nassim Road was one of the few long, picturesque streets in Singapore that still retained a feel of graceful, Old World exclusivity with its parade of historic mansions converted into embassies, tropical modern bungalows on crisp manicured lawns, and stately Black and White houses left over from the colonial era. Number 11 Nassim Road was a particularly fine example of Black and White architecture, as it had only changed hands once since it had been built a century ago. Originally commissioned by Boustead and Company, it had been purchased by S. K. Leong in 1918, and every original detail had been preserved and lovingly maintained since then by three generations of Leongs.
As Astrid pulled up the long driveway lined with Italian cypresses to the home where she had grown up, the front door opened, and Liat, the majordomo, gestured for Astrid to come down. Astrid frowned—she was picking up her mother to visit Ah Ma at the hospital, and they were already running late for the morning briefing with Professor Oon. Astrid left her dark blue Acura in the arched porte cochere and entered the foyer, bumping into her sister-in-law Cathleen, who was seated on a rosewood stool lacing up her walking shoes.
“Morning, Cat,” Astrid greeted.
Cathleen looked up at her with a strange expression. “They’re still eating. Sure you want to show your face today?”
Astrid figured that Cathleen was referring to the Isabel Wu fiasco the other evening. With all the attention focused on her grandmother, the incident had gone unmentioned by her parents, but she knew that wouldn’t last long.
“It’s now or never, I guess,” Astrid said, bracing herself as she walked toward the breakfast room.
“Godspeed,” Cathleen said, grabbing her battered Jones the Grocer shopping bag* as she went out the door.
Breakfast at Nassim Road was always served in the glassed-in summer porch adjacent to the drawing room. Boasting a circular marble-top teak table from the Dutch Indies, wicker chairs cushioned in whimsical monkey-print chintz, and a profusion of hanging ferns from the Tyersall Park greenhouses, it was one of the loveliest rooms in the house. As Astrid entered, her elder brother, Henry, gave her a dirty look and got up from the table to leave. He muttered something under his breath as he passed by, but Astrid couldn’t make out what he said. She glanced first at her father, who was sitting in his usual wicker chair methodically slathering a piece of toast with gooey Marmite, and then at her mother, who sat in front of an untouched bowl of porridge, clenching a wadded-up ball of tissue in her hand, her face red and puffy from crying.
“My God, did something happen to Ah Ma?” Astrid asked in alarm.
“Hnh! I think the question should be: ‘Will you finish your grandmother off with another heart attack when she reads this?’?” Felicity chucked a sheet of paper onto the marble-top table in disgust.
Astrid grabbed the sheet and stared at it in dismay. It was a printout from Asia’s most popular online gossip column:
DAILY DISH FROM LEONARDO LAI
THE BEWITCHING HEIRESS AT THE CENTER OF THE ISABEL WU SOUPGATE INCIDENT!