“What happened? Is it Ah Ma?” Eddie whispered to Fiona.
“Hiyah! Ah Ma’s fine, but Auntie Felicity just received some news that’s quite upsetting.”
“What news?” Eddie asked, irritated that he had only been in the toilet for barely ten minutes and somehow missed the whole first act.
His auntie Cat was now speaking in a low, soothing tone to Felicity. “If you ask me, this is all much ado about nothing. It’s a slow news week, and the press just had to pounce on something.”
“Just watch, Felicity, this will all blow over in a few days,” Taksin agreed.
Eddie, who was seated in the middle of the long table, cleared his throat loudly. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Alistair handed a cell phone over to him, and Eddie eagerly scrolled through the paparazzi pictures of Astrid and Charlie Wu in India, feeling his pulse begin to race. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. His always perfect, goody-goody cousin had really stepped in shit at long last! What would Ah Ma think when she found out? One by one, all his cousins were falling from grace, and he was the last man standing. He stared at the hundreds of comments left by viewers of the leaked photos:
Wah! So beautiful. This is my dream engagement!—AngMohKioPrincess
What a fucking waste! Outrageous that CRAs spend this much on one day when 75 million Indians still don’t have access to clean water! —clement_desylva
Astrid is babelicious. Charlie Wu is the man of the hour!—shoikshoik69
Suddenly, those words sparked something in Eddie’s mind that hadn’t quite occurred to him until this moment. Man of the hour. Earlier in the week, his grandmother’s lawyer, Freddie Tan, a senior partner at Singapore’s most prestigious law firm Tan and Tan, had paid an unexpected visit to Tyersall Park. Aside from Bishop See, he had been the only nonfamily member allowed into the private sanctum of his grandmother’s bedroom, and the distinguished white-haired gentleman had arrived with a smart-looking Dunhill briefcase and spent a rather long time behind closed doors with Su Yi. At some point during their meeting, Professor Oon and his associate doctor were summoned into the bedroom. Could they have been witnesses to the signing of a new will?
Eddie naturally hovered around outside her bedroom like a dog eager for scraps, and when Freddie Tan emerged, he studied Eddie from cravat to wing tips and said, “You’re Alix Young’s eldest boy, right? I haven’t seen you since you were a teenager, and now look at you—man of the hour!” Freddie then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes chatting with Eddie, asking after his wife and which schools his children attended. At the time, it didn’t occur to Eddie why a man who had never paid him any attention before was suddenly chatting him up like he was his biggest client. But now it dawned on him…did his grandmother make him the heir to Tyersall Park? Was this why Freddie was calling him the man of the hour?
As this epiphany was still settling in Eddie’s brain, he suddenly heard Alistair saying, “You know, you really can’t blame Astrid for this. How would she know that the paparazzi would be there? I’m sure she meant for this to be a very private moment.”
Fucky fuck! Eddie thought irritatedly. What the hell was Alistair doing defending Astrid? Didn’t he realize that they all needed to play this to their advantage, especially now when he stood to inherit the whole kit and caboodle. Eddie quickly cut in, drowning out his brother. “Auntie Felicity, I am so sorry you had to be put through this horrible scandal. What a disgrace!”
Alix scowled at her son, as if to say, Don’t make this any worse than it is!
Victoria spoke up. “Actually, I rather agree with Eddie. This is a complete disgrace. I can’t believe Astrid would be so careless.”
Felicity pulled another piece of tissue out of her Jim Thompson silk pouch and sniffed into it dramatically. “My hopeless daughter! We have spent all our lives protecting her from the press, spent so much money protecting her from unwanted attention. And now look how she’s repaid us!”
At the other end of the table, Piya Aakara whispered into her husband’s ear, “I don’t understand what the big deal is. Her daughter just got engaged, and the pictures look wonderful. Shouldn’t she be happy for her?”
“I don’t think Auntie Felicity approves of this fellow. And my family just doesn’t like to see themselves in the press—ever,” Adam explained.
“Not even Tattle?”
Overhearing Piya’s comments, Victoria suddenly piped up, “Especially not Tattle. My God, that ghastly magazine! You know, I wrote a few pieces for them back in the 1970s. But then one day the editor said my stories were too ‘cultural’—yes, I believe that’s the word he used. He said to me, and I’ll never forget it, ‘We don’t need any more stories on emerging Chinese artists. We thought you were going to write about your relatives. That’s why we hired you.’ And that’s when I gave my notice!”
Eddie continued to fan the flames. “It’s one thing to be in Tattle or Town & Country—I’m featured in those magazines all the time. Full disclosure, Piya—Fiona and I have been on the cover of Hong Kong Tattle once, and I alone have been on the cover three times. But it’s another thing to see Astrid’s photos popping up on these cheap gossip websites. As if she’s some actress or, even worse, a porno star. Like that Kitty Pong girl Alistair dated for half a minute.”
Alistair was indignant. “For the millionth time, Kitty was not a porn star! It was some other girl who just looked like her!”
Eddie ignored his brother and kept on talking. “The thing I can’t believe is that Astrid would dare to leave Singapore when Ah Ma is so sick. I mean, here we all are, spending every precious moment we have with her.”
“She was supposed to be in Malaysia, representing us at Prince Ismail’s wedding. I can’t believe she deceived us like this! Running off to India, of all places. Getting engaged on an elephant! Who on earth does Charlie Wu think he is? A maharaja?” Felicity sniffed angrily.
“So vulgar. Those Wus are all the same—they haven’t changed in all these years.” Victoria tut-tutted, shaking her head. “Did you know that that horrid Wu woman tried to steal Mabel Shang’s seamstress? Imagine the cheek! Thank goodness Mabel rescued that talented girl from her clutches! She made me several nice silk jacquard blouses, perfectly copying the style of this Liz Claiborne blouse Lillian May Tan brought back for me from America. I gave one to Mummy, which she loves, and didn’t I give you one too, Cat, when I came to visit you in 1992?”