“And where has that gotten him, Eddie? I don’t see that Leo has accomplished much in his life except expand his number of ex-wives. We gave you the support to become successful on your own terms. I can’t believe you fail to see all the advantages your father and I tried to give you. How did we manage to raise you to be so ungrateful? I don’t hear Cecilia or Alistair complaining about their lives or their surname.”
“They’re both underachieving losers! Cecilia is so obsessed with her horses, you should have named her Catherine the Great! And Alistair and his film-production bullshit—who in Hong Kong has ever seen any of those strange art-house movies that his director friend makes? Fallen Angels? It should have been called ‘Fallen Asleep’! I’m the only one of your children who has ever accomplished a damn thing! Do you really want to know what having the surname Cheng has done for me? It meant that I didn’t get to go to Robbie Ko-Tung’s birthday party at Ocean Park when we were in Primary Two. It meant that I didn’t get picked for the debate team at Diocesan. It meant that I didn’t get asked to be a groomsman at Andrew Ladoorie’s wedding. It meant that I knew I would never get a cushy no-show job at one of the Hong Kong banks and had to spend half my life licking the balls of everyone at Liechtenburg Group in order to claw my way to the top!”
“I never realized you felt this way.” Alix shook her head sadly.
“That’s because you never bothered to get to know your own children! You’ve never really had time to care about our needs!”
Alix got up from her chair, finally losing her patience. “I’m not going to sit here in the hot sun and listen to you whine about being a neglected child, when you jet around the world and hardly ever make time for your own kids!”
“Well, that’s fitting, isn’t it? Dad spent most of my childhood flying to medical conferences in Sweden or Swaziland while you were always off buying up properties in Vancouver. You’ve never listened to me! You’ve never once asked me what I truly wanted! YOU’VE NEVER EVEN GIVEN ME A BUTT MASSAGE!” Eddie wailed, as he collapsed onto one of the balcony chairs, his body suddenly wracked with sobs.
Alix stared at her son, thinking that he must have temporarily gone mad.
Eddie wiped away his tears and glared at his mother. “If you truly care about your children, if you truly love us as you say you do, you will say NOTHING to Ah Ma about Nicky. Don’t you see what a perfect opportunity this is for us? We need to make sure he never gets to see her, and we need to keep reinforcing to Auntie Felicity that Astrid is still not welcome here! We can tell Uncle Philip that Ah Ma is too weak to see anyone. I will plant myself outside Ah Ma’s bedroom at all times—nobody is going to get in or out without my approval!”
“This is insane, Eddie. You can’t restrict other family members from seeing Ah Ma like this.”
“This is not insane!” Eddie screamed. “YOU’RE insane if you allow us to lose this opportunity. This could be our only chance to get Tyersall Park. Yes—OUR. You see, I’m always thinking of what’s best for our family! I’m not doing this just for me, but for Alistair and Cecilia and all your precious grandchildren. If we are the new owners of Tyersall Park, no one can ever say that the Chengs aren’t as great as the Youngs or the Shangs. Please don’t ruin everything for us now!”
CHAPTER TEN
TYERSALL PARK, SINGAPORE
“Which bottle?” Jiayi asked in Cantonese as she stood on the third-highest step of the wooden rolling ladder.
“Um…look for any bottle from before 1950,” Ah Ling instructed.
The maid squinted her eyes at the ancient yellowing labels affixed to the front of the large glass canisters, looking at the dates. She remembered going to a fancy herbal shop in Shenzhen when she was a teenager and seeing one precious golden tin of yen woh in a locked glass cabinet in the pride of place behind the cash register. Her mother had explained that the container was full of edible bird’s nest—one of the most expensive delicacies in China. Now she was looking at an entire shelving unit lined with them. “I can’t believe that all these bottles are filled with yen woh. It must be worth a fortune!”
“That is why we keep this larder under lock and key,” Ah Ling said. “All of these bottles came from Mrs. Young’s father. Mr. Shang owned a company that supplied the finest yen woh in Asia, taken from the most prized caves in Borneo.”
“Is this how they became so rich?”
“Hiyah, you can’t build a fortune like the Shangs’ on yen woh alone. This was just one of the many companies Mr. Shang owned.”
The maid climbed down from the ladder hugging a huge bottle almost as big as her entire torso. She stared through the musty glass at what looked like dried white husks, marveling at the precious treasure inside. “Have you ever tried it?”
“Of course. Mrs. Young always has a bowl prepared for me on my birthday.”
“What does it taste like?”
“I can’t quite describe it…it’s like nothing you’ve ever had. It’s more about the texture…it’s sort of like snow fungus, but much more delicate. But here, Ah Ching makes it into a dessert soup. She cooks it in a double boiler with dried longan and rock sugar for forty-eight hours, and then puts shaved ice over it. It’s marvelous. Now, third rack from the bottom on that shelf over there. Get me three cups of dried longan,” Ah Ling instructed, as she carefully marked the amount of bird’s nest she had taken out of the canister in a ledger book.
“Whose birthday is it now?” Jiayi asked.
“Nobody’s. But Mrs. Young’s brother Alfred Shang is coming over for Friday-night dinner. And we know how much he likes yen woh.”
“So he gets to have it whenever he wants?”
“Of course! This used to be his house too, you know.”
“Life is so unfair…” Jiayi muttered as she strained to open the lid of the bottle of dried longans.
There was a knock on the door, and Vikram, the head of security, poked his head in and smiled at Ah Ling. “There you are! Ah Tock said you were down in the larder, but he didn’t say which one. I searched two other larders before finding you!”
“I only ever come to the dried-goods larder, because only I have the key. The other larders I never bother with. What do you need?”
Vikram eyed the young maid scooping out the dried longans into a bowl and said to the housekeeper, “May I have a few minutes of your time after you’re done with this?”
Ah Ling looked over at Jiayi. “Take everything up to Ah Ching now. And maybe if you are very nice to her, she will let you have a little taste of the yen woh on Friday.”
As soon as the maid had left the room, Ah Ling asked in a slightly weary tone, “What is the problem today?”
“Well, I’ve been going through something in my mind for the last couple of days,” Vikram began. “You know how Joey’s been out on leave since his mother’s surgery? Well, I took over his patrol schedule myself, and the other day while I was on the roof, I overheard something rather interesting coming from Mrs. Young’s balcony.”
Ah Ling’s ears perked up. “What was so interesting?”