Aunty Lee's Delights (21 page)

“Should we get an interpreter?” SSS Salim asked.

“Afterward, if you want to take a proper statement. For now, just listen. She can understand us. Right, Komal? You can understand?”

Komal looked scared, but she nodded.

“Do you know what happened to Miss Marianne?” Aunty Lee asked gently.

Komal shook her head. Then she nodded—and shook her head again. “Don’t know,” she said.

“You know she’s dead?”

A nod.

“But you don’t know what happened?”

Another nod, with relief this time. “I try to help Miss Mari.”

“How did you try to help her?”

“I pack her things in her bag for her.”

“What things?”

“Things to wear. Passport.”

“Why didn’t Miss Mari pack them herself?”

“She go already. She go first. Then her man, he says she needs her things. She don’t want to come back because if she comes back, then her father don’t let her go. So she ask her man to come and get her bag for her.”

“Then?”

“Then, when I bring for him the bag, he give me fifty dollars. He say it is from Miss Mari and I must not tell anybody or her family will be very angry with her and with me.”

“Did you believe that?”

Komal nodded earnestly. “Then, when Miss Mari is dead, I am scared. That is why I run away. I never take anything, I swear, madam!”

“I also made phone call to Carla Saito, ma’am,” Nina put in. “I said if she wants to talk to Miss Marianne’s maid, she should come here. I hope that is all right.”

Aunty Lee was surprised. “It’s all right. But I thought you didn’t like Carla Saito.”

Nina looked uncomfortable. “Ma’am, it is not for me to like or not like. But Komal said that Miss Marianne talked about Carla Saito. And she wish for Carla Saito to meet her family. Ma’am, I thought since you know Mr. and Mrs. Peters . . .”

Komal looked hopeful, as Nina left her words open to interpretation. Aunty Lee did not think it a good idea to introduce her old friends to someone whom the Peterses would probably see as the cause of their present tragedy. But it was clearly something that little Komal had set her heart on. Aunty Lee looked at Nina’s mutely pleading expression and guessed the leverage she had used to get Komal to come back to Binjai Park.

“You think it would make Miss Marianne happy?”

“Yes, please, madam! It is the last thing I can do for Miss Marianne.”

“Remember what Marianne told Carla Saito about the guy planning a romantic getaway for two weeks? And then the young couple that found Laura Kwee’s body? They just got married and had their wedding dinner at the hotel the night before. Suppose it’s the same place. They were staying in a chalet, right? Find out more about that resort where they were staying, Nina. And I should be getting over to the hospital soon. Where is Carla Saito?”

Sometimes pieces just fell into place, Aunty Lee thought, as the phone and doorbell rang simultaneously. Aunty Lee answered the phone and Nina let Carla in.

“Yes. Shall we come over now?”

“I’m glad you came,” Aunty Lee said to Carla Saito. “Because there is someone else who wants to meet you.”

Carla knew where the Peters house was. She had been on the street outside it before, and had spent quite some time staring at it from across the road without attempting to go inside.

“I thought they were keeping Marianne prisoner in there,” she admitted. “I know it sounds stupid now. But at the time I remember Marianne saying how traditional and protective her parents were and I thought there was a good chance—or rather I hoped that’s where she was.”

An old black dog who had flopped down in the drive lifted his head hopefully as the gate opened.

“Hey, Chewy,” Carla said, and the dog thumped its tail politely but unenthusiastically. Clearly they were not who he was hoping to see.

“You know Chewy?”

“Marianne told me about Chewbacca. He was her dog for sixteen years; when they got him he was so small and scared she used to smuggle him in to sleep in her bed even though he wasn’t supposed to be inside the house. I think one of the reasons she wanted to come back here was to see Chewy.”

Aunty Lee had explained simply that she and a friend of Marianne’s had located Komal and were bringing her back. Komal had been frightened and still was; and “the friend” of Marianne’s wanted to talk to both Komal and her mistress.

Anne Peters looked at Carla Saito for so long without speaking that Aunty Lee wondered whether she had made a mistake in bringing her here.

Then Anne Peters said to Carla, “I think I always knew at some level. But you know what it is like being a minority. Even after we have been here for so many years. It would just have been one more thing to make her life more difficult. If she were here right now, we would be fighting about it. I would not approve because I am her mother and it is my job not to approve.”

“She kept saying it would have broken your heart, that you would never have approved,” Carla Saito said. She was daring Mrs. Peters to contradict her. She could not feel sorry for this woman who had been the cause of so much of Marianne’s unhappiness.

“It is my job to protect her from other people. But what can I do now?”

Carla said, “You can change other people.”

“I would not have approved. But it is wrong of you to say I would never have approved. Did Marianne tell you I was against my son marrying Cherril?”

Carla was confused by the change of subject. “She never mentioned that. But I remember her saying she was glad Cherril was around because you had someone to do stuff like shopping and manicures with. She hated stuff like that.”

“I always thought Marianne was a bit jealous. Cherril was Chinese and from a broken home. She was a flight attendant without a university degree. Please listen and let me finish—” She held up a hand as Carla started to interrupt. “I didn’t approve because making a marriage work between two different personalities is difficult enough without adding two different backgrounds. And it was my duty as a mother to make potential difficulties clear to them. But once they were married, it was my duty as a mother to stand by them.”

“Marianne didn’t like Cherril. She said she didn’t know what Mycroft saw in her. She said you didn’t like her either, but you were pretending to because you wanted to have grandchildren.”

“It’s true. I didn’t like Cherril before she married my son. Now they are married it’s irrelevant whether I like her or not because she is family.”

Carla Saito waited.

Anne Peters went on: “You would have become family too, given time. I want you to know that.” That was why she had shared her initial reaction to Cherril Lim with Carla. It was something Marianne would have appreciated, Carla thought.

“The shock is still too strong. I know she is dead and I should feel worse. But she’s been away so much I still keep expecting to get another text message from her saying where she is now.”

“When did she send that last message?” Aunty Lee asked sharply. “And where is her phone? And her computer?”

She had been silent for so long that they had almost forgotten she was there.

“Marianne’s laptop is missing. Komal said she asked for it, which is strange because Marianne usually used the computer at work or her iPhone. The laptop was several years old and she hardly used it. And though she asked for her laptop, she did not ask for her charger.”

“You thought Komal stole her phone and her computer, didn’t you? But she didn’t. She brought them to the man she thought was Marianne’s boyfriend. And Mycroft knew that. He also knew Marianne didn’t have a boyfriend. So he thought you had sent Marianne for ex-gay therapy. That’s why he wouldn’t let anyone report her missing. Laura Kwee told Mycroft she had proof that Marianne was having an affair with another woman and she knew someone who could help her change. At the same time Laura befriended Marianne, telling her she was on her side and wanted to help her.”

“I don’t understand,” Anne Peters said. “We would never have sent Marianne for any kind of corrective therapy. Her health—”

“Marianne had epilepsy,” Carla said. “She had to be very careful not to trigger . . . Do you mean she died during ex-gay therapy?”

“But that would not explain what happened to Laura Kwee,” Aunty Lee said.

15

At the Hospital

Aunty Lee always maintained that it was impossible to tell how a dish was going to turn out just by reading about how it was made in a recipe. You had to put all the ingredients side by side and prepare them before you could tell how they were going to react with one another. And, of course, there was always the chance that a new ingredient you were unfamiliar with would throw everything else off.

This time the new “ingredient” showed up, not only in the form of a Joseph Cunningham, a tall, gangly, ginger-haired young man (whom Aunty Lee had been expecting and curious to meet), but also in the form of the person he brought with him.

Joseph Cunningham’s Singaporean partner, Otto, had arrived at the hospital within an hour after getting Aunty Lee’s phone call.

“Actually we were both in Singapore already, before you called, so it wasn’t a problem. We were planning our commitment ceremony. I was hoping my parents would fly in, of course, but I didn’t know they were already here.”

So that was the Cunninghams’ big secret, Aunty Lee thought. “How are your parents?”

“Very good considering how things might have turned out. The doctors said to watch out for local infections and cellulitis and it’s going to be painful for a while, but with luck they’ll be fine in three weeks.”

They were talking in Lucy Cunningham’s room. Her natural warmth had already broken through her prejudice against gays, and while her son talked to Aunty Lee, Otto was sitting by her bedside listening to her stories about Joe as a child. Now and then she looked over to Joe and Aunty Lee with a big smile on her face. In spite of the angry-looking red-and-white burn blisters visible on her arms and legs (fortunately, she had instinctively blocked her face in time), Lucy Cunningham looked better than Aunty Lee had ever seen her.

“And how is your father taking it?” Aunty Lee asked Joe.

“Do you know why they came to Singapore without telling me? They—or rather my father—wanted to meet up with Otto’s parents to try to enlist their help in breaking us up. That was what Laura Kwee was helping them with. Actually she told them that since same-sex relationships are illegal in Singapore, they could threaten to have Otto arrested if I didn’t swear never to see him again. But my mother refused to go along with that. So Laura said she would link them up with Otto’s parents if they came out here. She told them that if both sets of parents confronted us together, we would have to give in and they could bring me home. But then she never showed up. Anyway, it wouldn’t have worked. Otto’s father is dead and his mother totally accepted me. It didn’t happen overnight, of course, but she was helping us plan the commitment ceremony. Or rather she’s organizing everything.”

“Looks like she’s going to have some competition . . .”

They both looked across the room as Lucy Cunningham laughed. “What does he mean there are no photographs—I have hundreds, thousands of photographs of my Joe. We can go through them and pick out what you’ll use for the montage . . .”

Otto grinned at the others as Joe Cunningham made a wry grimace. This family would go on relatively unscarred, Aunty Lee thought. And she said precisely that.

“I always thought they’d come round,” Joe responded. “People who really care find a way to deal with it. Even my dad will, given time. The people who get most upset are those crazies in LifeGifters—you know, the ones who want to save people from being gay? Laura Kwee was involved in it.”

“You know Laura Kwee?”

“Never met her. Knew of her. In uni, she had this big crush on Otto. They used to do stuff together. He told her he was gay and thought she was okay with it and supportive, but then she started saying how her father back home kept asking when he was going to marry her and he got scared. Then she started stalking him online and spamming all his friends. She even wrote to the pastor of his church saying he had AIDS after he blocked her on Facebook.”

“Why?” Aunty Lee asked.

Joe shrugged. “She thought she was saving him. That’s what that LifeGifters network is all about. It’s pretty brutal actually. There are stories of how they actually kidnap people to reprogram them for their own good. It’s called ‘reparative therapy’ to supposedly turn gay people straight.”

“How does it work?”

Joe looked at Aunty Lee suspiciously but saw only earnest curiosity. “You’re locked up and told to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination. The only people you get to see are those who have given up the ‘gay lifestyle.’ If you resist, you get tied up and only released to read the Bible and attend church.”

“Does it work?”

“Didn’t work on me. That’s when I told my parents I never wanted to see them again.”

“But you invited them to your commitment ceremony.”

“I knew they only wanted what was right for me. I wanted to show them I’d found what was right for me.”