Crazy Rich Asians (51 page)

“Doesn’t she?” Nick grinned.

“I’d cut in on them if I were you. You know how lethal our Turkish friend can be,
especially since he knows how to tango better than an Argentinean polo player,” Colin
warned.

“Oh, Mehmet already confessed to me that he thinks Rachel has the sexiest legs on
the planet.” Nick laughed. “You know how they say weddings are infectious. I think
I really caught the bug today, watching you and Araminta during the ceremony.”

“Does this mean what I think it does?” Colin asked, perking up.

“I think so, Colin. I think I’m finally ready to ask Rachel to marry me.”

“Well hurry up,
lah
!” Colin exclaimed, clapping Nick on the back. “Araminta already told me she intends
to get pregnant on our honeymoon, so you need to catch up. I’m counting on your kid
to check my kid into rehab!”

It was almost midnight, and while the older guests were perched comfortably on terraces
overlooking the promenade, sipping their
Rémy Martins or lapsang souchongs, Rachel was sitting with the few remaining girls
in the banquet hall, catching up with Sophie Khoo. Lauren Lee and Mandy Ling were
chatting several chairs away when Francesca sauntered up to the table.

“Wasn’t that dinner a disappointment? That Edible Bird’s Nest Semifreddo at the end—why
would you ever puree bird’s nest? Bird’s nest is all about the texture, and that idiot
chef transforms it into a half-frozen muck,” Francesca complained. “We should all
go for supper after the fireworks.”

“Why don’t we just go now?” Lauren suggested.

“No, we have to stay for the fireworks! Araminta told me in secret that Cai Guo-Qiang
designed a pyrotechnics show even more spectacular than the one he did for the Beijing
Olympics. But we’ll take the first ferry the minute the show is over. Now, where should
we go?”

“I don’t know Singapore well at all anymore. If I was in Sydney right now, I’d be
heading to BBQ King for a late-night snack,” Sophie said.

“Oooh! BBQ King! I love that place! I think they have the best
siew ngarp
in the world!” Lauren declared.

“Aiyah, BBQ King is such a grease pit. Everyone knows that Four Seasons in London
has the best roast duck in the world!” Mandy countered.

“I’m with Lauren, I think BBQ wins hands down,” Francesca said.

“No, I find their roast duck too fatty. The duck at Four Seasons is
perfect
, because they raise the ducks on their own special organic farm. Nico would agree
with me—we used to go there
all
the time,” Mandy added with a flourish.

“Why do you call Nick ‘Nico’?” Rachel turned to Mandy, the curiosity finally getting
the better of her.

“Oh, when we were just teenagers, we spent one summer together on Capri. His auntie
Catherine, the Thai one, took a villa there. We would follow the sun all day—start
out sunbathing at the beach club by the Faraglioni rocks in the mornings, go swimming
in Grotta Verde after lunch, and end up at Il Faro beach for sunset. We got so brown,
and Nicky’s hair got so long—he looked practically Italian! That’s when the Italian
kids we made friends with started calling him
Nico
and I was his
Mandi
. Oooh, it was such a
glorious
time.”

“Sounds like it,” Rachel said lightly, ignoring Mandy’s blatant
attempt to make her jealous by resuming her conversation with Sophie.

Francesca leaned into Mandy’s ear. “Really, Mandy, I could have milked that story
way better. Your mother is right—you have lost your edge living in New York.”

“Go to hell, Francesca. I don’t see you doing any better,” Mandy said through gritted
teeth as she got up from the table. She was fed up with the pressure coming at her
from all sides, and wished she’d never agreed to come back. The girls looked up as
Mandy stormed off.

Francesca shook her head slowly and gave Rachel a look. “Poor Mandy is so conflicted.
She doesn’t know what she wants anymore. I mean, that was such a pathetic attempt
at inciting jealousy, wasn’t it?”

For once, Rachel had to agree with Francesca. “It didn’t work, and I don’t understand
why she keeps trying to make me jealous. I mean, why would I care about what Nick
and her did when they were teenagers?”

Francesca burst out laughing. “Wait a minute, you thought she was trying to make
you
jealous?”

“Er … wasn’t that what she was doing?”

“No, honey, she’s not paying any attention to you. She was trying to make
me
jealous.”

“You?” Rachel asked, puzzled.

Francesca smirked. “Of course. That’s why she brought up the whole Capri story—I was
there that summer too, you know. Mandy’s never gotten over how into me Nick was when
we had our threesome.”

Rachel could feel her face get hot. Very hot. She wanted to bolt from the table but
her legs seemed to have turned to glue.

Sophie and Lauren stared at Francesca, mouths agape.

Francesca looked straight into Rachel’s face and kept on chattering lightly. “Oh,
does Nick still do that trick with the underside of his tongue? Mandy was far too
prissy to let him go down on her, but my God, on me he would stay down there
for hours
.”

Right then, Nick entered the banquet hall. “There you are! Why are you all sitting
in here like statues? The fireworks are about to start!”

99 Conduit Road

The elderly amah opened the door and broke out into a wide grin. “Hiyah, Astrid Leong!
Can it be?” she cried in Cantonese.

“Yes, Ah Chee—Astrid will be our guest for a few days. Will you please make sure no
one knows? And don’t go telling any of the other maids who she is—I don’t want them
carrying tales to my mother’s maids. This needs to remain
absolutely secret
, okay?” Charlie decreed.

“Yes, yes, of course, Charlieboy—now go and wash your hands,” Ah Chee said dismissively,
continuing to fuss over Astrid. “Hiyah, you are still so beautiful, I have dreamed
about you often over the years! You must be so tired, so hungry—it’s past three in
the morning. Let me go and wake the cook up to make you something to eat. Some chicken
congee maybe?”

“No need, Ah Chee. We came from a wedding banquet.” Astrid smiled. She could hardly
believe that Charlie’s childhood nanny was still looking after him after all these
years.

“Well, let me go make you some warm milk and honey. Or would you rather have Milo?
Charlieboy always likes that when he’s up late,” Ah Chee said, rushing off to the
kitchen.

“There’s no stopping Ah Chee, is there?” Astrid laughed. “I’m so glad you still have
her.”

“She won’t leave!” Charlie sputtered in exasperation. “I built her a house back in
China—hell, I built all her relatives houses, got a satellite dish for the village,
the whole nine yards, thinking she would want to return to China to retire. But I
think she’s much happier here bossing all the other maids around.”

“It’s very sweet of you to take care of her like that,” Astrid said. They stepped
into an expansive double-height living room that resembled the wing of a modern art
museum, with its row of bronze sculptures placed like sentinels in front of the floor-to-ceiling
windows. “Since when did you collect Brancusi?” she asked in surprise.

“Since you introduced me to him. Don’t you remember that exhibition you dragged me
to at the Pompidou?”

“Gosh, I’d almost forgotten,” Astrid said, gazing at the minimalist curves of one
of Brancusi’s golden birds.

“My wife, Isabel, is mad for the French Provençal look, so she hates my Brancusis.
They haven’t had an airing until I moved in here. I’ve turned this apartment into
a sort of refuge for my art. Isabel and the girls stay at our house on the Peak, and
I’m here in the Mid-Levels. I like it because I can just walk out my door, take the
escalator down to Central, and be at my office within ten minutes. Sorry it’s a bit
cramped—it’s just a small duplex.”

“It’s gorgeous, Charlie, and much larger than my flat.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. I’m in a three-bedroom off Clemenceau Avenue. You know that eighties
building across the street from the Istana?”

“What on earth are you doing living in that old teardown?”

“It’s a long story. Basically, Michael didn’t want to feel beholden to my dad. So
I agreed to live in a place he could afford.”

“I suppose that’s admirable, although I just can’t imagine how he could make you squeeze
into a pigeonhole for the sake of his pride,” Charlie huffed.

“Oh, I’m quite used to it. And the location is very convenient, just like here,” Astrid
said.

Charlie couldn’t help but wonder what sort of life Astrid had made for herself since
marrying this idiot. “Here, let me show you to your room,” Charlie said. They climbed
the sleek brushed-metal staircase and he showed her into a large, spartanly furnished
bedroom with topstitched beige suede walls and masculine gray flannel
bedding. The only decorative object was a photograph of two young girls in a silver
frame by the bedside. “Is this your bedroom?” she asked.

“Yes. Don’t worry, I’m going to sleep in my daughters’ room,” Charlie quickly added.

“Don’t be silly! I’ll take the girls’ room—I can’t make you give up your bedroom for
me—” Astrid began.

“No, no, I insist. You’ll be much more comfortable here. Try to get some sleep,” Charlie
said, closing the door gently before she could protest any more.

Astrid changed out of her clothes and lay down. She turned on her side and stared
out the floor-to-ceiling windows that perfectly framed the Hong Kong skyline. The
buildings were densely packed in this part of the city, staggered steeply on the mountainside
in sheer defiance of the terrain. She remembered how, when she had first visited Hong
Kong as a young girl, her aunt Alix had explained that the city’s
feng shui
was particularly good, because wherever you lived, the dragon mountain was always
behind you and the ocean was always in front of you. Even at this late hour, the city
was a riot of lights, with many of the skyscrapers illuminated in a spectrum of colors.
She tried to sleep, but she was still too wired from the past few hours—stealing away
from the wedding just as the fireworks show was starting, rushing home to pack a few
things, and now finding herself in the bedroom of Charlie Wu, the boy whose heart
she had broken. The boy who, strangely enough, had awakened her to another way of
life.

Astrid leaped onto the king-size bed at the Hôtel George V, sinking into the plush
feathertop mattress. “Ummmm … you need to lie down, Charlie. This is the most delicious
bed I’ve ever slept on! Why don’t we have beds like these at the Calthorpe? We really
ought to—the lumpy mattresses we have probably haven’t been changed since Elizabethan
times.”

“Astrid, we can enjoy the bed later,
lah
. We only have three hours left until the shops close! Come on, lazybones, didn’t
you sleep enough on the train?” Charlie cajoled. He couldn’t wait to show Astrid the
city he had come to know like the back of his hand. His mother and sisters had discovered
the world of high fashion in the decade
since his father had taken his tech company public, transforming the Wus almost overnight
from mere centi-millionaires to billionaires. In the early days, before they were
in the habit of chartering planes, Dad would buy up the entire first-class cabin of
Singapore Airlines, and the whole family would sweep through the capitals of Europe—staying
in the grandest hotels, eating at the restaurants with the most Michelin stars, and
indulging in limitless shopping. Charlie had grown up knowing his Buccellati from
his Boucheron, and he was eager to show this world to Astrid. He knew that—for all
her pedigree—Astrid had been brought up practically in a nunnery. The Leongs did not
eat in expensive restaurants—they ate food prepared by their cooks at home. They did
not favor dressing up in designer clothes, preferring to have everything made by their
family tailor. Charlie felt that Astrid had been far too stifled—all her life she
had been treated like a hothouse flower, when in fact she was a wildflower that was
never allowed to bloom fully. Now that they were eighteen and living together in London,
they were finally free of family confines, and he would dress her like the princess
she was, and she would be his forever.