“Come on, I have a right to know!”
“Yes, but you have no right to sabotage his wedding.”
“I’m not going to sabotage anything! You have to tell me! I’M HIS MOTHER, DAMN IT!” Eleanor exploded, forgetting where she was. The shocked pianist stopped playing, and suddenly all eyes in the room were on them. Astrid could see that even her grandmother was peering over in their direction with displeasure.
Astrid pursed her lips, refusing to say anything.
Eleanor looked at her sharply. “This is unbelievable!”
“No, what’s unbelievable is how you can expect Nicky to want you anywhere near his wedding,” Astrid said, her voice shaking, before she stalked off.
• • •
Three weeks before the New Year, the chefs from the Young, Shang, and T’sien households would gather at Tyersall Park’s cavernous kitchen to begin the marathon production of New Year delicacies. Marcus Sim, the Shang family’s acclaimed pastry chef based at their estate in England, would fly in to prepare all manner of nyonya desserts—rainbow-hued kueh lapis, delicately sculpted ang koo kueh, and of course, his famous kueh bangkit cookies with Marcona almonds. Ah Lian, the T’siens’ longtime cook, would supervise the team responsible for the labor-intensive preparation of pineapple tarts, sinfully sweet nien gao, and savory tsai tao kueh radish cakes. And Ah Ching, the chef at Tyersall Park, would oversee the New Year’s Day luncheon where a gigantic baked ham (with her famous pineapple brandy sauce) would make its annual appearance.
But for the first time in as many years as she could remember, Eleanor did not enjoy her lunch. She hardly touched any of the ham that Geraldine Tan proclaimed to be “even juicier than last year’s,” and she couldn’t even face her favorite neen gao. She loved the way the sticky-rice-flour dessert cake was prepared here—cut into half-moon slices, dipped in egg batter, and fried to a golden brown so that the outer layer of the cake was light and crisp, yet sweet and gooey the minute you bit into it. But today, she just didn’t have the appetite for anything. Following strict seating protocol, she was trapped next to Bishop See Bei Sien, and she glared at her husband on the other side of the table who was tucking into another helping of ham as he chatted with the bishop’s wife. How could he eat at a time like this? An hour ago, she had asked Philip whether he had heard anything regarding Nicky and a wedding, and he had shocked her by saying, “Of course.”
“WHAAAT? Why didn’t you tell me, lah?”
“There was nothing to tell. I knew we weren’t going to go.”
“What do you mean? TELL ME EVERYTHING!” Eleanor demanded.
“Nicky called me in Sydney and asked me if I wanted to come to his wedding. I asked if you were invited, and he said no. So I told him, Good luck chap, but I won’t be coming if your mother doesn’t,” Philip calmly explained.
“Where is the wedding? When is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alamak! How can you not know when he invited you?”
Philip sighed. “I didn’t think to ask. It wasn’t relevant since we weren’t going.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the conversation in the first place?”
“Because I knew you were going to be unreasonable about it.”
“You are a moron! An absolute moron!” Eleanor screeched.
“See, I knew you were going to be unreasonable.”
Eleanor played with her braised noodles, seething on the inside as she pretended to listen to the bishop complain about some pastor’s wife who was spending millions trying to become a famous pop star. At the children’s table, Cassian’s au pair was trying to coax him into finishing his lunch. ?
??I don’t want noodles! I want ice cream!” the boy fussed.
“It’s Chinese New Year. No ice cream for you today,” his au pair said firmly.
Suddenly, an idea came to Eleanor. She whispered to one of the serving maids, “Can you please tell Ah Ching that I have a sore throat from all this heaty food and I’m desperately craving some ice cream?”
“Ice cream, ma’am?”
“Yes, any flavor. Anything you might have in the kitchen. But don’t bring it to me here—I’ll meet you in the library.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, after having paid off Cassian’s au pair with five crisp hundred-dollar bills, Eleanor was sitting at the black lacquered scholar’s table in the library, watching the little boy devour an ice-cream sundae out of a large silver bowl.
“Cassian, when your mummy is away, you just tell Ludivine to call me, and my driver will come and pick you up and take you for ice cream anytime you like,” Eleanor said.