*9 Cantonese for “This lousy girl is useless.” (A refrain heard by Cantonese daughters since the beginning of time.)
CHAPTER FIVE
PULAU CLUB, SINGAPORE
Godfrey Loh, the esteemed Supreme Court justice, could not believe what he was hearing in the stall next to his in the men’s room of the Pulau Club.
“Yeah, that’s so hot. Fucky fuck! I need a close-up. Send me a close-up, pleeeease.”
What in God’s name was happening?
“Wait a minute. The pic is still downloading—Wi-Fi’s terrible in here. Oh my God…I’m looking at it now. Phwoar! So…fucking…sexy!”
Someone is looking at dirty pictures on his phone right next to me! But who is it? Sounds like a Hong Kong accent. No wonder, all the men in Hong Kong are perverts. That’s what you get from a country when you can buy filthy magazines right in the airport!
“Looks like it’s dripping wet. It’s so beautiful I want to lick it all over! Come on, come on, I’m ready for it now!”
Is this creep actually engaging in phone sex in the next stall? Godfrey had heard enough. He emerged from the cubicle hurriedly and went over to the sink, washing his hands furiously with twice the amount of soap he would normally use. He felt dirty all over just listening to that heavy breather in the stall.
“I want to slip my whole foot inside.”
He wants to do WHAT with his foot? This man should be arrested. Godfrey banged his fist against the stall door and said loudly, “You are a degenerate! A complete disgrace to this esteemed club! Take your dirty business elsewhere! Not in our toilets!”
Inside the cubicle, Eddie looked up from his phone, completely mystified. “Sorry, I have no idea what that was about. Some ranting weirdo—Singapore’s full of them. Anyway, when will this last coat dry? Stop teasing me, Carlo. I need these shoes now!”
“Just a few more days. We are waiting for this latest coat of varnish to dry, and then we’re going to add one more. Once the patina is perfect, we can overnight them to you in Singapore,” Carlo replied.
“My uncle Taksin—you know, he’s a Thai prince—I can’t wait for him to see me in these. Taksin started wearing bespoke Lobbs when he was five years old. Nobody else will appreciate them like he would,” Eddie said as he gazed longingly at the picture of his new custom-made Marini shoes. These tasseled loafers were glazed a deep lapis blue, a process that took up to four weeks to achieve in Marini’s Rome atelier, and the shoemaker, Carlo, had been sending him teaser photos of the progress all through the month.
“You will have them by this weekend,” Carlo promised.
Eddie ended his call, pulled up his pants, flushed the toilet, and walked back to the Lookout—the casual eatery with sweeping views of the nature reserve where Singapore’s oldest and most exclusive country club was situated.* Returning to the table where members of his extended family had gathered for a luncheon hosted by his aunt Felicity, he asked his wife, Fiona, “Did you order me the beef satay and the chicken rice?”
“No one’s ordered yet,” Fiona replied, giving him a strange frown. It was then that Eddie noticed that no one at the table was talking, but all eyes were on Felicity. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears, and his mother, Alix, was busily fanning her with a menu.
“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 s
peaking 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?