“Near those old wooden houses?” Neena asked.
“Yes, but this wasn’t one of the colonial houses. The architecture was very unusual, sort of Orientalist, and the gardens were unbelievable—probably around fifty acres or more.”
“Bullshit, lah!” Wye Mun said.
“Papa, I’m telling you—the property was immense. It was like the Istana. The driveway itself went on for miles.”
“Cannot be! Two or three acres I might believe, but fifty? No such thing, lah.”
“It was fifty acres at least, probably more. I thought I was dreaming. I thought I was in another country.”
“Lu leem ziew, ah?”† Neena looked at her daughter in concern. Peik Lin ignored her.
“Show me,” Wye Mun said, his interest piqued. “Let’s see it on Google Earth.” They walked over to the computer desk in the corner, pulled up the program, and Peik Lin began searching for the place. As they zoomed in on the topographical screen, she immediately noticed something amiss in the satellite image.
“Look, Papa—this whole patch is empty! You think it’s part of the Botanic Gardens, but it’s not. This is where the house is. But why are there no images? It doesn’t appear on Google Earth at all! And my GPS couldn’t find the address either.”
Wye Mun stared at the screen. The place his daughter claimed to have seen was literally a black hole on the map. It did not officially exist. How very strange.
“Who is this fellow’s family?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But there were a lot of VIP cars in the driveway. I saw quite a few diplomatic license plates. Old Rolls-Royces, vintage Daimlers, that type of car. These people must be loaded beyond belief. Who do you think they are?”
“I can’t think of anyone specifically who lives in this area.” Wye Mun ran the cursor over the perimeter of the blacked-out area. His family had been in the property development and construction business in Singapore for more than forty years, but he had never come across anything like this. “Wah, this is prime, prime land—right in the middle of the island. The value would be incalculable. Cannot be one property, lah!”
“Yes it is, Papa. I saw it with my own eyes. And supposedly Nick’s grandmother grew up there. It’s her house.”
“Make Rachel find out the grandma’s name. And the grandpa. We need to know who these people are. How can one person own this much private land in one of the most crowded cities in the world?”
“Wah, it looks like Rachel Chu has hit jackpot. I hope she marries this guy!” Neena chimed in from her recliner.
“Aiyah, who cares about Rachel Chu? Peik Lin, you go after him!” Wye Mun declared.
Peik Lin grinned at her father, and began texting Rachel.
Wye Mun patted his wife on her shoulder. “Come, call the driver. Let’s take a drive down Tyersall Road. I want to see this place for myself.”
They decided to take the Audi SUV in an effort to be as inconspicuous as possible. “See, I think this is where the property actually begins,” Peik Lin noted as they turned onto the curving, densely wooded road. “I think all this on the left side is the southern boundary of the land.” When they reached the gray iron gates, Wye Mun made the driver stop the car for a minute. The place looked completely deserted. “See, you wouldn’t think there’s anything here. It looks like some old section of the Botanic Gardens. There’s another guard house farther down this road, a high-tech one manned by Gurkha guards,” Peik Lin explained. Wye Mun stared down the unlit, overgrown road, completely fascinated. He was one of Singapore’s leading property developers, and he knew every square inch of land on the island. Or at least he thought he did.
* * *
* Hokkien for “big house.”
† Hokkien for “Have you been drinking?”
4
Rachel and Nick
TYERSALL PARK
“The tan huas are coming into bloom!” Ling Cheh announced excitedly to everyone on the terrace. As the guests began to head back in through the conservatory, Nick pulled Rachel aside. “Here, let’s take a shortcut,” he said. Rachel followed him through a side door, and they wandered down a long hallway, past many darkened rooms that she longed to peek into. When Nick led her through an arch at the end of the passage, Rachel’s jaw dropped in disbelief.
They were no longer in Singapore. It was as if they had stumbled onto a secret cloister deep within a Moorish palace. The vast courtyard was enclosed on all sides but completely open to the sky. Elaborately carved columns lined the arcades around its perimeter, and an Andalusian fountain protruded from the stone wall, spouting a stream of water from a lotus blossom sculpted out of rose quartz. Overhead, hundreds of copper lanterns had been meticulously strung across the courtyard from the second-floor walkway, each flickering with candlelight.
“I wanted to show you this place while it was still empty,” Nick said in a hushed voice, pulling Rachel into an embrace.
“Pinch me, please. Is any of this real?” Rachel whispered as she looked into Nick’s eyes.