“Uncle Philip, Auntie Elle, let me be very frank. Three days ago, when I was with Ah Ma in her bedroom, I told her that Nicky was on his way home. I thought it would soothe her to know that he was coming to make amends, but instead she got so upset that she went into cardiac arrest. Auntie Victoria was right there when it happened. We almost lost her that day.”

“Well, that was three days ago. I’m going up to see my mother now. She can tell me to my face if she doesn’t wish to see Nicky,” Philip insisted.

“You’re really going to put Ah Ma’s life at risk again?” Eddie said.

Philip stared contemptuously at his nephew, who was drenched in sweat, his clammy skin showing through in large blotches on the most unflattering areas of his white outfit. What a ridiculous boy he was, all dressed up like he was playing in a cricket match at Lord’s. He didn’t trust him for one second. “Eddie, let me worry about my mother. Perhaps you should be more concerned about your own children at the moment.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie swung around and saw his children standing by the ice-cream bar with their cousin Jake Moncur. Constantine, Augustine, and Kalliste were happily licking away at cones topped with double scoops of ice cream, oblivious to the ice cream melting down their hands and dripping all over their white linen outfits.

Eddie broke into a sprint toward them as he began screaming, “FI! FIONA! LOOK WHAT THE KIDS ARE DOING! I TOLD THEM NO ICE CREAM IN THEIR BRUNELLO CUCINELLI LINENS!”

Fiona Tung-Cheng, who was huddled in conversation with Piya Aakara and Cecilia Cheng Moncur, looked up for a brief moment. She rolled her eyes and went right back to talking with the ladies.

With Eddie urgently marching his three children off in search of Ah Ling and the head laundress, Nick took his place in the badminton game while his parents went into the house with Victoria. “She’s really not supposed to have any more visitors today,” Victoria muttered as she led Philip and Eleanor down the corridor toward Su Yi’s bedroom-cum-hospital suite.

“I’m not a visitor—I’m her son,” Philip shot back in annoyance.

Victoria fumed silently to herself. Yes, I know you are her son. Her only son. Mummy’s made this abundantly clear to me my entire life. Her precious only son gets special bird’s nest soup prepared for him every week all through his childhood while we girls only get it on our birthdays. Her only son has all his clothes tailor-made on Savile Row while we have to sew our own dresses. Her only son gets his own Jaguar convertible the minute he returns from university while the girls have to share one miserable Morris Minor. Her only son gets to marry whomever he wants no matter how common she is while every man I ever bring home is deemed “unsuitable.” Her only son abandons her to live out his Crocodile Dundee fantasies in Australia while I’m forced to stay here and take care of her in her old age. Her precious only son.

When they arrived at her mother’s sitting room, Victoria started interrogating the nurses while Philip and Eleanor went into the bedroom. Alix was sitting in the armchair by her mother’s bedside when they entered. “Oh, Gor Gor, you’re here. Mummy’s just fallen asleep. Her blood pressure was fluctuating too wildly, so they gave her a sedative.”

Philip looked down at his mother, suddenly shocked by her appearance. When he had last seen her at Christmas, barely five weeks ago, she was still climbing on the ladder to the top of her star-fruit trees. But now she seemed so small in the hospital bed, so lost in the tangle of tubes and machines surrounding her. All his life, she had seemed so strong, so invincible, he couldn’t even begin to fathom the possibility of her not being around.

“I think I’ll spend the night here with Mum,” he said in a quiet voice.

“There’s really no point. She’s going to sleep right through the night, and besides, her lady’s maids take turns to be with her all night long in case she wakes up. The nurses also come in to check on her every half hour. Come back tomorrow. She’s usually conscious for a few hours in the morning,” Alix said.

“It doesn’t matter if she’s asleep. I’ll stay with her,” Philip tried to insist.

“Are you sure? You look like you could use a little sleep yourself—” Alix began.

Eleanor agreed. “Yah, lah, you didn’t sleep much on your flight, did you? You look so run-down—I can see all the bags under your eyes. Let’s go home and come back early tomorrow.”

Philip finally relented. “Okay. But Alix, can you do me a favor? If Mummy wakes up anytime soon, will you tell her I was here?”

“Of course.” Alix smiled.

“And will you tell her Nicky was here too?” Philip pressed her.

Alix hesitated for a moment. She was concerned that any mention of Nicky would upset her mother again, but she also felt that her mother needed to mend her rift with him. It was the only way she would truly close her eyes in peace. “Let’s see. I’ll try my best, Gor Gor.”

* * *

*1 Hokkien for “Bengali dog shit.” However, Eleanor is technically wrong in her swearing, since Vikram—being a Gurkha—is Nepali, not Bengali. But to her, there are only two types of Indians: rich ones, like her friends the Singhs, and poor ones, like everybody else.

*2 National University of Singapore.

*3 Cantonese for “brother.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SURREY, ENGLAND

Anyone lucky enough to be a guest at Harlinscourt should wake in time to watch the sun rise above the gardens, Jacqueline Ling thought as she sipped the orange pekoe tea that had just been brought to her bedside on an exquisite bamboo tray. Propped up against four layers of goose-down pillows, she had the perfect view onto the pure symmetry of the box parterres, the majestic yew hedges beyond, and the morning mist rising over the Surrey Downs. It was these quiet moments before everyone began to assemble downstairs for breakfast that Jacqueline relished most during her frequent visits at the Shangs’.

In the rarefied stratosphere inhabited by Asia’s most elite families, it was said that the Shangs had abandoned Singapore. “They’ve become so grand they think they’re British” was the common refrain. Though it was true that Alfred Shang enjoyed a lifestyle that surpassed many a marquess at his six-thousand-hectare estate in Surrey, Jacqueline knew it would be a mistake to assume that he had transferred all his allegiances to queen and country. The simple truth was that over the decades, his three sons (all Oxbridge educated, naturally) had one by one taken English wives (all from appropriately aristocratic families, of course) and chosen to make their lives in England. So beginning in the early eighties, Alfred and his wife, Mabel, were compelled to spend greater parts of the year there—it was the only way they would get to see their children and grandchildren regularly.

Mabel, being the daughter of T’sien Tsai Tay and Rosemary Young T’sien, was far more Chinese in her ways than her husband, who was an Anglophile even before his Oxford days in the late 1950s. At Harlinscourt, Mabel set about creating a decadent domain that indulged her favorite aspects of East and West. To restore the nineteenth-century Venetian revival–style house built by Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur, Mabel coaxed the great Chinese decorative-arts historian Huang Pao Fan out of retirement to work alongside the legendary British decorator David Hicks.*1 The result was a ravishingly bold mix of modern European furnishings with some of the finest Chinese antiquities held in private hands.