“You know what, it’s so late, I probably should go straight to the house. I’m sure there will be food for us there. With everyone in town, I think Ah Ching’s kitchen staff must be churning out food nonstop.”

“No problem. Tyersall Park, coming right up! I’m just going to visualize a hundred sticks of satay awaiting me there. You know, not to push you in any way, but I like your grandmother. She’s always been good to me. Remember how I ran away from home after my stepmonster threatened to ship me off to boarding school in Tasmania, and your grandma let us hide out in the tree house at Tyersall Park?”

“Yeah! And every morning, she would make the cook send a big basket full of breakfast goodies up to the tree,” Nick added.

“That’s what I mean! All my associations with your grandma revolve around food. I’ll never forget the chee cheong fun and char siew baos delivered on those bamboo trays, and the freshly baked roti prata! We were feasting like kings up there! When I finally got sent home, I wanted to find any excuse I could to run away to that little tree house again. Our cook was nothing compared to yours!”

“Haha! I remember you ran away from home so many times.”

“Yep. My stepmonster made life so miserable. You only ran away once, if I remember correctly.”

Nick nodded as the memory began to unfurl in his mind, taking him back to when he was eight years old…

They had been in the middle of dinner, just the three of them. His father, mother, and him, eating in the breakfast room off the kitchen, as they did when his parents weren’t entertaining guests in the formal dining room. He could even remember what they ate that night. Bak ku teh. He had poured too much of the rich, aromatic broth over his rice, making it too watery for his liking, but his mother had insisted he finish his bowl before she would let him redo it. She was more irritable than usual—it seemed like both his parents had been so tense for days now.

Someone came speeding up the driveway, too fast, and instead of parking by the front porch like all the guests would, the car kept going until it reached the back of the house, stopping just behind the garage. Nick looked out the window and saw Auntie Audrey, his parents’ good friend, emerging from her Honda Prelude. He liked Auntie Audrey, she always made the most delicious nyonya kuey. Was she bringing something yummy for dessert tonight? She came bursting through the back door, and Nick saw immediately that Auntie Audrey’s face was puffy and bruised, her lip bleeding. The sleeve from her blouse was torn, and she looked totally dazed.

“Alamak, Audrey! What happened?” His mother gasped, as several maids came rushing into the room.

Audrey ignored her, staring instead at his father, Philip. “Look what my husband did to me! I wanted you to see what the monster did to me!”

His mother rushed to Auntie Audrey’s side. “Desmond did this? Oh my dear!”

“Don’t touch me!” Audrey cried out as she crumpled to the floor.

His father stood up from the table. “Nicky, upstairs now!”

“But Dad—”

“NOW!” his father shouted.

Ling Jeh rushed to Nick’s side and steered him out of the dining room.

“What is happening? Is Auntie Audrey okay?” Nick asked worriedly.

“Don’t worry about her, let’s go to your room. I’ll play dominoes with you,” his nanny replied in her soothing Cantonese as she rushed him up the stairs.

They sat there in his bedroom for about fifteen minutes. Ling Jeh had laid out the dominoes, but he was too distracted by the sounds coming from downstairs. He could hear muffled shouts and a woman weeping. Was it his mum or Auntie Audrey? He ran out to the landing and overheard Auntie Audrey shouting, “Just because you are Youngs, you think you can go around fucking anyone you want?”

He couldn’t believe his ears. He had never heard an adult use the f word like that. What did this mean?

“Nicky, come back into the room at once!” Ling Jeh yelled, pulling him back into his bedroom. She shut the door tightly and began rushing around, hurriedly shutting the jalousie windows and turning on the air conditioner. Suddenly the familiar tock, tock sound of an old taxi could be heard laboring up the steep driveway. Nick rushed to the veranda and leaning out he could see that it was Uncle Desmond—Auntie Audrey’s husband—stumbling out of the taxi. His father came outside, and he could hear the both of them arguing in the dark, Uncle Desmond pleading, “She’s lying! It’s all lies, I’m telling you!” while his father murmured something and then suddenly, forcefully, raised his voice. “Not in my house. NOT IN MY HOUSE!”

At some point he must have fallen asleep. He woke up, not knowing what time it was. Ling Jeh had left the room, and the air conditioner had been turned off but the jalousie windows were still closed. It felt stiflingly hot. He cracked open the door carefully and saw across the hallway the line of light underneath the door to his parents’ bedroom. Did he dare leave his room? Or would they be shouting at each other again? He didn’t want to hear them fighting—he knew he wasn’t supposed to hear them. He was feeling thirsty, so he walked out to the landing where there was a refrigerator that was always stocked with ice and a jug of water. As he opened the fridge and stood in front of it, feeling the cool draft against his body, he heard sobs coming from his parents’ bedroom. Creeping over to their door, he could hear his mother suddenly scream, “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare! You’ll see your name splashed over the front pages tomorrow.”

“Lower your voice!” his father shouted back angrily.

“I’m going to ruin your precious name, I tell you! What I’ve had to put up with all these years from your family! I’m going to run. I’ll run off with Nicky to America and you’ll never see him again!”

“I’ll kill you if you take my son!”

Nicky could feel his heart pounding. He had never heard his parents this angry before. He rushed into his bedroom, stripped off his pajamas, and threw on a T-shirt and his soccer shorts. He took out all the ang pow money he had saved in his little metal safe box—$790—and grabbed his silver flashlight, tucking it into the waistband of his shorts. He went out the door leading onto the veranda, where a large guava tree arched over the second floor. He grasped hold of one of the thick branches, swung onto the tree trunk, and quickly shimmied down to the ground, as he had done hundreds of times.

Jumping onto his ten-speed bicycle, he raced out of the garage and down Tudor Close. He could hear the Alsatians at his neighbor’s house begin to bark, and it made him cycle even faster. He sped down the long slope of Harlyn Road until he reached Berrima Road. At the second house on the right, he stopped in front of the tall steel electronic gate and looked around. The concrete fence had glass spikes at the top, but he wondered whether he could still climb it, holding on to the edges and propelling himself quickly enough that he wouldn’t get cut. He was still out of breath from his escape. A Malay guard came out of the sentry box next to the gate, astonished to see a boy standing there at two in the morning.

“What do you want, boy?”

It was the night guard who didn’t know him. “I need to see Colin. Can you tell him Nicky is here?”