Just then, Sister Gracie came walking down the lawn toward the bedroom pavilion with Carol and her husband trailing behind. She called out loudly, “Now, what demons lie in wait here? Exodus 20:3–6 says, ‘You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.’ ”

Daisy glanced at the other ladies and said urgently, “Everyone grab a shopping bag and run for the doors. Don’t look at them, just keep moving!”

* * *

* Singapore’s red-light district (sadly, not as picturesque as Amsterdam’s).

20

Villa d’Ora

SINGAPORE

Peik Lin sequestered Rachel and her mother in the library, shutting the boiserie doors behind her firmly. She then padded out to the terrace bar overlooking the pool and began mixing margaritas for herself and Nick. “I think we both deserve about a dozen of these, don’t we?” she said, handing him a tall frosty glass.

Surrounded by bookshelves filled with gold-tooled leather volumes, Rachel perched on the cushioned bay-window seat and stared out at the rose garden angrily. All she wanted to do was get on that plane to China, but once again Nick had screwed things up. Kerry grabbed one of the dark green leather chairs by the reading desk and turned it around so she could sit facing her daughter. Even though Rachel wouldn’t look at her, she took a deep breath and began the story she had flown halfway around the world to tell.

“Daughter, I have never told this story to anyone, and it is something I always intended to spare you from. I hope you will not judge me, and that you will listen with an open mind, an open heart.

“When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a man who was six years older. Yes, it was Zhou Fang Min. His family was from Xiamen, in Fujian Province. He was one of those ‘Red Princelings’ and he came from a rich family—at least, for that time period, they were considered rich. His father was the general manager of a state-owned construction company. He was well placed in the Communist Party, and one of his older brothers was a high-level party chief in Guangdong Province. So the Zhous received the concession to build the new school in our village, and Fang Min was sent to oversee the construction. It was his summer job. Back then, I was in my final year of secondary school and working nights as a waitress in the only bar in our village, so that is how I met him. Now, up till this time I had spent my entire life in this small village outside of Zhuhai. I had never even left our province, so you can only imagine what it was like when this twenty-three-year-old man with slick black hair came into the bar, dressed in Western-style clothes—I remember his shirts were all Sergio Tacchini or Fred Perry, and he wore a gold Rolex. What’s more, Fang Min had an expensive motorbike and chain-smoked Kent cigarettes smuggled into the country by one of his cousins, and he would brag to me about his family’s big house and big Japanese car, and tell me tales of his holidays in Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi’an. I had never met a more handsome or sophisticated man, and I fell head over heels in love. Of course, back then, I had very long hair and fair skin, so Fang Min took an interest in me.

“Now, when my parents heard that this rich man was coming to the bar every night, taking an interest in me, they tried to put a stop to it. My parents were not like other parents—they did not care that he came from a rich family; they wanted me to concentrate on my studies so I could qualify for university. It was so hard to get into university in those days, especially if you were a girl, and that was my parents’ sole dream—to have a child that got into university. But after so many years of being the perfect daughter and doing nothing but studying, I rebelled. Fang Min started taking me on his motorcycle in secret to Guangzhou, the biggest city in the province, and there I discovered a whole other world. I had no idea there was an entire class of people like Fang Min—the children of other high-ranking Communist Party members, who got to dine in special restaurants and shop in special stores. Fang Min treated me to expensive meals and expensive clothes. I became intoxicated by this world, and my parents noticed that, bit by bit, I was changing. When they found out he had taken me to Guangzhou, they forbid me to see him, which of course made me want to be with him even more. It was like Romeo and Juliet. I would sneak out of our flat late at night to meet him, get caught and punished, but a few days later I would do it again.

“Then, a few months later, when the construction project was finished and Fang Min was heading back to Xiamen, we made plans for me to run away with him. That’s why I never finished my studies. I ran away to Xiamen, and we quickly got married. My parents were devastated, but I thought all my dreams had come true. Here I was living in a big house with his rich and important parents, getting to ride in a big Nissan sedan that had white curtains on the back windows. See, Rachel, you are not the only one who has experience dating a rich boy. But my dream quickly turned sour. I soon found out how awful his family was. His mother was one of these extremely traditional women, and she was a northerner, from Henan. So she was very snobbish, and she never let me forget that I was just a village girl who got very, very lucky because of my looks. At the same time, I was expected to perform a million and one daughter-in-law duties, like preparing tea for her every morning, reading the newspapers to her, and rubbing her shoulders and feet after dinner every night. I had gone from being a student to being a servant. Then the pressure started for me to get pregnant, but I was having trouble conceiving. So it made my mother-in-law very upset—she wanted a grandchild desperately. What use was a daughter-in-law if you didn’t have a grandchild? Fang Min’s parents became very displeased that I wasn’t getting pregnant, and we started having big fights.

“I don’t know how I managed it, but I convinced Fang Min to move us to our own apartment. And that’s when things turned into a living nightmare. Without his parents under the same roof to check on him, my husband suddenly lost interest in me. He went out drinking and gambling every night and started seeing other women. It was as if he were still single, and he would come home late at night, completely drunk, and sometimes he wanted to have sex, but other times he just wanted to beat me up. It excited him. Then he would bring home other women to have sex in our bed, and he forced me to be with them. It was terrible.”

Rachel shook her head in dismay, making eye contact with her mother for the first time. “I don’t understand how you put up with that.”

“Hiyah, I was only eighteen! I was so naïve and afraid of my worldly husband, and most of all I was too humiliated to tell my parents what a mistake I’d made. After all, I had run away and abandoned them in order to marry this rich boy, so I had to make the best of it. Now, right underneath our apartment lived this family with one son. His name was Kao Wei, and he was a year younger than me. My bedroom happened to be right over his, so he could hear everything that was happening every night. One night, Fang Min came home in a rage. I’m not sure what made him so angry on this night—maybe he lost some money gambling, maybe one of his girlfriends got mad at him. Anyway, he decided to take it out on me. He began to break all the furniture in the apartment, and when he broke a chair and started coming after me with the jagged chair leg, I fled the apartment. I was so afraid that in his drunken rage he would accidentally kill me. Kao Wei heard me leaving, so as I ran down the stairs, he opened his door and pulled me into his flat, while Fang Min ran outside of the building and began screaming in the street. That is how Kao Wei and I met.