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* Peranakan dessert cakes. These addictive, delicately flavored, and colorful kuehs, or cakes, usually made of rice flour and the distinctive pandan-leaf flavoring, are a beloved teatime staple in Singapore.

1

Astrid

SINGAPORE

Cassian was just being buttoned into his smart new Prussian-blue sailor suit when Astrid got a call from her husband.

“I have to work late and won’t make it in time for dinner at Ah Ma’s.”

“Really? Michael, you’ve worked late every single night this week,” Astrid said, trying to maintain a neutral tone.

“The whole team is staying late.”

“On a Friday night?” She didn’t mean to give away any indications of doubt, but the words came out before she could stop herself. Now that her eyes were wide open, the signs were all there—he had canceled on almost every family occasion over the past few months.

“Yes. I’ve told you before, this is how it is at a start-up,” Michael added warily.

Astrid wanted to call his bluff. “Well, why don’t you join us whenever you get off work? It’s probably going to be a late night. Ah Ma’s tan hua flowers are going to bloom tonight, and she’s invited some people over.”

“Even more reason for me not to be there. I’m going to be much too worn out.”

“Come on, it’s going to be a special occasion. You know it’s awfully good luck to witness the flowers bloom, and it will be so much fun,” Astrid said, struggling to keep the tone light.

“I was there the last time they bloomed three years ago, and I just don’t think I can deal with a big crowd tonight.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s going to be that big a crowd.”

“You always say that and then we get there and it turns out to be a sit-down dinner for fifty, and some bloody MP is there, or there’s some other sideshow distraction,” Michael complained.

“That’s not true.”

“Come on lah, you know it’s true. Last time we had to sit through a whole piano recital by that Ling Ling guy.”

“Michael, it’s Lang Lang, and you’re probably the only person in the world who doesn’t appreciate a private concert by one of the world’s top pianists.”

“Well, it was damn lay chay,* especially on a Friday night when I’m exhausted from the long week.”

Astrid decided that it wasn’t worth pushing him any further. He obviously had a thousand ready excuses not to be at dinner. What was he really up to? Was the texting slut from Hong Kong suddenly in town? Was he going to hook up with her?

“Okay, I’ll tell the cook to make you something when you get home. What do you feel like eating?” she offered cheerily.

“No, no, don’t bother. I’m sure we’ll be ordering food here.”

A likely story. Astrid hung up the phone reluctantly. Where was he going to order the food? From room service at some cheap hotel in Geylang? There was no way he could meet this girl at a decent hotel—someone was bound to recognize him. She remembered a time not long ago when Michael would be so sweetly apologetic for missing any family occasion. He would say soothing things like, “Honey, I’m soooo sorry I can’t make it. Are you sure you’ll be okay going on your own?” But that gentler side of him had dissipated. When exactly did that happen? And why had it taken her so long to notice the signals?

Ever since that day at Stephen Chia Jewels, Astrid had experienced a catharsis of sorts. In some perverse way, she was relieved to have proof of her husband’s unfaithfulness. It was the uncertainty of it all—the cloak-and-dagger suspicions—that had been killing her. Now she could, as a psychologist might say, “learn to accept and learn to adapt.” She could concentrate on the bigger picture. Sooner or later the fling would be over and life would go on, as it did for the millions of wives who quietly endured their husbands’ infidelities since time immemorial.

There would be no need for fights, no hysterical confrontations. That would be much too cliché, even though every silly thing her husband had done could have come straight out of one of those “Is My Husband Cheating on Me?” quizzes from some cheesy women’s magazine: Has your husband been going on more business trips lately? Check. Are you making love less frequently? Check. Has your husband incurred mysterious expenses with no explanation? Double check. She could add a new line to the quiz: Is your husband getting text messages late at night from some girl proclaiming to miss his fat cock? CHECK. Astrid’s head was beginning to spin again. She could feel her blood pressure rise. She needed to sit down for a minute and take a few deep breaths. Why had she missed yoga all week, when she so badly needed to release the tension that had been building up? Stop. Stop. Stop. She needed to put all this out of her mind and just be in the moment. Right now, in this moment, she needed to get ready for Ah Ma’s party.

Astrid noticed her reflection in the glass coffee table and decided to change her outfit. She was wearing an old favorite—a gauzy black tunic dress by Ann Demeulemeester, but she felt like she needed to turn up the volume tonight. She was not going to let Michael’s absence ruin her night. She was not going to spend one more second thinking about where he could possibly be going, what he might or might not be doing. She was determined that this would be a magical night of wild blooming flowers under the stars, and that only good things would happen. Good things always happened at Ah Ma’s.

She went into the spare bedroom, which had basically become an extra closet for her overflow of clothes (and this didn’t even include the rooms upon rooms of clothes she still kept at her parents’ house). The space was filled with metal rolling racks on which garment bags of outfits had been meticulously organized by season and color, and Astrid had to move one of the racks into the hallway in order to fit comfortably into the room. This apartment was much too tiny for the family of three (four if you counted the nanny, Evangeline, who slept in Cassian’s room), but she had made the best of it for the sake of her husband.

Most of Astrid’s friends would have been utterly horrified to discover the conditions in which she lived. To the majority of Singaporeans, a spacious two-thousand-square-foot, three-bedroom condo with two and a half baths and a private balcony in District Nine would be a cherished luxury, but for Astrid, who had grown up in such palatial surroundings as her father’s stately house on Nassim Road, the modernist weekend beach bungalow in Tanah Merah, the vast family plantation in Kuantan, and her grandmother’s Tyersall Park estate, it was totally unfathomable.

As a wedding gift, her father had planned to commission an up-and-coming Brazilian architect to build the newlyweds a house in Bukit Timah on land that had already been deeded to Astrid, but Michael would have none of that. He was a proud man and insisted on living in a place that he could afford to purchase. “I am capable of providing for your daughter and our future family,” he had informed his stunned future father-in-law, who instead of being impressed by the gesture, found it rather foolhardy. How was this fellow ever going to afford the kind of place his daughter was accustomed to on his salary? Michael’s meager savings would barely even get them a down payment on a private flat, and Harry found it inconceivable that his daughter might live in government-subsidized housing. Why couldn’t they at the very least just move into one of the houses or luxury apartments that she already owned? But Michael was adamant that he and his wife begin their life on neutral territory. In the end, a compromise was struck and Michael agreed to let both Astrid and her father match what he was able to put in as a down payment. The combined amount allowed them a thirty-year fixed mortgage on this condo in an eighties-era apartment complex off Clemenceau Avenue.