Fifteen seconds later, Astrid’s cell phone rang. It was Charlie calling, so she picked it up and mischievously answered, “Housekeeping?”

“Er, yes, I need someone to come deal with a big problem in my room right now,” Charlie responded, not missing a beat.

“What kind of problem?”

“These cake fetishists had a party in my room, and there are about thirty crushed cakes from Lana Cake Shop all over the carpet, smeared on the walls, on the bed. It looks like people have been rolling around in the cake and frosting, trying out different Kama Sutra positions.”

Astrid giggled. “Sicko! Where do you come up with this kind of stuff?”

“I was surfing the web last night and came across this article on people who get turned on by sitting on cakes.”

“I’m not going to ask what sort of websites you’ve been surfing in Hong Kong—no doubt ones that would be blocked in Singapore.”

“And I’m not going to ask why you’re sitting in a room at Marina Bay Sands, of all places!”

Astrid sighed. “There are very few hotels where I can be sure no one will recognize me. MBS is one of those—it’s mainly tourists.”

“No locals? Really?”

“No one I would know, anyway. When they first opened, my mother tried to go up to the SkyPark with Mrs. Lee Yong Chien and the Queen Mother of Borneo to see the view, but when they found out there was a twenty-dollar entry fee for seniors, Mrs. LYC said, ‘Ah nee kwee! Wah mai chut!’^*1 So they ended up going to Toast Box in the mall instead.”

Charlie laughed. “You can’t change those women! It’s funny—my mother used to be so extravagant, but the older she gets, the more she seems to be turning into an obsessive tightwad. You know she won’t let her cooks turn on the lights in the kitchen until seven thirty now? I go over there and they are bumbling around in complete darkness, trying to make dinner for her.”

“That’s crazy! When we go to restaurants nowadays, my mum gets them to tah pow^*2 leftover gravy from the dishes. I kid you not. I tell her she’s insane and she says, ‘We paid for it! Why waste all this great gravy? Rosie can put it into tomorrow’s lunch and it will taste so much better!’ ”

Charlie chuckled. “So really, how long are you planning to hide out at the hotel?”

“I’m not hiding. I’m just taking a little break. Cassian and his nanny are with me, and he’s loving the SkyPark pool.”

“You know, the husband is the one that’s supposed to leave. Whenever I got into really bad fights with Isabel, I would either go over to my brother’s or get a hotel room. I couldn’t ever imagine making my wife and children leave the house.”

“Well, you’re a different species than Michael. Besides, he didn’t make me leave. I chose to leave. He got so angry that he began getting physical.”