“Okay.” Evie nodded, gaping at the elegant colonnade of palm trees leading to the most majestic house she had ever seen, getting more nervous by the second.

“And just avoid making any eye contact with her Thai ladies-in-waiting. Great-auntie Su Yi always has these two maids standing by her side who will give you the evil eye,” Eric remarked.

“Oh God—”

“Aiyah, stop scaring the poor girl,” Lillian May scoffed. As the family emerged from their cars and prepared to enter the house, Geraldine whispered a final warning to her mother. “Remember…DO NOT bring up Nicky again. You almost caused Auntie Su Yi to have a stroke last year when you asked where he was.”

“What makes you think Nicky won’t be here this year?” Lillian May asked as she crouched down by the Mercedes’s side mirror to rearrange the elaborate wisps of hair cascading down her neck.

Geraldine glanced around quickly before continuing. “Aiyah, you don’t even know the latest! Monica Lee told me that her niece Parker Yeo heard the most sensational tidbit from Teddy Lim: Apparently, Nicky’s all set to marry that girl next month. Instead of a grand wedding here they are getting married in California on a beach! Can you imagine?”

“Hiyah—what a disgrace! Poor Su Yi. And poor Eleanor. What a loss of face—all her efforts to position Nicky as the most favored grandson have been dashed.”

“Remember, Mummy, um ngoi hoi seh, ah.^*3 Don’t say anything!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say a thing to Su Yi,” Lillian May promised. She was glad to be here at Tyersall Park at last, in this oasis of splendor far removed from the garish New Year kitsch that adorned the rest of the island. To Lillian, there was this sense of being in an enchanted time warp the moment she passed through the front door. It was a house that adhered only to the traditions decreed by its exacting chatelaine, transforming for the festive season in its own subtle ways. The white phalae-nopsis orchids that usually greeted visitors on the ancient stone table in the foyer were replaced by a towering arrangement of pink peonies. Upstairs in the drawing room, a twenty-foot-long calligraphy scroll bearing a New Year poem by Xu Zhimo—composed in tribute to Su Yi’s late husband, Sir James Young—would be unfurled against the silver- and lapis-inlaid wall, and the white voile curtains that usually flapped against the veranda doors would be swapped for watered-silk panels in the palest shimmering rose.

In the sun-soaked conservatory, the New Year tea ritual was just beginning. Su Yi, resplendent in a high-necked turquoise silk charmeuse dress and a single opera-length strand of cultured pearls, sat on a cushioned wicker chair by the French doors with her trusty Thai lady’s maids standing solemnly behind her, while three of her middle-aged children stood in a row before her like school kids waiting to turn in their homework. Felicity and Victoria watched as their brother, Philip, ceremoniously offered the little teacup to his mother with both hands and formally offered wishes of good health and prosperity. After Su Yi took a sip of the oolong tea infused with dried red dates, it was Eleanor’s turn. As Eleanor began pouring the steaming liquid from the ornately carved Qing dragon teapot, the first guests of the morning could be heard arriving.