“Alamaaaaaaak! Fifty million dollars and I can’t even flush the toilet!” Nadine screeched as she entered the breakfast room.

“What do you expect, when everything is so bloody high-tech?” Lorena laughed. “Did the toilet at least help you suay kah-cherng?”^*2

“No, lah! I waved and waved at all the stupid sensors but nothing happened!” Feeling defeated, Nadine plopped down into an ultramodern chair that appeared to be constructed out of a tangled pile of red velvet ropes.

“I don’t want to criticize, but I think this apartment of your daughter’s is not only hideously modern, it’s hideously overpriced,” Daisy commented between bites of toast topped with pork floss.

“Aiyah, she’s paying for the name and the location, nothing more,” Eleanor sniffed. “Personally, I would have chosen a unit with a nice view of Hyde Park, rather than the view facing Harvey Nichols.”

“You know my Francesca, lah! She could care less about the park—she wants to fall asleep staring at her favorite department store! Thank God she finally married someone who can pay her overdraft.” Nadine sighed.

The ladies kept quiet. Things hadn’t been easy for Nadine ever since her father-in-law, Sir Ronald Shaw, woke up from a six-year coma and turned off the money spigot on his family’s free spending. Her profligate daughter, Francesca (once voted one of the Fifty Best Dressed Women by Singapore Tattle), did not respond well to being put on a clothing budget, and decided that her best solution was to embark on a brazen affair with Roderick Liang (of the Liang Finance Group Liangs), who had only just married Lauren Lee. Singapore’s social set was scandalized, and Lauren’s grandmother, the formidable Mrs. Lee Yong Chien, retaliated by making sure every old-guard family in Southeast Asia shut their doors firmly on the Shaws and the Liangs. In the end, a severely chastened Roderick chose to crawl back to his wife rather than run off with Francesca.

Finding herself a social pariah, Francesca fled to England and quickly landed on her feet by marrying “some Iranian Jew with half a billion dollars.”^*3 Since moving into 2 Hyde Park, the obscenely expensive luxury condominium backed by the Qatari royal family, she was finally on speaking terms with her mother again. Naturally, this gave the ladies an excuse to visit the newlyweds, but of course they just wanted to check out the much-publicized apartment and, more important, have a free place to stay.^*4

As the women discussed the day’s shopping agenda, Eleanor launched into her white lie. “I can’t go shopping this morning—I’m meeting those boooring Shangs for breakfast. I need to see them at least once while I am here, or else they will be terribly insulted.”

“You shouldn’t have told them you were coming,” Daisy chided.

“Alamak, you know that Cassandra Shang will find out sooner or later! It’s like she has some special radar, and if she knew I was in England and didn’t pay my respects to her parents, I would never hear the end of it. What to do, lah? This is the curse of being married to the Youngs,” Eleanor said, pretending to bemoan her situation. In reality, even though she had been married to Philip Young for more than three decades, his cousins—“the Imperial Shangs,” as they were known to all—had never extended her any courtesies. If Philip had come with her, they would surely have been invited to the Shangs’ palatial estate in Surrey, or at the very least to dinner in town, but whenever Eleanor came to England on her own, the Shangs remained as silent as tombs.