I got off just behind the Shangri-la Hotel as I didn’t want to get stuck in the tight squeeze of cars. The taxi driver appreciated it too and raised his eyebrows as I asked him to keep the change.

There was a crowd and the sharp click-clack of handmade heels. Expensive cars purring in a row, all inching towards the valet. Women in designer clothes, sequined tight-tight skirts, expensive glittery clutch bags, guys with slicked-back hair and straight backs.

Karin was my age, 26, and had recently married Cleo Magazine’s most eligible bachelor of the year. The wedding was a no-expense-spared glittery weekend affair at the Carcosa. A colonial-style extravaganza of white and gold; guests partied on the hotel greens, drinking from gold-embossed champagne flutes under tents that had twisty gold minarets, tulle from chandeliers, lilies everywhere. The cake was a five-tier frosted dream—it was the most delicious vanilla butter—and guests stayed on partying at the Long Bar till dawn.

I’d known Karin since we were kids at Methodist Kindergarten in Petaling Jaya. Her German father and Cantonese mother lived three doors down from our street in Section 5, and we had grown up together. Karin, beautiful, long-limbed and sleek like a gazelle, with bouncy copper curls and piercing blue-grey eyes. She was on the cover of every magazine in town, and one of the most sought-after models in Malaysia and Singapore. And she had married Kai, who was also of mixed blood—Malay-Irish—and they were KL’s celebrity couple of the moment. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kai and Karin.

Karin’s father was a structural engineer and had travelled frequently around the region. One night he showed up with a skinny Thai woman at their door and asked Karin and her sister to call her “Big Sister”.

Karin’s mother, Aunty Kim, diminutive and ferocious in her humiliation, screamed at her husband and his “slut” so loudly that the entire street had heard her. What proceeded were the most filthy indignities in English, German and Cantonese I had heard in my twelve years.

I remember seeing Karin huddling next to her Indonesian maid by the metal gate, her face pale with fright. She wore pink pyjamas and clutched a teddy bear. I didn’t see tears, but I imagined them streaming down her cheeks.

Karin’s dad disappeared after that and Aunty Kim took to drinking until she met a nice Indian doctor at the Polo Club, and later married him. Karin had meanwhile become the most scandalous and envied girl at Assunta Convent; she was gorgeous, smart and the school’s top athlete.

And we were friends. I was three inches shorter, rounder, flat-nosed and pimply, and three shades darker than her honey-alabaster skin. But you have SO much character, Del. At least one of us has that.