Aunty Lee's Delights Read Online Free Page B

beer to wine, but he was expected to maintain certain standards here in Singapore and he tried to live up to those expectations. He guessed the old Caucasian couple coming slowly along the five-foot way peering into shop windows and squinting at shop numbers had signed on for the same event at Aunty Lee’s Delights as he had. They looked like retirees who were traveling to see the world and had chosen Singapore as their first stop because of its clean, safe, English-speaking reputation. Both with fuzzy-ginger-turning-gray hair and in matching Merlion T-shirts, they also looked new to Singapore and Southeast Asia. Harry Sullivan, with six months’ residence behind him, could afford to be generous to these newcomers.
    “Hey there. Here for the wine-and-local-food do?”
    Frank and Lucy Cunningham were glad to see him. They were early, as Lucy explained. They had expected to get lost but they had not. Lucy was doing most of the talking, and Harry guessed the dinner—perhaps their whole trip—had been her idea.
    “How many people attend these things?” Frank Cunningham wanted to know.
    “First time ten people showed up,” Harry answered. “Second time only six. I have no idea how many people will be turning up tonight, but the food is good. It’s definitely an experience you won’t get anywhere else.”
    “Oh goody,” Lucy Cunningham said. She peered in through the window, but though she could discern two women pottering around inside, no one came to the door. “Doesn’t look like they’re going to be ready for a while. We’ll go look around first. We saw an antique shop.”
    Typical tourist types, Harry Sullivan thought.
    “So who is coming tonight?” Mark asked again.
    Selina thought that her earlier silence should have made clear that this was not something she wanted to discuss. For a moment she wondered whether Mark was deliberately trying to provoke her, but one glance at him made her dismiss the thought. He looked as blandly uninvolved as that stepmother of his . . . which was good because Selina didn’t know who was going to turn up that night. Laura Kwee was in charge of taking down the names and collecting payment. In the run-up to the previous two dinners, she had called or texted Selina every time someone called with an inquiry. Selina had made it very clear that this had to stop—“If you’re going to bother me with every detail, I might as well do it myself!”—and since then, there had been no word from Laura Kwee.
    Selina felt a quiver of foreboding that she tried to suppress. Perhaps she had spoken more sharply to Laura than she need have. Maybe she’d offended her. But that woman could be so dense sometimes. The shiver she felt was not exactly in her gut—more in her bladder. She wondered if there was time for Mark to drive her up to Aunty Lee’s house to use the toilet. Selina did not use public toilets, not even the one at the wine café that was maintained daily by contract cleaners, supervised by Nina. It was not just a matter of cleanliness but of privacy. Selina could not bear the thought of any stranger using the toilet after she did. No matter how carefully one cleaned up, there were bound to be some traces left—it seemed to her the grossest invasion of privacy. But as Selina decided to get back in the car, Mark finished securing the travel case holding his precious wine bottles onto its wheeled trolley and locked the vehicle.
    “Mark, I have to use the ladies’.”
    “No problem. You’ve got lots of time.”
    “Mark!”
    Mark continued toward the entrance of the wine café without waiting for her or offering her his arm, as he used to do during their courtship and the early days of their marriage. Absurdly perhaps, she was now angry with her husband for not waiting for her to answer the question she had been angry with him for asking.
    “I don’t know,” Selina called after him. “I have no idea who’s turning up tonight. I don’t even know how many people are