China Rich Girlfriend

ALSO BY KEVIN KWAN

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Kevin Kwan

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY
and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House, LLC.

Cover design and illustration by Joan Wong

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Kwan, Kevin.

   China rich girlfriend : a novel / Kevin Kwan. — First edition.

       pages; cm

ISBN 978-0-385-53908-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-385-53909-8 (eBook)

   1. Fiancées—Fiction. 2. Rich people—China—Shanghai—Fiction. 3. Socialites—Singapore—Fiction. I. Title.

   PS3611.W36C48 2015

   813′. 6—dc23

2015003996

eBook ISBN 9780385539098

v4.1

a

For my brothers and my cousins

LONDON, 8 SEPTEMBER 2012, 9:00 A.M. GMT

A red Ferrari 458 Italia crashed through the window of the Jimmy Choo shoe boutique on Sloane Street sometime between 4:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. last night. No one witnessed the accident. Metropolitan Police reported that two passengers were taken to St Mary's Paddington, where they are being treated for serious but noncritical injuries. The vehicle owner's name was not released pending further investigation
.

—SARAH LYRE
,
The London Chronicle

SEPTEMBER 9, 2012, 7:45 P.M.

“Wait a minute—I'm in first class. Take me to first class,” Edison Cheng said contemptuously to the flight attendant escorting him to his seat.

“This
is
first class, Mr. Cheng,” the man in the crisp navy uniform informed him.

“But where are the cabins?” Eddie asked, still confused.

“Mr. Cheng, I'm afraid British Airways does not have private cabins in first class.
^*1
But if you'd allow me to show you some of the special features of your seat—”

“No, no, that's fine.” Eddie tossed his ostrich leather briefcase onto the seat like a petulant schoolboy.
Fucky fuck—the sacrifices I have to make for the bank today!
Edison Cheng, the pampered “Prince of Private Bankers”—famous in Hong Kong society pages for his bon vivant lifestyle, his dapper wardrobe, his elegant wife (Fiona), his photogenic children, and his superb lineage (his mother is Alexandra Young, of the Singapore Youngs)—was unaccustomed to such inconveniences. Five hours ago he had been interrupted during a luncheon at the Hong Kong Club, rushed aboard the company jet bound for Beijing, and then hustled onto this flight to London. It had been years since he had suffered
the indignity of flying
commercial
, but Mrs. Bao was on this godforsaken plane, and Mrs. Bao needed to be accommodated.

But where exactly was the lady? Eddie expected to find her seated nearby, but the chief purser informed him that there was no such person by that name in the cabin.

“No, no, she's supposed to be here. Can you check the flight manifest or something?” Eddie demanded.

Minutes later, Eddie found himself being led to row 37, seat E of the aircraft—economy class—where a petite woman in a white vicuña turtleneck and gray flannel slacks sat sandwiched between two passengers.

“Mrs. Bao? Bao Shaoyen?” Eddie inquired in Mandarin.

The woman looked up and smiled wanly. “Are you Mr. Cheng?”

“Yes. So glad to meet you, but I'm sorry we had to meet like this.” Eddie smiled in relief. He had spent the past eight years managing the Bao family's offshore accounts, but they were such a secretive lot, he had never met any of them until today. Even though she looked rather tired at the moment, Bao Shaoyen was much prettier than he had imagined. With alabaster skin, large eyes that slanted upward at the edges, and high cheekbones accentuated by the way she wore her jet-black hair—pulled into a tight, low ponytail—she did not look old enough to have a son in grad school.

“Why are you seated here? Was there some mix-up?” Eddie asked urgently.

“No, I always fly economy class,” Mrs. Bao replied.

Eddie couldn't hide his look of surprise. Mrs. Bao's husband, Bao Gaoliang, was one of Beijing's top politicians, and what's more, he had inherited one of China's biggest pharmaceutical firms. The Baos weren't just one of his regular clients; they were his ultra-high-net-worth clients.

“Only my son flies first class,” Bao Shaoyen explained, catching Eddie's look. “Carlton can eat all the fancy Western food and, being a student under so much pressure, he needs all the rest he can get. But for me, it's not worth it. I don't touch airplane food, and I can never sleep on these long flights anyway.”

Eddie had to resist the urge to roll his eyes.
Typical Mainlanders!
They lavished every penny on their Little Emperor and suffered in silence. Well, look where that got them. Twenty-three-year-old Carlton Bao was supposed to be at Cambridge finishing his master's dissertation, but had instead spent the previous evening doing his best Prince Harry impersonation—running up a £38,000 bar tab at half a dozen London
nightspots, wrecking his brand-new Ferrari, destroying public property, and almost getting himself killed. And that wasn't even the worst of it. The worst of it Eddie had been explicitly instructed not to reveal to Bao Shaoyen.

Eddie faced a conundrum. He urgently needed to go over the plans with Mrs. Bao, but he would sooner endure a colonoscopy than spend the next eleven hours slumming it in
coach
. God in heaven, what if someone recognized him? A picture of Edison Cheng crammed into an economy-class seat would go viral within seconds. Yet Eddie grudgingly realized that it would be unseemly for one of his bank's most important clients to remain here in steerage while he was up front, stretched out on a flatbed recliner, sipping twenty-year-old cognac. He eyed the spiky-haired youth slouching dangerously close to Mrs. Bao on one side, and the elderly woman clipping her nails into the air sickness bag on her other side, a solution springing to mind.

Lowering his voice, Eddie said, “Mrs. Bao, I would of course be happy to join you in this cabin, but as there are some
highly confidential
matters we need to discuss, would you allow me to arrange a seat for you up front? I'm certain the bank would insist that I upgrade you to first class—at our expense, of course—and we will be able to talk much more
privately
there.”

“Well, I suppose—if the bank insists,” Bao Shaoyen replied a little hesitantly.

After takeoff, when aperitifs had been served and they were both comfortably ensconced in the sumptuous, pod-like seats facing each other, Eddie wasted no time updating his client.

“Mrs. Bao, I was in contact with London just before boarding. Your son has been stabilized. The surgery to repair his punctured spleen was completely successful, and now the orthopedic team can take over.”

“Oh thank all the gods.” Bao Shaoyen sighed, easing back in her seat for the first time.

“We've already lined up the top reconstructive plastic surgeon in London—Dr. Peter Ashley—and he will be in the operating room alongside the orthopedic team attending to your son.”

“My poor boy,” Bao Shaoyen said, her eyes getting moist.

“Your son was very lucky.”

“And the British girl?”

“The girl is still in surgery. But I'm sure she will pull through just fine,” Eddie said, putting on his peppiest smile.

Barely thirty minutes earlier, Eddie had been on another plane parked in a private hangar at Beijing Capital International Airport, taking in the grim details during a hastily arranged crisis-management meeting with Mr. Tin, the gray-haired head of security for the Bao family, and Nigel Tomlinson, his bank's Asia chief. The two men had climbed aboard the Learjet as soon as it landed, huddling over Nigel's laptop while an associate in London gave the latest update via secure-feed videoconference.

“Carlton is out of surgery now. He was quite a bit banged up, but being in the driver's seat with his airbag and everything, he actually suffered the least injuries. But with the English girl, it's touch and go—she's still in a coma, and they've relieved the swelling in the brain, but that's all they can do for now.”

“And the
other
girl?” Mr. Tin asked, squinting at the small pixilated pop-up window.

“We're told she died on impact.”

Nigel sighed. “And she was Chinese?”

“We believe so, sir.”

Eddie shook his head. “What a fucky, fucky mess. We need to track down the next of kin immediately, before they are contacted by the authorities.”

“How do you even fit three people into a Ferrari?” Nigel asked.

Mr. Tin twirled his phone nervously on the lacquered walnut console. “Carlton Bao's father is on a state visit to Canada with the premier of China, and nothing must interrupt him. My orders from Mrs. Bao are that no hint of any scandal must ever reach his ears. He must never know about the dead girl. Do you understand? There is too much at stake—given his political position—and it is an especially sensitive time with the big once-in-a-decade changeover in party leadership happening right now.”

“Of course, of course,” Nigel assured him. “We will say that the
white
girl was his girlfriend. As far as the father is concerned, there was only
one
girl in the car.”

“Why does Mr. Bao even need to know about the white girl? Don't worry, Mr. Tin. I have handled much worse dealing with some of those sheikhs' children,” Eddie boasted.

Nigel shot Eddie a warning glare. The bank prided itself on the utmost discretion, and here was his associate blabbing away about other clients.

“We have a tactical response team in place in London that I am personally directing, and I can assure you we will do everything to contain this,” Nigel said, before turning to Eddie. “How much do you think it will take to keep Fleet Street quiet?”

Eddie inhaled deeply, trying to do some quick calculations. “It's not just the press. The policemen, the ambulance drivers, the hospital staff, the families. There's going to be an assload of people to shut up. I would suggest ten million pounds for starters.”

“Well, the minute you land in London, you need to take Mrs. Bao straight to the office. We need her to sign off on the withdrawal before you take her to the hospital to see her son. I'm just wondering what we should say if Mr. Bao asks us why we needed so much,” Nigel pondered.

“Just say the girl needed some new organs,” Mr. Tin suggested.

“We can also say we needed to pay the boutique,” Eddie added. “Those Jimmy Choos are bloody pricey, you know.”

2 H
YDE
P
ARK

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 10, 2012

Eleanor Young sipped on her morning tea, crafting her little white lie. She was holidaying in London with three of her closest friends—Lorena Lim, Nadine Shaw, and Daisy Foo—and after two days of being with the ladies nonstop, she desperately needed a few hours on her own. The trip was a much-needed distraction for all of them—Lorena was recovering from a Botox allergy scare, Daisy had gotten into yet another fight with her daughter-in-law over the choice of kindergartens for her grandchildren, and Eleanor herself was depressed that her son, Nicky, had not spoken to her for more than two years. And Nadine—well, Nadine was appalled by the state of her daughter's brand-new apartment.

“
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.

Of course, Eleanor had long since given up trying to fit in with her husband's snobbish, insular clan, but lying about the Shangs was the only way to stop her girlfriends from prying too much. If she was seeing anyone else, her
kay poh
^*5
friends might surely want to tag along, but the mere mention of the Shangs intimidated them from asking too many questions.