Don’t even ask

‘Say seebong-seebong, say seebong-seebong,’ sang the Filipino band in their white tuxedos, swaying cheerfully from side to side.

‘Si bon, si bon,’ whispered Sweetie to the music, smiling carefully, swaying her sumptuous jade earrings in time to the Filipinos’ narrow hips and tapping her manicured nails on the tablecloth; everyone said that before she had left her last husband, who was with the Banque de L’Indochine, she had made him pay for a face lift and a bottom lift.

‘Si bon, si bon,’ she half-sang again, looking archly at her guests round the table; she was giving a birthday party for her new husband, a Scottish investment banker.

For its Christmas theme that year the Repulse Bay Hotel had chosen Scottish baronial, which was why Sweetie had booked a table there. The vast colonial dining-room was covered on every available surface with greenery, most of it far from Scottish, and the enormous Christmas tree behind the band was covered in tartan taffeta bows and a multitude of flashing pink and white lights. The centre of every table was decorated with baronial candles and stuffed Scottish game birds, surrounded by heather flown at enormous expense from the UK, with ambitious twirls of wired tartan ribbon.

‘So, Sarah, how do you like Hong Kong?’ Sweetie asked politely, leaning across towards Miles Thurston’s new wife.

‘Amazing,’ said Sarah, astonished by almost everything around her. ‘But I’m beginning to get used to it.’

‘You’ll never guess what my amah told me today,’ said Patty Hughes, the wife of another investment banker, in a very tight gold cheongsam. ‘It’s just too good. You know how priggish some of these old-fashioned amahs can be? Well, our Ah Yee told me that her friend Ah Ho — that’s the Hendersons’ amah — had been very hot and cross about something for ages.