“I thought I’d take you to my favorite restaurant for a proper lunch—Sun Yik Noodles. It’s a little café that’s been around since the 1930s.”
“Fantastic! I was just starting to get hungry.”
Within fifteen minutes they had arrived in the Chinatown neighborhood, and after parking the car, they strolled down Club Street with its picturesque old shop houses toward Ann Siang Road as Nick began to fill Rachel in on the place.
“It’s a total hole-in-the-wall, and they haven’t even changed the Formica tables since the fifties, I bet. But they have the best noodles in Singapore, and so everyone comes here. The former chief justice of the Supreme Court used to eat lunch here every day, because the noodles were so addictive. You’re gonna die when you taste these noodles. They are hand-pulled egg noodles, and they have this incredible, perfectly chewy texture to them. And they serve it with braised chicken that’s been simmering for hours in this garlick
y gravy. Oh man, the gravy! I wanna see if you think you can possibly replicate it. We’re here after lunch rush, so we probably won’t have to wait too long for a ta—”
Nick stopped dead in his tracks, staring at a façade across the road that had been covered by a metal construction fence.
“What’s wrong?”
“This is it! Sun Yik Noodles! But where is it?”
They crossed the street and came to a small sign that was glued to the metal sheeting. It read:
TORY BURCH
Opening Summer 2015
Nick ran in to the shop next door, and Rachel could see him gesturing frantically to the baffled salesman inside. A few moments later, he came outside, his face registering nothing but shock.
“It’s gone, Rachel. No more Sun Yik. This area has become so trendy, the original owner’s son apparently sold the building for an insane amount of money and decided to retire. And now it’s going to be a friggin’ Tory Burch boutique.”
“I’m so sorry, Nick.”
“What the fuck!” Nick yelled, kicking the metal sheeting angrily. He sank down onto the pavement and covered his face with his hands despondently. Rachel had never seen him look quite so upset before. She sat down next to him on the pavement and put her arm around his shoulder. Nick sat there for a few minutes, staring off into space. After a while, he finally spoke.
“Everything I love about Singapore is gone. Or it’s disappearing fast. Every time I’m back, more and more of my favorite haunts have closed or been torn down. Restaurants, shops, buildings, cemeteries, nothing is sacred anymore. The whole character of the island I knew growing up is almost completely obliterated.”
Rachel simply nodded.
“Sun Yik was such an institution, I thought it would always be safe. I mean, I swear to God, they had the best noodles in the whole world. Everyone loved it. But now it’s gone forever, and we can never ever get that back.”
“I don’t think people ever realize what they’ve lost until it’s too late,” Rachel said.
Nick looked into her eyes with a sudden intensity. “Rachel, I have to save Tyersall Park. I can’t let it be torn down and turned into some grotesque gated community that only allows in millionaire Christians.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“I thought for a while that I would be okay with everything. I thought I wouldn’t care if I didn’t inherit the estate as long as someone in the family got it and maintained it properly. But now I know I’m not.”
“You know, I’ve been wondering all along if you were really okay with losing the house,” Rachel observed.
Nick considered what she’d said for a moment. “I think part of me always resented Tyersall Park in a subconscious way, because everyone always associated me with the house, and I could never detach from it when I was younger. I think that’s why Colin and I became such good friends…I was always ‘the Tyersall Park Boy’ and he was always ‘that Khoo Enterprises Boy.’ But we were just boys.”
“It was like a curse in a way, wasn’t it? It’s amazing how you both managed not to let it define you,” Rachel remarked.
“Well, at some point I made my peace with it, and getting away also helped me appreciate it in a new light. I realized how much the place nurtured me, how I found my adventurous side climbing trees and building forts, and how spending all those hours in the library reading all my grandfather’s old books—Winston Churchill’s memoirs, Sun Yat-sen’s letters—got me fascinated with history. But now it feels like I’m seeing my entire childhood sold off to the highest bidder.”
“I know, Nick. It’s been so painful even for me to watch on the sidelines. I just can’t believe how it’s happening so quick, and how your aunts who also grew up in the house don’t seem to care about letting it go.”
“Even though my grandmother’s will clearly states what it does, I don’t think she would have wanted Tyersall Park to be demolished and forgotten like this. To me, there are so many things that just don’t add up with my grandmother’s will and everything.”
“That’s been my suspicion all along too, but I didn’t feel like it was my place to say anything,” Rachel said with a frown.
“I wish I had more time to dig deeper, and figure out why my grandmother wanted the house sold off like this. But things are moving so fast with my aunties.”