9th of August Read online

  9th of August

  A novel

  Andre Yeo

  ISBN: 978-981-47-8579-2

  First Edition: June 2018

  © 2018 by Andre Yeo

  Author photo by Eng Chun Pang. Used with permission.

  Published in Singapore by Epigram Books

  www.epigrambooks.sg

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, 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.

  Table of Contents

  9th of August

  Before

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  5th of August

  64

  65

  6th of August

  66

  7th of August

  67

  8th of August

  68

  69

  70

  71

  9th of August

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  After

  101

  102

  103

  104

  105

  106

  107

  108

  109

  110

  111

  112

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  ALSO FROM THE EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE

  WINNER

  The Riot Act by Sebastian Sim

  FINALISTS

  Sofia and the Utopia Machine by Judith Huang

  Nimita’s Place by Akshita Nanda

  2016

  The Gatekeeper by Nuraliah Norasid (winner)

  State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang

  Fox Fire Girl by O Thiam Chin

  Surrogate Protocol by Tham Cheng-E

  Lieutenant Kurosawa’s Errand Boy by Warran Kalasegaran

  The Last Immigrant by Lau Siew Mei

  Lion Boy and Drummer Girl by Pauline Loh

  2015

  Now That It’s Over by O Thiam Chin (winner)

  Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! by Sebastian Sim

  Death of a Perm Sec by Wong Souk Yee

  Annabelle Thong by Imran Hashim

  Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

  Altered Straits by Kevin Martens Wong

  To my mum and dad and sister Audrey.

  And to my wife Jasmine, and our kids—

  Renee, Raquel, Rachelle and Russell.

  Family is everything.

  9th of August

  The whoosh, when it came, blew Henry across the packed MRT train carriage like an old toy someone had tired of.

  A bright orange light enveloped everyone inside, forcing people to shield their faces with their hands. The breeze from the air-conditioners was replaced by a scorching gust of wind. The noise was so deafening that Henry couldn’t hear anything else.

  As the unseen hand of the blast lifted him, Henry noticed objects flying past—pieces of glass, teeth, one half of a pair of headphones, clumps of hair, a haversack, a pair of cracked spectacles, multiple droplets of blood breaking up in flight. Like an astronaut in space, he let the shockwaves dump him where they would. He crashed into the soft bodies of other passengers. A burning sensation crept over him.

  This wasn’t how he had planned to spend the public holiday: Singapore’s 55th National Day. Not after all that had happened to him. He was tired of being a single parent to a teenage girl who kept asking him about the mother she’d never known.

  There was so much he wanted to tell her.

  But as he felt his flesh burning, he wondered if he would live to do so.

  Before

  1

  It wasn’t easy being Henry’s daughter. That was how Sally felt growing up as an only child in a single-parent household. She had often thought about what it would be like to have a mother. All 14-year-olds in Singapore had one. Except her.

  Sandra was her name. Daddy said so.

  Sally never knew her mother. Daddy said she had died giving birth to her. Flipping through photo albums of Mummy and Daddy from the time they dated, he told her Mummy was a hero and the bravest woman in the world for giving up her life for her. Because Sally was worth it. Sally wished she had known Mummy. So she could say “thank you”.

  To Sally, Sandra was one of those characters she read about in history books—brave, mysterious, human and always doing something cool in spite of what everyone else said.

  Daddy kept so many photos of Mummy. There was one of her in her twenties, smiling while cooking salted-egg crabs at home with Daddy when they were dating. Another of her cycling along East Coast Parkway and having a barbecue with a group of friends. And numerous shots of her in Egypt, Paris, London, Nepal, India and Japan. The petite, short-haired woman with dark eyes, a round face, thin shoulders and slender legs had clearly loved life. No, embraced it.

  There were so many questions Sally wanted to ask her.

  Like how it felt to be dying yet carrying something inside you that wanted to live. Or how many kids she would have liked to have, and what she saw in Daddy. Sally smiled and imagined the many conversations they could have had just gossiping about Daddy, who didn’t look like much of a catch.

  And what advice would she give about boys? Loathe them or love them? Avoid them was Daddy’s solution. But it was pointless wishing for something that could never happen. And so, since she was a child, Sally had told herself there was no time for self-pity and to make the most of what she had.

  A netball player at 1.82 metres, she was the tallest girl in school, much taller than her best friends—Macy and Sophia. They liked the same food, books, movies and celebrities. Others had tried to be accepted into their group but were roundly judged to be unworthy and would slink quietly into the background in shame. Not that the trio was arrogant or aloof. There would just be an awkward silence and the person auditioning for the part of “group member” would quickly get
the message and find other unsuccessful applicants to mingle with.

  Something clicked the day they met in school a year earlier. It was the moment they knew they’d be friends for life.

  “The weekend’s finally here! So what are you guys doing after school?” Macy asked her BFFs.

  “Got to meet my mum to go shopping for clothes,” said Sophia. “She’s got a date with some doctor tomorrow. Ever since my parents divorced, she’s been acting like a teenager. Like she’s making up for lost time after fourteen years with my dad. She’s living her second childhood and it’s so annoying. I keep telling her there’s already one teenager at home. Me. We don’t need another one. What about you, Sally? What will you be doing today?”

  Sally’s thoughts had drifted off again. To Mummy, rainbows, rabbits, lollipops and Daddy.

  She thought about his eyes, always sad, always hiding something. When Henry thought she wasn’t looking, he’d stare out the window into nothingness. She had seen him do it often when she was a six-year-old, when he thought she was too young to understand what pain was.

  She’d sit with her Lego sets or dolls and Henry would think she was playing with them. But she was observing him, studying his eyes. The way he’d stand with his hands on his hips, his head bowed, sighing heavily, sometimes crying quietly. It hurt her to hear him when he sniffled and whimpered like a wounded animal, with his right hand covering his mouth so she wouldn’t hear him.

  Sometimes, while staring out the window, he’d say something to her like, “Good job, dear” or “Okay, keep it up”, even though she had not asked him anything or done anything particularly interesting.

  Sally had wondered who or what could hurt Daddy so badly. She had always been afraid to ask. Some scars don’t show themselves. Some scars never heal.

  “I’ll be spending time with my Daddy,” she told her friends.

  She thought about her father again. And wondered if he was still miserable at home.

  2

  Hunching by the bookshelf while going through the messages on Sally’s mobile phone, Henry kept looking over his shoulder to make sure she was still having her bath.

  For 14 years, he had fumbled his way through raising another human being. All the self-help books and YouTube videos weren’t much help to this IT specialist. Since none of them had said it was wrong to check your teenage daughter’s messages, Henry reasoned it was perfectly all right for him to do so. Especially since he had paid for the phone and continued to pay the monthly bills. So, theoretically, the phone was his. Theoretically.

  How he wished Sandra was still around. How much easier it would be for him. And for Sally.

  He spent every day thinking about his dead wife. Breast cancer had taken her. The last year of her life was especially brutal as the cancer cells launched one attack after another. The first sign of trouble came months before she was pregnant with Sally. That lump on the left side of her left breast had made an unwelcome appearance. Sandra brushed it off, which was normal. But there was nothing normal about the lump.

  “It’s probably an ulcer,” she said whenever Henry asked her to go for a check-up. “Relax. It’ll burst and disappear.”

  Like an uninvited guest who refused to leave, the lump remained. Henry’s constant nagging finally convinced her to see a doctor. Three days later, when the call came asking them to go to his office, they each knew it was probably bad news. She was now three months pregnant and the baby was developing well. Thankfully, she had been spared morning sickness. So far, so good.

  “What do you think he’ll say?” Sandra asked Henry as they sat on their sofa at home. It was a simple three-bedroom flat with a massive bookshelf stuffed with fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, dictionaries and titles on LEGO, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. They were Henry’s. Sandra, a pre-school teacher, loved crime thrillers, romance and poetry. Lego Star Wars models took pride of place on custom-made cabinets. Henry said nothing as he stared at the television, not paying attention to what was happening onscreen.

  “I don’t know,” he said, sounding annoyed. He wished Sandra would be more optimistic. Pessimism only complicated things.

  “Maybe it’s nothing” was all he could offer. Henry wondered how they would deal with that last day if cancer were to win. And whether his wife would be strong and healthy enough to see her pregnancy through. He turned away so she wouldn’t see he was about to cry. There were two lives at stake here and six more months to go.

  “It’s probably just a routine session with the doctor,” said Henry, trying to delude himself.

  He knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. He was such a bad actor.

  “He probably just wants to tell you the good news so you wouldn’t have to worry about the baby. Women have lumps all the time. I read somewhere it’s quite common. It’s probably just a false alarm.”

  No one said the C word that night. As if not mentioning its name could make it go away. They were playing pretend.

  But this was a game Henry and Sandra knew they’d both lose.

  3

  Henry was 14 when he met a mean girl at the bookstore.

  He was alone as usual. He didn’t know many boys his age who liked to cook and read cookbooks. Proclaiming that to the world and to his classmates in their all-boys school would be like pouring honey over his body, lying down and waiting for red ants to carpet him with a new layer of skin before feasting on his carcass.

  Already struggling with his studies, he could do without that. It was his dirty little secret. Like not telling people you came from a poor family.

  So whenever he went to the bookstore in Orchard Road, he’d always be alone. He loved getting lost in the forest of paperbacks, shielded by bookshelves standing like the solid defences along Normandy during World War II. Peace embraced him whenever he walked among the shelves, caressing the book spines.

  Twice a week, he’d head down to the bookstore after school. It would usually be an uneventful visit. First to the comics section, then fiction, then the cookbooks, always in that order. Order made the world bearable for Henry.

  Except that one day. Henry was reading a book on Mediterranean cuisine when he noticed the slim and sexy girl with the cute, round face and shoulder-length hair walking into the comics section. They go there?

  He chucked the hardcover he had planned to buy back into the bookshelf and followed her. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling and couldn’t find the words to describe it. He wasn’t aware he was still holding two other cookbooks when he walked among the comics. He was careful to keep his distance and control his breathing as he homed in on this fine specimen. Wait till he told his friends at school. No, wait. He wasn’t sharing. No bloody way.

  Henry walked along the perimeter of the outer shelves like a cheetah circling its prey, unaware of its presence among the bushes. He had one eye on the comics, another on Pretty Girl. Pretty Girl liked to read Iron Man and Batman comics. His kind of girl.

  For several minutes, he pretended to be interested in the Japanese manga three shelves away while Pretty Girl browsed a copy of The Avengers. Henry was smiling to himself. It was a disturbing sight, enough to make a couple beside him walk briskly away. Henry didn’t know how long he had been staring. And that was the problem. He had stayed at the same spot for far too long and Pretty Girl had begun to sense an evil presence behind her. She turned and looked momentarily stunned to find him gawking at her. Pretty Girl regained her composure, determined he was only a threat to himself and smiled back.

  Okay, that wasn’t supposed to happen, thought Henry. Pretty Girl wasn’t supposed to respond. Not to someone like him. Girls normally saw through him. But now, Pretty Girl was walking towards him. Henry suddenly felt numb and the blood drained from his face along with any remaining strength in his legs, which rendered him immobile. Pretty Girl was clutching three comic books across her chest.

  “Hi,” said Pretty Girl.

  Silence.

  “You looking for something? For someone?”

>   More silence.

  “I’m Sandra.”

  Pretty Girl had a name! Progress! Henry then forced himself to say the first thing that came to mind.

  “Errrrrrrr…”

  “What’s your name?” asked Sandra.

  Still more silence.

  “You have a name? You know, that thing your parents gave you when you were born? When you couldn’t speak? Like now?”

  Pretty Girl was funny. And cruel. Henry wasn’t sure if he still liked Pretty Girl. There was a meanness in her eyes. And it made her look beautiful.

  “H-h-h-Henry.”

  “Hello, H-h-h-Henry,” Pretty Girl said. “Relax, I was only joking. What have you got there?”

  Oh great, his cookbooks. Here he was standing in front of one of the most beautiful girls he had ever met and he was carrying cookbooks. Henry wanted to say they were books on hunting, weightlifting, Army Special Forces or diving with great white sharks.

  “Cookbooks. I love to cook,” said Henry, nodding and half-smiling. He was holding onto the books so tightly, his palms felt sweaty. He was sure that would be the end of the conversation and was expecting her to smile back, walk away and then call security.

  “I love to cook too. I’ve never met a guy who liked to cook. Cool. Wanna go for a drink?”

  “Okay, sure. Let me pay for these first then we can go,” said Henry, unable to restrain himself from smiling ear to ear.

  Henry couldn’t remember what he had bought and walked slightly behind Sandra to admire her. Everything about her seemed perfect. Her flawless skin, the way the tendrils of her hair bounced gently by the left side of her face and the moles that dotted both cheeks like planets revolving around the sun. Henry slowly began to find his voice and they talked as they walked to a McDonald’s.

  Sandra was captivated by his stories about his adventures in the kitchen.

  His mother was a housewife and had taught him how to cook. Since he was five, he’d wander into the kitchen in their three-room flat and his mother would never chase him away. He started by cutting vegetables and pounding herbs and nuts. Then, peeling potatoes, onions, garlic and carrots before moving on to the more serious stuff when he was eight. It took his mother three years to trust him with frying, using the oven, and slicing fish and chicken. But he was a quick learner and by the time he was 11, his relatives weren’t able to tell who had cooked the dishes—his mother or Henry.