Rich People Problems (Crazy Rich Asians #3)(118)

By this point, Kitty's lounger had drifted to the middle of the pool, and she screeched at the maid, "Get me my phone!"

Kitty jabbed at her phone angrily, calling Oliver T'sien. It rang a few times before he picked up.

"Ollie's Psychic Hotline," he answered jokingly.

"Have you seen the latest Tattle yet?" Kitty said, her voice shaking with fury.

"No. Did it come out today? I'm in Hong Kong this week, so I haven't seen it yet. Congratulations! How does it look?" 

"Congratulations? Go look at the magazine and tell me how I fucking look on the cover!" Kitty screamed, before hanging up.

God, what now? Oliver thought to himself. Did they end up going with a photo that was slightly less flattering to her surgically sculpted nose? There was no way he would find a copy of the magazine in Hong Kong, but maybe the issue was already online. He went to his browser and logged on to Tattle.sg. Within seconds, the page loaded, and the cover of Tattle popped up.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Oliver cursed, as he began to scan through the story.





ECO WARRIOR PRINCESS: AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH COLETTE, THE COUNTESS OF PALLISER


The Countess of Palliser enters the garden of the British embassy in Singapore with no pomp or circumstance, no personal assistant or PR handler in sight. She shakes my hand and immediately starts fretting that I'm seated in the sun. Am I too hot? Would I like to swap seats? Has no one brought me a drink?

This was not the woman I was expecting to meet. The former Colette Bing, once China's most influential fashion blogger-with over 55 million followers-is today sitting before me in a simple yet lovely floral dress with not a dab of makeup on her face or any jewelry except for a simple wedding band of Welsh gold. I ask her who designed her dress and she laughs. "This is a Laura Ashley dress that I got out of a bin at an Oxfam thrift shop in the village near where I live."

It's the first hint that as ordinary as the Countess's life seems to be, things are not all that ordinary. The village she is referring to is Barchester, perhaps one of the most charming in all of England, and home for the Countess and her husband, Lucien Montagu-Scott, the Earl of Palliser, is a charming old vicarage with 10 bedrooms tucked away at Gatherum Castle, the 35,000-acre Barsetshire estate of her father-in-law, the Duke of Glencora.

I've heard rumors that the interior designer Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, of the Blenheim Palace Spencer-Churchills, has been busy transforming the cottage into an elysian paradise, but when I try to ask the Countess about it, she simply says that the house is being refurbished and redirects me to the matter at hand. "My life is not that interesting. Let's talk about Indonesia," she says with an effervescent smile.

Indonesia is the reason the Earl and Countess have been spending so much time in these parts of late. The Earl, a renowned environmental activist, and the Countess actually met there. "I was a bit adrift, traveling to various spa resorts on my own for a few months," the Countess admits. "By chance I met Lucien in Bali, and he told me that he was on the way to a remote part of North Sumatra. I decided on a whim to follow him."

It was a decision that changed her life forever. "Lucien brought me to an orangutan rescue center, and it was my first exposure to the terrible environmental tragedy that's been unfolding here. Sumatran orangutans are classified as 'critically endangered,' and the population is being decimated, along with scores of other species, because of deforestation and illegal poaching. Infant orangutans are being sold to the pet trade, and the way they do this is by killing the mother first. For every baby orangutan sold, it's estimated that six to eight adult orangutans die in the process of capturing them. Can you imagine?" the Countess says, her normally pearl-white complexion flushed with fury.

What she witnessed those first weeks in Sumatra has given the Countess a singular mission in life: to spread awareness of this environmental tragedy and to advocate for change. "People talk about the Amazon, but it's horrific what's being done in this part of Southeast Asia. The main culprit is the palm oil industry. Everyone should stop consuming products that contain palm oil! In the quest for more land to create more palm oil plantations, ancient forests are being burned down, destroyed completely, and we are losing so many species that will never be seen again. Orangutans, one of our planet's most precious animals, could be extinct in the wild within 25 years," the Countess says with tears in her eyes.