A FASHION FAIRYTALE: SOMEWHERE, SOMEONE IS WATCHING YOU

CHAPTER 7

1am, A room in a four-room flat in Boon Keng Road. 


In quite a different world from that of Dana Lee and her ilk, in a flat in Boon Keng to be precise, Snowdrops (aka Catherine Yeo Lay Leng) a 22 year old blogger and president of Eliments: The Official Eli Kee Fan Club sat in her sunless bedroom, before the flare of a snow white laptop monitor, a floor fan whirring away the afternoon stupor. She’s uploading pictures of Eli Kee onto the Eliments website for the 3, 481 Eliments members to admire. These pictures ranged from those of Eli at his album promotions (sheepish Eli), to those scanned from magazines (suave Eli), such as those from Flair, as well as paparazzi-style snaps taken of Eli unawares (goofy Eli), waiting for coffee at Starbucks, say, or picking up dry cleaning (very goofy Eli). Some of these photos were sent in by Eliments fans, and hence were of varying picture quality. Snowdrops herself didn't like many of theses amateurish shots, but they did seem to up the site traffic: Pictures of her idol ambushed by one rabid girl after the next (but all curiously similar) with their faces pressed up against their Eli’s, saying ‘cheese’, and with their fingers in a ‘peace’ sign. Click, click; Snowdrops had seen them all.

But today, the intrepid and enterprising Snowdrops, who on top of running the fan club and website, also worked waiting shifts at various posh eateries in town, had something rare and revealing to post: She had stolen two snapshots of her idol on her iPhone on what appeared to be a romantic dinner at The French Place last Friday.  To think that Snowdrops had wanted to call in sick that night! She really can’t stand her supervisor there, the prissy Maitre’d Kennerf De Silva. But she would have kicked herself blue had she missed her idol Eli in such intimate circumstances. Table 12, the table in her section, the one by the French window! The two snaps weren’t really up to Snowdrops's usual standards because the lighting was truly quite low (how these people can eat such long meals practically in the dark was beyond Snowdrops) and the candles did flicker so in the aircon – but here was Eli (with stars in his eyes) and a mystery lady in what looked like a Chinese coat (Snowdrops couldn’t rightly identify a 1991 Yves Saint Laurent couture dress even if it was lit by lanterns). Who was that chick? How was she going to caption this? Snowdrops knew that these two pictures were going to rock the world of Eliments – and beyond – for even the mainstream media never managed to catch “Eli on the sly with mystery chick” (that was her caption for these pictures). Sly Eli! That would be a new spin for the Eliments – “Oh the ripples this will cause,” thought Snowdrops as she clicked ‘publish’.

Little knew Snowdrops that with that one fatal click of her clammy finger, that the ripples would cause her world to collide with that of Dana Lee’s rarefied one, in wave after wave of misery.