FOR PETER WONG Wai-kwan and Theresa Callejo, it wasn't exactly love at first sight. In fact, Callejo says she rather disliked him. 'He seemed strange to me,' she says. ' I felt uneasy around him.' As for Wong, he can't remember making any connection. In fact, he can hardly remember her at all.
Tomorrow, however, like thousands of other couples across Hong Kong, they will spend a romantic Valentine's Day together, taking in a movie before drifting away to a cosy candlelit dinner. Unlike most couples, however, theirs is a story of love that grew from difficult and almost tragic circumstances.
The couple met in 1996 when Callejo worked as a domestic helper in Wong Tai Sin. Wong, now 46, would often come to the flat, but they were never introduced.
'I was always angry with him,' says Callejo. 'I wondered why he came to the house so often. I didn't know who he was. I thought, if he was my employer's husband, why didn't they sleep together?
'I slept on a bunk bed with my employer - she was on the upper and I was below, and he was in the next bed. He seemed so strange to me. He ate slowly. When we ate lunch, he was still having breakfast. Every day I saw him and felt uneasy. He would always sleep on the sofa. Every day was like that.'
What Callejo didn't know was that Wong was her employer's older brother, and for almost 20 years had lived with an incurable disease that had ravaged his body and almost driven him to suicide.
