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Paradise found

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Why you can trust SCMP

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.

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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.

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'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.'

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