It was “stupid, dumb and idiotic”. And it ruined four relationships.
She had taken the cigarette butts from two lovers for a paternity test but mixed them up in the process of labelling.
The result: She married the wrong man.
When the truth finally emerged three years later, her husband walked out on their marriage and her daughter, then nine.
That was not all. Her former lover didn’t want to have anything to do with her or his biological daughter.
Stupid. Dumb. Idiot. That best describes whatI did, says Ms Jessica Cheong.
She was reluctant to talk about her folly at first, especially since it has turned her daughter into an angry, rebellious teenager.
But after much thought, Ms Cheong agreed to speak, only because she hopes that others would be more careful when it comes to extracting samples for paternity tests.
“One stupid mix-up and your life gets totally screwed up, like how it has happened for this dumb woman here,” says Ms Cheong, 44, mocking herself.
She leans back in her two-seater sofa, brings her knees up and crosses both arms around them, and muses: “I wonder what would’ve happened if I had left things status quo. “Would I be in this mess now?”
She recalls the series of unfortunate events that started after she found out she was pregnant about 19 years ago.
She was working in Hong Kong as a fashion stylist then and was involved in “three non-exclusive relationships”.
She moved back to Singapore about 10 years ago after her marriage broke down. Says the attractive woman:“When you’re young, you tend not to think about the consequence of sleeping around until it hits you in the face.”
So she became pregnant. But she was unsure who the father of the baby was.
Ms Cheong, who now runs her own boutique on Orchard Road, says: “I did some mental calculation and I wasn’t quite certain who would most likely be the daddy.
“It could either be Alex or MrH(who has asked not to be named) but I couldn’t possibly go to them and say, ‘Hey guess what, I’m pregnant and either of you could be the father’, right?”
But she wanted to keep the baby.
“I was 25 years old then, I felt I was ready to be a mum even though I wasn’t sure if I wanted to settle down yet,” she says.
She broke the news of her pregnancy to both men separately.
She recounts: “They didn’t know of each other’s existence of course, and both offered to marry me.
“But honestly? I wanted to weigh my options and decide on who was better.”
She returned to Singapore to deliver her baby and lived here for about a year. “I’d also hoped that when my baby was older, I’d be able to tell whom she resembled.
You know, what they say, the father- and-daughter look.”
Both men continued to visit Ms Cheong and took to the baby like she was their own.
She says: “I was also selfish. It felt good to have two men doting on us (mother and daughter), and for some time, I didn’t want to do anything about it.”
It was only when her daughter turned five that she decided to take a paternity test.
She explains: “I wanted to send my daughter to an international school (in Hong Kong) and I didn’t want her to be ostracised.
“She’d also started to ask questions, like why she had to address two different men as ‘Daddy’... and I was afraid that the secret would come out.” Ms Cheong did some checks and found a company that offered paternity testing.
“I was told I could collect my own samples and send them over to the lab, which was perfect since I didn’t want to raise any suspicion on why I’d be asking them to go for a test,” she says.
“Of course, I also didn’t expect that I’d be the idiot who would mess things up.”
With the results – albeit not the correct ones – she told Mr Alex Lee that she was ready for marriage.
