Page 15 of The Friend Zone Experiment

Renee was to learn later that Ket Siong had won multiple music competitions and performed for the queen before she died—the actual British queen, the one everyone had heard of. But he gave no indication of this; only nodded, thoughtful.

“How about the ‘Sonata facile’?” he said.

Renee narrowed her eyes. “Doesn’t that mean ‘easy sonata’?”

Ket Siong didn’t bother denying it. “It’s by Mozart.”

“Oh, I love Mozart,” said Renee, thawing out. “Is that a really basic thing to say if you know anything about classical music? Is it like loving pumpkin spice lattes?”

“It’s like loving sunshine,” said Ket Siong. He sat down at Nathalie’s piano and played for her. By the end of the sonata, they were friends.

5Now

Ket Siong andRenee ended up wandering for a while after leaving the V&A. They eventually cast up at what Renee called an “old man pub,” an establishment with a wooden façade in peeling black paint and the nameTHE WHITE HARTin gold letters above. The sign bore a spindly white deer with a gold collar around its neck, sitting with its limbs primly folded.

Inside, the pub was wood-panelled and warm, smelling of stale beer. Illuminated gaming machines burbled and hissed in a corner. A slight stickiness adhered to everything, from the coasters on the tables to the floors. Unusually for London, they seemed to be the only people there who were below fifty and not white.

Renee ordered their drinks with unfussy efficiency, impossible to contest.

“You can get the next round,” she said, when Ket Siong protested.

She would have let him buy her a drink in the old days. They had both enjoyed his performance of small chivalries then.

They sat at a small wobbly table that threatened to tip their drinks over them at any moment. Renee smiled as she slid his pint of beer over to him. She was wearing a black trouser suit. From certain angles, glimpses of her bra could be caught underher jacket—flashes of pale green satin over golden skin. The effect was glamorous, sexy but untouchable.

The past decade had changed her. Ket Siong saw this in the set of her shoulders, the bland reserve of the smile she’d first turned on him at the museum, the practised and impartial quality of her charm.

The Renee he’d known before was someone who knew she’d have to fight for what she wanted out of life. This Renee knew what it was to win.

And yet there was no fundamental change. In the most important respects, she was the same person Ket Siong had fallen in love with, all those years ago.

If he’d been asked even a few hours earlier, he would have said he had more or less forgotten Renee. Now he realised that would have been a lie. He’d retained almost everything about her. But time had softened the intensity of the emotions associated with her, removing the sting and leaving only the pleasure of remembering. Ket Siong could feel himself slipping into a different self, a version of the boy he had been when he was Renee’s friend.

He had almost forgotten that boy. It was strange being reacquainted with him. Strange, but good.

“What are you doing these days?” said Renee. “Did you come to the UK for work?”

This was a natural guess, if Renee thought Ket Siong was still on the path he’d been on when they’d known each other before, headed for a promising career as a concert pianist.

He said, “I teach music. Mostly to children.”

When he had first moved to London with his family, it had seemed obvious that he could not continue to pursue a performing career, like the one he used to have back in KL. Most classical pianists, however lauded, enjoyed a relatively limited form of fame. But it wasn’t the sort of job you did if you were trying to escape notice, as they were.

Ket Siong had minded this less than he might have expected,given he had devoted his entire life before then to pursuing that job. Something vital had gone out of music. He wouldn’t have been able to say why, or pin down the precise moment it had happened—whether it was when they heard about Stephen, or when they decided to leave Malaysia.

Three years on from the move, Ma and Ket Hau seemed to have lost some of their sense of being in ever-present danger—enough, at least, to think Ket Siong having a performing career wouldn’t be antithetical to their safety. They’d started sending him links to auditions, and wondering aloud about whether it might be worth getting in touch with his teachers from the Royal Academy of Music.

He didn’t like to tell them it was no good. Music was like a language he’d once been able to speak. He retained the grammar and vocabulary, could still understand it. But when he opened his mouth, the words wouldn’t come.

He hadn’t thought that was possible, before.

He could see the rapid recalculation behind Renee’s eyes, as she adjusted her assumptions.

She said, without any change in tone or manner, “That sounds fun. Do you like it?”

The old Renee might have asked if he’d stopped performing, and if so, why. But neither of them was the person they used to be.

“Yes.” To change the subject, Ket Siong said, “Are you in touch with your friends from uni?” He searched his memory for examples. “Derek Lim?”

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