Ket Siong’s voice was very gentle when he said, “You’d do a great job.”

“Thanks,” said Renee. She found herself glad of the bad lighting. He probably couldn’t see her blush.

Ket Siong held up his pint glass, and she clinked hers against it.

6

The evening wentby quickly. It was only when a staff member came round to tell them they were closing up that it struck Ket Siong that his family might be wondering where he was.

He checked his phone, but it was dead.

“Wow, it’s almost eleven,” said Renee, blinking like she was waking up from a dream. “I didn’t realise it was so late. Is someone waiting for you?”

“My family,” said Ket Siong, putting his phone away. “My mother and brother.” The clarification felt important, though it wasn’t like it mattered if Renee thought he was married.

She swayed a little as she got up. Ket Siong put a hand under her elbow, steadying her.

“How are you getting home?” he said. He would have guessed they were at least half an hour’s walk from her flat. He hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going earlier, or he might have insisted on staying closer to her place.

Renee yawned—delicately, like a cat. “Cab.”

Ket Siong hesitated. “It’s late to be going back on your own. Let me see you home. I can get the Tube from High Street Ken.”

“I haven’t had that much to drink,” said Renee, amused. “It’s tiredness, not alcohol.”

He shouldn’t insist. Renee was an adult, and London wasrelatively safe. Broadly. Most women got home unmolested from a night out.

Just as most people lived out their lives with nothing too bad happening to them, no unexpected tragedy snatching them away from their loved ones. Ket Siong thought of Stephen, heading out to work in his ratty old Myvi, on the last morning he had been seen alive. Ket Siong’s own father, who had died in a road accident when Ket Siong was two.

“It’s late,” he repeated.

At least Renee wasn’t offended at his persistence. She smiled, her eyes sleepy. “OK. We can tell the driver to do a second drop-off. Save you a walk to the Tube station, if you think home’s too far,” she added, when Ket Siong started to protest.

He couldn’t have afforded the taxi fare home, but arguing over the five-minute ride between Renee’s flat and the Tube station would have been as ungracious as letting her send him back to Edmonton by black cab. He shut up.

They were quiet in the taxi. Renee was a million miles away, gazing out of the window. Ket Siong wondered what she was thinking.

Beyond this, he did not engage in much thinking himself. Images from the evening flitted through his mind. Low Teck Wee’s face when he was asked about Stephen; that spangled ballgown behind the glass; Alicia saying,Have fun.

Beneath these impressions sat the fact that Ket Siong might well not see Renee again after tonight. So he did not ask himself what the evening had meant, or what might come after. For now, he was simply existing in the moment, looking neither to the future nor the past.

He got out of the taxi when they arrived at Renee’s place, partly to help her out of the car and partly to say a proper goodbye, out of the driver’s hearing. Not that they said anything anyone could not have heard.

Ket Siong watched Renee walk up to the entrance to her building. She pushed open the glass door, then paused.

I probably shouldn’t do this,thought Renee.

But it had been a long day. She was so tired everything had taken on a sparkling clarity, and she hadn’t eaten quite enough to soak up the couple of drinks she’d had.

In this floating, light-headed state, it was hard to recover her daytime inhibitions. The Renee of this evening was perilously close to the Renee of ten years ago, around Ket Siong—her guard lowered, longing to touch. She wanted to run her hands over his forearms, feel the muscle shifting under smooth, warm skin.

If she was being sensible, Renee would accept this reunion as the gift it was. Let it slip through her fingers, fleeting and lovely.

But it was the self underneath her defences who was in charge right now. The lonely girl, yearning for something straightforward and sweet. She thought,If you walk through this door, you’re never going to see him again.

Renee turned around.

Ket Siong was standing by the black cab, looking woebegone. Renee was reminded absurdly of a dog waiting outside a supermarket, patient and consciously good, but just a little worried that its owner might never emerge.