Page 32 of The Friend Zone Experiment

“How old is she? Around your age? Younger?” When Ket Siong refused to be drawn on this, Ket Hau said, sagely, “Try Instagram. Facebook’s for old farts like me.”

After he left, Ket Siong reopened his laptop and looked up Renee’s Instagram.

He tried to ignore the voice of his conscience, pointing out he was overstepping a boundary. Renee had made it clear she wanted to be friends, nothing more. She’d drawn a line. He should respect it.

The voice of his conscience spoke in vain.

Renee’s Instagram was an attractive collection of selfies, images and videos of food and places of interest around London, and Virtu hype.

Ket Siong paused on a recent selfie. The timestamp said the image had been shared the day of their encounter at the V&A.

Renee was wearing something pale blue that she must have changed out of for the evening. She was illuminated by morning light, smiling. She looked beautiful, but there was something distant about her expression, her true self guarded behind it. It was similar to the smile she’d given Ket Siong at the museum, before she’d realised who he was. The face she showed the world at large.

That he got to see anything else was precious. He couldn’t risk that. This time, he needed to make sure he was what Renee needed—no more and no less.

But he kept staring at the photo. Renee’s hair coiled over her collarbones, the tender hollow of her throat. Ket Siong was hijacked by a sudden sense-memory, extraordinarily vivid, of leaning into Renee, pressing his lips to her throat and hearing her sigh.

Arousal whiplashed through him. He jolted upright and closed the browser.

9

“You agreed todowhat?” said Nathalie.

It was the middle of the week, a few days after the V&A private view. Renee hadn’t originally been expecting to see Nathalie. Their meetups these days were either crowbarred at short notice into gaps in their packed schedules, or else they required all the planning of a military operation, months in advance.

This one fell into the first category. Nathalie happened to be in South Kensington for a meeting that was cancelled at the last minute. Instead of heading back to the office, she’d texted Renee to ask if she was free for a coffee.

Now they were holed up in a cosy Lebanese café, perched on a bench covered with a worn red rug and sharing a couple of baklawa between them—small crisp pastries, dense with nuts and fragrant with orange blossom water. Renee was having a black coffee, Nathalie a beetroot latte because she could never resist ordering whatever novelty drink happened to be on the menu.

“Not as bad as turmeric,” was her conclusion, but she wasn’t making great progress on finishing her drink.

Their conversation had so far majored on Nathalie’s work woes. Nathalie had returned to Europe for a dream job, a role as creative director for a luxury cosmetics brand, but the dream was not without its challenges. It transpired that a long-standing employee in her team had applied for the job, too. Her working life now consisted of incessant warfare—passive-aggressiveemail chains, shady business with Outlook scheduling, sniping over team lunches.

Nathalie seemed to value Renee’s insights into the situation, but she’d yet to take Renee’s advice to turn her nemesis into an ally by the determined application of flattery. “That might work for you, Miss Charisma, butIdon’t have the ability to make everyone like me.”

Renee rolled her eyes. “Because I’m so popular. You’re the only person I hang out with who isn’t paid to be around me.” She thought of Ket Siong and blushed. “I mean, pretty much the only person.”

“Yeah, right. What about Jason?” Nathalie waggled her eyebrows. “Is he waiting for you back at the suite? I’m surprised he let you out to see me.”

She looked at Renee’s face and said, “Don’t tell me. He stood you up?”

“He broke up with me,” Renee admitted. “The day after he arrived in London.”

Nathalie said, with gratifying energy, “That motherfucker!”

“I was going to tell you,” said Renee. “It’s just been so busy…”

And if she’d texted Nathalie about Jason, she would have been bound by the laws of their friendship to tell her about Ket Siong as well.

Renee wasn’t sure she felt like telling anyone about that reunion, especially not someone who knew as much about her history with Ket Siong as Nathalie. It was Nathalie who’d picked up the pieces when Ket Siong had rejected her, all those years ago—her shoulder Renee had sobbed on afterwards.

Which meant, of course, that Nathalie was best placed to extract the details of what had happened from Renee. She set about this with characteristic efficiency, only interrupting to exclaim, “I can’t believe you let me go on about Annalisa at work when you had actual news!”

She listened to Renee’s account of the day Jason had brokenup with her—and the night that followed—with admirable restraint. It was only when Renee said she had fixed a day with Ket Siong to go to the National Gallery together that Nathalie had her outburst.

“What’s wrong with that?” said Renee. “We said we’d be friends.”

“Then why are you going on a date with him?”

---