Page 52 of The Friend Zone Experiment

13Now

The day afterhis visit to the Rembrandt exhibition, Ket Siong went to Richmond, to teach Alicia Tan’s brother Jasper the piano.

Ket Siong was off his game, preoccupied. It took a particularly discordant muddling of chords to stir him from his reverie. He came to himself to see Jasper gazing at him, wide-eyed and penitent.

“Sorry,” said Jasper.

Jasper was not one of his keener students. Jasper’s mother, a former hedge fund manager who had quit to focus on her kid, worked off her considerable energy by endeavouring to cultivate genius in him. The piano lessons were part of this uphill effort. Jasper would rather have learnt to play the harmonica.

“It’s all right,” said Ket Siong, with a twinge of guilt. “Just needs more practice. Let’s take it again from the top.”

He hadn’t slept well. He’d lain awake for a long time after going to bed, replaying the events of the day in his head. Imagining hauling off and punching Jason Tsai, as he’d so dearly wanted to do in reality. It was a natural next step to imagine Renee flinging herself in his arms, and from there his fantasies had devolvedinto scenes not at all suited to the platonic footing they’d agreed to be on.

Ket Siong often missed having his own room. He’d definitely felt the lack of privacy the night before.

Jasper—never the most focused student—was taking his cues from Ket Siong’s distraction.

“Ket,” he said, “did you want to be a piano teacher when you were a kid? Was that your dream?”

Jasper’s current dream was to drive a Tube train and run a dim sum restaurant on the side, the two ruling passions of his life being the intricacies of the London Underground, and siu mai. Ket Siong and Jasper’s mother had attempted to persuade him that being proficient at the piano would help him achieve these goals, but this had so far had no visible effect on Jasper.

“No,” said Ket Siong, after a moment. “I like doing it, though.”

Jasper wasn’t buying this. “What was your dream?”

Ket Siong stared at the score propped on the piano. Petzold’s Minuet in G major, commonly attributed to Bach. It was one of the earliest pieces he remembered learning as a child—an old friend, as familiar as the mole on the underside of his mother’s chin. “I wanted to be a concert pianist.”

“Like Lang Lang?” Jasper’s mother occasionally suggested that he might like to be like Lang Lang when he grew up.

Ket Siong smiled. “A bit like Lang Lang.”

Jasper was frowning, dissatisfied. “Why didn’t you become a concert pianist?”

“I did,” said Ket Siong.

He’d had a career in KL. Not exactly the career he’d dreamt of when he was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, but one he could be proud of nonetheless, combining performance, touring, and teaching at a somewhat higher level than he was doing now.

Jasper asked the obvious question. “Why’d you stop?”

I left home and it was too dangerouswas one answer. It had served Ket Siong well for years. It had been useful to have an excuse that was true, so it could obscure the real answer:I stopped caring.

He’d assumed his indifference to music was a fixed principle of the nightmarish new world he lived in now. But for the first time, Ket Siong found himself wondering if that was correct. Gazing unseeing at Petzold’s minuet, he saw in his mind’s eye Renee, standing by Rembrandt’sThe Jewish Bride, her face alight.

With the image came music. It took him a moment to recognise it. Mozart, the second movement of the D minor concerto.

“Ket?” said Jasper.

Ket Siong cleared his throat, tapping the score. “Come on. Petzold.”

Alicia ambushed Ket Siong after the lesson, coming down the stairs as he was putting his shoes on in the hall.

“How’s Jasper doing?” she said.

“He’ll pass if he practises,” said Ket Siong.

“It’s not looking good, you mean. I’m glad Maje’s only my stepmum. She’s great, but I would’ve been shit at being hothoused.” Alicia leaned against the banister, giving him a sidelong glance. “So how did it go the other night? With your ‘old friend’?” She did the quotes with her fingers.

Ket Siong undid his shoelaces so he could retie them, giving them more attention than had been necessary since he turned five. “Fine. Did you get home safe?”