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Ma sat them down at the dining table. They were not to fight. It was clear none of them was in a fit state to retire, despite Ket Hau and Ket Siong’s feeble protests that Ma should go to bed and not worry about them. Instead, they should talk—but not before she had made them all hot drinks.

They waited in silence while Ma bustled around the kitchen, putting on the kettle and getting jars out of cupboards. Ket Siong stared at his phone.

His heart had leapt, absurdly, when Ket Hau said Renee’s name, but there was no message from her. Or there was, but nothing so encouraging as a text. Renee had sent him a payment for her half of the bill for dinner.

He’d forgotten she had his bank details. They’d exchanged those after their Chelsea nasi lemak dinner. Renee had reluctantly permitted him to pay for his half of the meal, at his insistence, but then she’d turned around and sent him back an amount covering their drinks. She’d said it wasn’t fair for him to have to pay fifty percent when she’d drunk ninety percent of the alcohol.

He hadn’t argued. That was what friends did, go Dutch. Maybe when their renewed friendship was no longer quite so new and Renee had relaxed a little, she’d let him treat her once in a while.

So much for that. This time she’d calculated the amount owed down to the penny. The precision of the payment was a statement. Her debts were paid; he had no claim on her.

The notification had come through at five minutes to midnight. Hopefully Renee was asleep by now. She’d have to get up early for her pitch the next morning.

He remembered with a slight start that he didn’t want the pitch to succeed. But he didn’t want it to go badly for Renee, either. She’d put so much into it.

Who was he to judge her for her choices? Love compromised you. Ket Siong should know.

“So,” said Ket Hau, “is this the same Renee?”

Ket Siong’s head whipped up. “What?”

“You know, the friend you told us about back then. The one you had a crush on at uni. Come on,” said Ket Hau, as Ket Siong gaped at him, “it was obvious. You couldn’t talk about her without blushing. You’re doing it right now.”

Ket Hau shook his head. “So she’s the girl you’ve been seeing. I should have guessed. I couldn’t believe you went and slept with some stranger you met at an event—”

Ket Siong glanced towards the kitchen. “Shh!”

There was no sign of Ma emerging, thankfully. The kettle was boiling and the hiss tended to fill the kitchen, drowning out all other sound.

“It was so out of character,” Ket Hau went on, though he did at least lower his voice. “I couldn’t brain it. You meet some random girl and suddenly you’re always on your phone, you’re going around humming to yourself…”

“I wasn’t humming. Was I humming?”

“Oh, and it was a Dior exhibition you went to. Ofcourse,” said Ket Hau. “She studied fashion, right, your Renee?” At Ket Siong’s expression, he added, “What, did you think we didn’t know? We were so worried after she rejected you back then.”

Ma and Ket Hau had been especially solicitous while he was reeling from the breach with Renee, but Ket Siong hadn’t noticed anything unusual in their concern. After all, he had just had to give up his studies at the Royal Academy of Music. If he was crushed, that needed no explanation.

Apparently, it had, in fact, required no explanation. If anyone in this family was allowed secrets, it certainly wasn’t Ket Siong.

“She didn’t reject me,” he said, a little too loudly.

Ma, coming into the room with three mugs on a tray, said, “I told you all, cannot fight.”

She placed two mugs before Ket Siong and Ket Hau, brimming with piping hot Milo, made in Ma’s irreproducible style. Heated milk poured onto six heaping spoonfuls of Milo powder, with a generous teaspoon of condensed milk stirred in at the end.

Ma had made herself mulberry leaf tea. She sat down, cupping her hands around her mug.

“I wasn’t fighting,” muttered Ket Siong. “I was just saying.Iwas the one who rejected Renee.”

“Which Renee?” Ma’s eyes widened. “You mean your uni friend? The fashion student?”

Ket Siong probably shouldn’t be surprised at the retentiveness of his family’s memory. After all, they remembered more of his life than he did.

“You broke up with her because you had to leave London?” said Ket Hau sympathetically. “I’m sorry, man.”

Ket Siong found himself abruptly tired of subterfuge. There was no reason not to be honest. If he’d acted on his impulse to tell Renee how he felt about her earlier that evening, maybe she would still be talking to him.

“No. We weren’t dating,” he said. “I turned her down, because I found out her father is Goh Kheng Tat.”