In the aforementioned documentary that shows Zayn waking up in the middle of the night to record, cameras follow his mother as she comes home, for the first time, to a new house that Zayn bought for his family. He tells me that this single purchase was his only goal in the band, ever since his days on The X Factor. “In whatever way I can help them right now, because I’ve been almost gifted in a way, I do,” he says. “I feel like it’s my responsibility.” The cousin who was with him on the morning of his departure from the band—after realizing how far behind Bradford’s educational system was, Zayn paid to enroll him in private school in London.

As much as he says he was tired of the lifestyle that accompanies mega-fame, Zayn is working around the clock on his solo album—including taking time for this story, long after the sun’s gone down. “I’m working every day now, but I’m working on music that I enjoy,” he says. Were there any parts of One Direction’s music that he enjoyed? He says that’s beside the point. “That’s not music that I would listen to. Would you listen to One Direction, sat at a party with your girl? I wouldn’t. To me, that’s not an insult, that’s me as a 22-year-old man. As much as I was in that band, and I loved everything that we did, that’s not music that I would listen to. I don’t think that’s an offensive statement to make. That’s just not who I am. If I was sat at a dinner date with a girl, I would play some cool shit, you know what I mean? I want to make music that I think is cool shit. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.”

That’s not to say that he’ll never work with his former bandmates again. In old interviews and even in the note announcing he was quitting, Zayn always expressed a desire to remain “friends for life” with his former bandmates. So it was surprising when only weeks after his exit he got into an argument on Twitter with Louis over someone’s poor choice of a photo filter. I ask him where he and the group stand now. “I spoke to Liam about two weeks ago,” Zayn says. “It was the first time I’d spoken to him since I left the band, and I rung him, and he wanted to talk. He said that he didn’t understand it at the time, but he now fully gets why I had to do what I did. He understands that it’s my thing, that I had to do that, and that basically he wants to meet up and sit down and have a good chat in person, and he wants to do some music and work on some stuff aside from being in the band, which we always wanted to do anyway.”

You can bracket phases in Zayn’s life by albums and concerts and scandals and hairstyles—after quitting the band, he sported a penitential buzz cut. Now, liberated from the band and out of the relationship he’d been in for almost as long, his next phase will be defined not by any clear direction but by the total absence of one. He’ll try new, weird things and see what fits, then maybe throw it all out again. Maybe in a few years the fame he says he’s rejecting will be exactly what he wants. The point is it’s up to him. “When an album comes out, it’s a snapshot of the artist’s life,” Malay tells me. “‘This is who I am, this is where I’m at, fuck with me or don’t fuck with me.’ It takes a lot of guts to do that. I’m sure in the future he’s going to have a whole new set of things he’s dealing with. This particular piece is definitely dealing with a transitional point in his life, but I don’t think there’s an end to that.”

Zayn does seem up-in-the-air about where exactly he’s going, and a bit cagey too. “The album—I have a name for it in my head right now, but I don’t want to tell you what the album name is—all the songs are different genres,” he says. “They don’t really fit a specific type of music. They’re not like, ‘This is funk, this is soul, this is upbeat, this is a dance tune.’ Nothing is like that. I don’t really know what my style is yet. I’m kind of just showing what my influences are. Depending on what the reaction is, then I’ll go somewhere with that. If people like that I’m a bit more R&B, then I’ll do more R&B on my next album. If they like the fact that there’s reggae on there, I might do more reggae. It’s just depending on what they want and what I feel comfortable with at the time. I might even have a rock tune on the album, but it’s kind of like R&B-rock.”

A week later, Zayn sends me a three-paragraph mission statement for the album that elaborates on his feelings. The very fact of this letter’s existence says a lot about his intentions. “I can map every lyric and every note to mean something to me,” it says. “It’s a snapshot of my life and the thoughts on my life, my hopes, my aspirations, and my regrets in the summer of 2015.” The last part is what really clicks for me—it’s just this summer. The years that came before, and whatever comes after, can stay a mystery. That’s how everyone lives, isn’t it? You find your way. Where Zayn’s entire identity was once fixed awkwardly upon him by others, he’s now embracing a perpetual state of becoming something else, recognizing he’s changing as he goes: this is me, trying now, and it won’t be me forever.

Back in the pub, Zayn describes his dad as a way to underscore his own change. “My dad is super reserved, and he kind of just is the way that he is,” he says. “He just stays in Bradford. He’s really shy, and he doesn’t like to be in the limelight. He kind of feels like I just went and auditioned and never came back.” This idea—what happened to the families when their boys left—has been stuck in my head since 2013, when One Direction put out a strange video for “Story of My Life.”

The video shows actual photographs of the bandmates as kids with their families, then, in a trick of special effects, morphs everyone into their present selves. The One Direction boys are free to move around the frame, browsing an old childhood bookshelf or looking wistfully out the bedroom window where they once projected so many dreams, but their family members—played by their actual family members—remain frozen in place. It’s as if celebrity brought the band immortality, but it robbed them of the ability to connect with the ones they most deeply love.

Now Zayn has chosen another path, leaving the world of gods to live a more fallible life. There’s something really sad about that—the once mighty band feels a little off balance, and solitary Zayn can seem so lonely in comparison. But he isn’t alone. Fifteen minutes before our interview ends, one of his managers pops in to tell Zayn his mother has arrived. She’s driven down from Bradford, and when he’s done with work tonight they’ll head home together, spend time as a family, and probably not worry about what comes next.