Page 15 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“No. I’m not even born.”

“So why come back to now?”

“When it happened...” She took a breath. “She was driving back here. Back to Cambridge, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of an award she’d won on the twenty-third of June, 2006.”

He saw it like a warped perspective coming into focus. “She’s a student here.”

She nodded. “Same year as you. When Retroflex said they were launching a trip to see you, I knew that was my chance. Right place, right time.” She pressed her palms to her cheeks. “So. What they say, about how the past doesn’t change? I can’t think like that. What happened to her—what’s going to happen...” Her eyes met his, burning. “You can’t tell me that was meant to be.”

He looked down at the leaflet. He wanted to believe it for himself so badly. Now he understood why she was so desperate to believe the opposite. “I’m not saying it’smeant to be. I don’t think it’s right, or that God wants it, or any of that shite. I just think—maybe it’s how the universe works. What’s going to happen happens, and we can’t change it.”

Her red-rimmed eyes met his. “Do you know that for sure?”

“Fuck no.” He laughed. “I’m a philosopher. Knowing stuff isn’t our strong suit.”

She swirled the dregs in her mug. “And I don’t know the futurecan change. But I believe it. Because I have to. I’ll find her, and I’ll do whatever it takes to stop her winning that award, so she’s got no reason to come back here on that day.”

“And then what? You go back through the wormhole into the future?” He rubbed his temples, wincing. “But—a different future from the one you left?”

“A better one. The future me and my family were supposed to have.” She looked down at her hands. “And I’ll be the me I was always meant to be.”

“Okay.” He sat back. “So do it. I might not agree that it’s possible, but I’m not going to stop you trying.”

She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Have you heard of the butterfly effect?”

“Aye, it came out last year. The guy who goes back in time and rewrites his childhood, but he keeps making everything worse?” She looked at him blankly. “Oh. I thought you meant the film. Guess that one didn’t stand the test of time.” He frowned. “The butterfly effect. What, a butterfly flaps its wings and ends up causing a hurricane?”

“Tiny changes build up.” She interlocked her thumbs, spreading out her fingers. “I need to stop my mum winning that award. But I can’t change anything else. If I make the wrong change, even a small one, the consequences could be huge. She might not meet my dad. She might stay here and do a PhD, or she might move back to Ghana, or—or some other accident might happen that I can’t save her from.” She looked at him, her expression solemn. “Since I got here, I’ve been trying to stay out of people’s way. Affect as little as possible. This”—she gestured between the two of them—“this is a huge risk. I could be making a million tiny changes, just by talking to you. But I had to make sure you’re not going to do anything differently because of the book. You have to act like you never read it. Do whatever you were going to do before.”

He rubbed his face, smearing the words from his drunken poem. “Uh-huh.”

She was looking at him uneasily. “What?”

He gave her a slightly edited rundown of the events of the previous night. Her face steadily fell, until she looked almost as appalled as when she’d first seen him in the coffee shop.

She pinched her forehead. “I’m sorry. I want to make sure I understand. You walked up to Diana Dartnell dressed as a railway accident and told her you’re her destiny?”

Through her words, he saw himself from Diana’s perspective: a drunken imbecile, acting like she owed him her attention. He winced. “I truly wish that summary was less accurate.”

Esi made a grinding noise in her throat. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. All I had to do was come here and change one thing, and now it’s fucked and it’s all myfault—” Her head snapped up, braids flying. “You’ve got to fix this.”

Her terror cut through his shame. “I don’t understand. Why would anything I do affect your mum?”

She grabbed the book and opened it, turning to the page with the photographs. She tapped the girl with her arm around Diana. In a rush, he saw past the differences—the cool tone of her complexion where Esi’s was warm, the shining fall of her straightened hair—to the likeness in her cheekbones, her eyes, her nervous smile. “Because they’re friends. Her and Diana Dartnell. Not in the future, but—here and now.” She looked up in desperation. “If you and Diana don’t get together when you’re supposed to, that changes Diana’s path. Which changes my mum’s path.” She mimed an explosion with her fingers. “My one change gets butterfly-hurricaned into nothing.”

Chapter Seven

He stared at her across the table. Her vision of the universe—unstable, rewriteable, constantly in flux—possessed him. Could she be right? By walking up to Diana last night, had he knocked his entire future off course?

“Me and Diana,” he said, trying to stay calm. “Do you know for sure that’s not how we first met?”

She made a face. “Of course it’s not how you first met. That’d be ridiculous—”

“Do you know for sure?” he interrupted. “Come on, you must know how we got together. You had to study me in school, for fuck’s sake.”

“Honestly, I tuned most of it out. But no. I don’t think they ever told us how you met.” She stared at him thoughtfully. “Did you even get together at Cambridge?”

“You’re askingme?”

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