Page 2 of Love and Other Paradoxes

Joe rolled over and stared at the ceiling. His family’s expectations, his diminishing overdraft, the loans he would somehow have to find a way to pay back, all agreed with Rob: the important thing was to graduate, so he could get a job and not have to live, or indeed die, in a bin. But he had only ever really wanted one thing, and the fact that it currently seemed impossible didn’t make it any less vital. “What about you?” He turned the question back on Rob. “Why don’t you stop pretending to kill people and focus on whatyou’rehere for?”

“You know why, Greeney. Because I have to defeat my nemesis.”

“Aye, of course. The Deadly Mr. Darcy.” Joe had never actuallymet Rob’s nemesis. He only knew that they had fought a duel at the end of first year, which had ended in Rob’s death by blue confetti. “What’s your pseudonym again?”

“Entropy.” Rob struck a pose. “It’s going to get you in the end.”

“It’s not funny if you have to be a physicist to understand it.”

“Stop changing the subject. The point is, you don’t have a nemesis. What’s your excuse?”

He thought about looking up at the statue, a hundred and eighty years after the poet had taken his final breath, and the answer came easily. “I want to be remembered.”

It was a ridiculously grandiose thing to admit to. But Rob just nodded, as if it made sense. “Okay. So, be memorable. I thought you’d already started. Didn’t you win the Tartan Limerick contest, or whatever?”

“The Scottish Young Poet award,” Joe corrected him. “When I was fifteen. And what have I done since? I submitted a poem toThe Maysin first year, and they rejected it for being ‘naive.’” That note still rang in his ears every time he sat down to write. “And see what I’m up against.” He grabbed a copy ofVarsityfrom Rob’s pile and leafed through at random. “Here. Someone in second year who’s already been commissioned by the BBC.”

“Overachiever,” Rob scoffed. “Ignore them.”

“I can’t afford to ignore them. I’m the first kid from my school to go to Cambridge since anyone can remember. Everyone back home’s expecting me to, I don’t know, invent the moon or something.”

“Moon’s already been invented, Greeney. You’ll have to think of something else.”

“And poetry has always been my thing,” he went on. “It’s what I do. It’s like—like...”

Rob placed a hand dramatically on his heart. “Likebreathing.”

“No. It’s not like breathing. Breathing is boring, and easy, and everybody does it. Poetry is—itusedto be fun, and hard in the best way, and it made me feel more like me than anything else.” He flushed: if he’d been talking to anyone but Rob, he would never have let the conversation get to this level of honesty. “I applied here because I thought it would turn me into the poet I’m supposed to be. But it’s the opposite. I think about all these great poets who came here before, and all I can see is how I just don’t measure up.”

Rob cleared his throat. “Greeney. Do you remember what happened when I joined the Assassins’ Guild in first year?”

“Someone shot you at point-blank range with a banana.”

“That is correct.” Rob steepled his fingers. “And how did I respond?”

Joe scrunched up his face. “Am I a bad friend if I don’t remember?”

“I read the reports of every Game since Lent 1993, consulting the same hallowed archives in which I hope to one day be enshrined as a Master Assassin. I learned the Game’s most important principle: make yourself hard to find. And, crucially,I kept playing. The result? While I’ve yet to win, I’ve survived till at least week five in every Game I’ve taken part in since.”

“Was there a point to this story?”

“The point is, you submitted to one pretentious student anthology and you didn’t get in. Big deal. Keep trying.” Rob reached in his pocket and took out a pink sheet of paper. He scrunched it into a ball, loaded it into his trebuchet, and fired. It hit Joe in the face and bounced off into a gap between the sofa cushions.

“Ow,” said Joe pointedly. He fished the ball out and unrolled it.

It was a flyer for a poetry competition. The title, surrounded by hearts, was Love Poems for Tomorrow. The idea was to pair emerging student writers and actors, who would perform the winning poems at an event on Valentine’s Day.

He imagined the hush of the ADC Theatre, his words echoing out from the stage. He visualised his future unfurling from that moment: a life of art and glory, where people knew his poems and treasured them, passing them down the years until the mess of his existence was overwritten by the perfect things he’d created.

“So?” Rob prompted him.

He sighed. “When’s the deadline?”

“Didn’t look. Must be on there somewhere.”

He found it at the bottom of the flyer. The first of November, 2005. Tomorrow.

The perfect, imaginary poem evaporated, leaving behind the terror of a blank page. Who could he write a love poem about? His first-year girlfriend, who had dumped him after three months when they had run out of things to say to each other? The girl he had kissed outside the toilets last time he went clubbing, who had slurred something in his ear about how much she lovedBraveheart, passed out on his shoulder, and never called him back?

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