Page 3 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“Oh no,” said Rob, recognising the expression on Joe’s face. “You’re having a Thought, aren’t you?”

The revelation built itself like a poem, elegant and inescapable, the end contained in the start. “This whole time, I was thinking,I can’t believe Rob is comparing my poetry to being in the Assassins’ Guild. I mean, you pretend to kill people, with banana guns and wee paper swords. It’s playacting. It’s a cheap, brazen mockery of anything real.”

“All right,” Rob muttered. “I don’t judge your hobbies.”

“And my poetry is exactly the same.” He spread his hands. “I’ve been sitting here trying to make a trebuchet out of old newspapers. Because I’ve never been in love.” It felt like looking up at the statue, recognising the immense gap between who he was and who he wanted to be. “That’s the problem.”

“No. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you’ve let this place get to you. I mean, you’re trying to write poetry while literally being stared at by the ghost of Lord Byron.”

He started. “How did you know?”

“You’ve got ink on your chin. You were doing that pen pose again, weren’t you?” Joe licked his finger and scrubbed. “Greeney. Stop readingVarsity. Stop staring at statues of insane aristocrats who had inappropriate relationships with their sisters.” An idea lit Rob’s face. “In fact, why not get away from the university? Go somewhere completely unexpected. Say... Mill Road.”

“This is starting to sound really specific.”

“Fine.” Rob tapped the wall chart that tracked his progress in the Game. “Truth is, I’ve got a target out at Hughes Hall, and I don’t want to walk there on my own.”

Joe sighed. “All right. But then I’m coming straight back to sit in a bin and wait for death.”

“Deal.” Rob checked his watch. “Oh. Give me a second.” He disappeared into his bedroom, emerging a few minutes later in a green waistcoat and straw hat.

Joe looked him up and down. “Is that your fancy murder outfit?”

“Got a shift on the river at quarter to one. I won’t have time to change.” Rob had a technically forbidden part-time job as a punt guide, poling tourists along the river while telling them outrageous lies about the famous people who had attended Cambridgein the past. He clapped his hands. “Chop chop, Greeney. Those poems aren’t going to write themselves.”

Joe pocketed a blank notebook and the flyer and followed Rob out of college. Across the street, the woman in the tabard was watching him with bored intensity. As Joe turned left, she directed her group in parallel along the opposite pavement.

He leaned towards Rob, keeping his voice low. “See that woman?”

“What woman?” Rob turned.

“Don’tlook!”

“You want me to see without looking? I thought you were a philosopher.”

“And I thought you’d spent the past two years working on your stealth skills.”

Rob sighed as they turned up Pembroke Street. “I know you’ve just decided the crux of all your problems is that you’ve never been in love. But fixating on the first woman you see in the street is not a solution.”

“I’m not fixating.She’sfixating. She’s been following me around. Look! She’s got a whole group with her!” One of them raised a disposable camera and flashed a photograph. “They’re taking pictures of me!”

“Greeney, I’m not saying you’re delusional. But we live in one of the busiest tourist spots in Western Europe. Is it possible that instead of taking a picture of you, a random undergraduate, they were instead taking a picture of the stunning twenty-fourth-century court of Pembroke College, which is directly behind you?”

“Fourteenth century. I’m not on one of your tours; you don’t need to lie.” Still, he couldn’t shake the paranoia. “This, and all the weird stuff in my pigeonhole—there’s definitely something going on.”

Rob looked at him sideways. “Maybe I signed you up for Assassins without telling you and now everyone is out for your blood.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Course I’m joking,” Rob scoffed. “That would be absurd.”

He eyed the newspaper trebuchet under Rob’s arm. “Aye.Thatwould be absurd.”

They crossed the grassy expanse of Parker’s Piece. With no sea to frame it, the sky felt too big, like a huge eye staring down at him. Only when they passed the lamppost known as the Reality Checkpoint, where the university gave way to the rest of town, did the feeling of being watched start to ease off.

“This is me.” Rob turned down a side street.

“Good luck with the murder,” Joe shouted encouragingly. Someone walking past did a double take.

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