Page 68 of Love and Other Paradoxes

Washed and dressed for the first time in days, he followed Rob outside. A dense fog had descended, colleges looming out of it like spectres from the past. As they crossed the river, he looked out at the ghostly timbers of the Mathematical Bridge. He remembered drifting under it with Diana as she spoke about Crispin, feeling for the first time like he was seeing her real self.

Crispin. He had thought how odd it was, that she would leave him for Joe only to turn around and marry him later. But she wasn’t going to leave him. She was going to stay with him and get engaged to him and walk open-eyed into two years of misery with a man who couldn’t tell her he loved her. Even if the future could change, Joe doubted a fling with a provincial nobody would be enough to throw that off course.

He followed Rob into Cripps Court, a 1970s block that sat across the river from Queens’ original fifteenth-century court like the aftermath of a time-travel accident. Rob unzipped the bag he was carrying and pulled something out.

“Why are you brandishing a poster tube?”

“It’s a sword. Clearly.” Rob indicated the base of the tube, whereSWORDwas written in neat black letters. He put a finger to his lips and started climbing the stairs.

Joe followed wearily, his leg aching, up to the third floor. Rob crept along the corridor, poster tube held high, and took up position behind the second door. As he followed, Joe tripped on the doorstop and banged his bad leg on a fire extinguisher.“Fuck.”

The second door flew open. Something hit Joe’s jumper, and he fell back instinctively against the wall. It took him some time to register that he had been shot.

The assassin lowered his water pistol, staring at Joe. “Who the hell are you?”

Rob looked from Joe to the assassin and back with an expression of utter devastation. “You killed Greeney! Now it’spersonal,” he growled, and launched himself at Joe’s assailant, who retreated hurriedly back into his room.

Joe looked down at the spreading wet patch on his jumper. So this was what it felt like to be dead. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected: in some ways, it was a relief. Joseph Greene the poet was dead already, his ashes blown to the wind. A water pistol to the chest seemed a fitting way to mark the end of all his hopes and dreams.

Rob emerged from the target’s room, the front of his hoodie dark with water.

“Jesus,” said Joe, momentarily distracted from his own predicament. “Are you okay?”

“No, Greeney. I’m dead.” Rob thwacked the poster tube against the floor in frustration. “That’s what tends to happen when you bring a sword to a water pistol fight.”

Joe stared over Rob’s shoulder, his mind still turning on wormholes and second chances. “Maybe you could go back in time and fix it.”

Rob laughed. “Not in this universe.”

As usual when Rob talked about time travel, Joe was immediately confused. “You mean because time travel isn’t possible in this universe?”

Rob was too preoccupied by his death to answer. “The worst thing is, it scuppers my chances of getting a PhD.”

“What are you on about? You’re the most likely person to get a PhD I know.”

“Not that kind of PhD. Paranoia Hardened Death-Master. It’s the title awarded to Assassins who win the Game twice. Now there’s only the May Week Game left, so it’s Master Assassin or nothing.”

Joe was barely listening: he only heard the end of the academic year rushing down on him, inexorable as time itself. His guaranteed 2:1 was gone. In its place was a blank sheet of paper, and the fact that he hadn’t done any serious work since before the Christmas holidays. He could have been making an effort—unlike the rest of the book’s broken promises, this one was in his power to fix—but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to try. If his original future was gone, he might as well have no future at all. He saw it bleakly laid out before him: moving back home, where his failure would become a running joke, working in the pub and paying rent to his parents until he died and was utterly forgotten.

The cold air chilled the wet patch on his jumper as they came out onto Silver Street. Rob stopped on the bridge, leaning over to watch a lone punt drift into the fog. “Greeney, what’s up?”

Joe hunched his shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“You had your big moment, then you ran away and got yourself run over, and since then you’ve basically been a shut-in.” Rob looked at him, puzzled. “What happened? Was it something with Diana?”

He shuddered against the cold. There were so many ways he could describe what had happened with Diana, but only one that Rob had enough context to understand: that moment backstage, when he had stepped out of her arms and turned away. “She invited me to a sex cupboard and I said no.”

“Right,” said Rob slowly. He rubbed his face. “I’m sorry, why exactly did you say no to the sex cupboard?”

“Because I was in love with someone else.” He closed his eyes, swallowed, let the truth come out. “Iamin love with someone else.”

“And you can’t be with that person because...” Rob left the question hanging.

She had told him a hundred times. She was a ghost, already drowning in a river of her own choosing, and she didn’t want him reaching in his hand to help her out. “She’s not staying.”

“Ah.” Rob picked up a loose chip of stone from the bridge and threw it in the river. “It’s Esi, isn’t it?”

Joe gaped at him. “You saw us togetheronce!” Months ago, at the very beginning, when he had barely known himself. “Was it that obvious?”

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