Page 7 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“It’s a compliment,” he said, with a frustrated laugh.

She stopped. “Look. Joe.” The way she said his name was a puzzle he could have worked on for years: weary, exasperated, like an in-joke too complex to explain. “You seem nice. Like, surprisingly nice. Honestly, I thought you’d be an entire...” She closed her eyes, put a finger to her lips. “This has been fun. I’m sure I’ll laugh about it one day, before I forget any of this ever happened, because it won’t have. But there’s something you should know about me.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m a disaster. Like, a full-on bomb crater of a person. So if we never see each other again, which we won’t, just know—you’re not missing anything.”

He shook his head, bewildered. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“You have no idea. You just met me. And now, we’re going to un-meet.” She pointed at the ground, marking the moment. “This is where I walk away.”

He spread his hands, helpless. “Okay.”

She turned towards WH Smith. Off to buy a roll of dead trees for the counting machine. He watched her go, feeling strangely bereft. Then someone walked into her. She stumbled, and her bag slipped to the ground. “Shit,” she yelled in disproportionate panic, as something fell out. It was a small hardback book. She lunged to pick it up.

“Let me,” he said.

“No,” she protested, but it was too late. He had already seen his name on the cover.

He picked it up, holding it out of her reach. He read the title.Meant to Be:Poems for Diana. By Joseph Greene. Above his name was a picture of a dark-haired man and woman embracing. Aside from the fact that the man was in his thirties, it was recognisably him.

His mind thundered with wild noise. “Explain?” he said weakly.

The expression on her face mesmerised him. It was one he had never seen before on anyone’s, and on hers, it was extraordinary. “It’s a joke,” she said desperately. “A stupid prank. Your friends put me up to it. Let me...” She tried to grab the book.

He stepped away, slow as a fly in honey. “If it’s a joke, why aren’t you laughing?”

Her face contorted, a terrified, pleading parody of a smile. “It has to be a joke, right? That’s the only way it makes sense.”

“No.” He ran back over their conversation: the band that didn’t exist; the way she’d responded when he’d asked if she was from London.I will be, if you wait around long enough.Barely believing himself, he said it. “You’re from the future.”

She should have laughed. She should have called him an idiot and sauntered away. Instead, she fixed her eyes on the book in his hands with a look of utter despair. “There’s this company. Retroflex. They run tourist trips back in time, to see famous people when they were young.”

His brain was in freefall. “I’m going to be famous. For my poetry.”

“Yeah. For some reason, you are.” She was looking in panic over his shoulder. “And in five minutes, the tour guide’s going to be off her lunch break and bringing more people here to stare at you, which means...” She reached out. “You need to give me that back.Now.”

She grabbed the book. He pulled. She clung, her fingers tightening.

A bike bell rang, shrill and close. They jumped apart to let it through. The book was in Joe’s hand.

Their eyes met across the narrow street.

He ran.

Chapter Three

He pelted away, Esi’s footsteps ringing behind him. He sprinted past Great St. Mary’s, narrowly avoiding a crocodile of tourists who were staring up at the tower instead of watching where they were going, and skidded down the narrow alley of Senate House Passage. High walls closed him in: if she caught up with him here, he’d have nowhere to run. He slalomed through a gauntlet of bikes, dodging a group of first-years in college scarves who were walking four abreast. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Esi was closing in, pacing relentlessly through the gap his chaotic flight had made. He burst out of the passageway, slicing right then left, where chalk scrawled on bricks read,TO THE RIVER.

The twists and turns had slowed her: she didn’t know this part of town like he did, and he used it. Instead of crossing the humped bridge, he slipped down the jetty on the right, hoping she would race on across the river. But he had misjudged her. Before she charged onto the bridge, her head turned in restless, searching attention, and her eyes locked with his.

He was trapped between her and the green water. He could jump in and swim for it, but the book would get wet. He looked frantically between it and the river.

“And this,” he heard from his left, “is Garret Hostel Bridge. Named, of course, after Dr. Garret Hostel, the original inventor of the swan.”

His heart leapt. Rob, in his green waistcoat, poling a shallow wooden boat along the sluggish river. Nestled under blankets inside was a group of tourists who seemed unmoved by his invented facts.

“Rob!” he yelled. “Can I get a lift?”

Rob nearly fell off the punt. “Greeney! Um, normally, yes, but these people have, you know, actually paid for a tour—”

He didn’t wait. He flung himself out like Frodo at Bucklebury Ferry and landed heavily in the boat, one foot squashing a punnet of strawberries. He staggered to the front and sat down, as the punt rocked madly and the passengers shouted and Rob steered them out from the sudden embrace of a willow tree, announcing loudly that everything was fine.

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