Page 41 of Love and Other Paradoxes

He laughed, the surprised, gut-punch laugh that comes with recognising a truth. That was it, after all: the dark mirror of his desire to be great, that he might put his soul on display and find it judged worthless. He knew now there was no danger of that; still, he couldn’t shake the lingering terror. “Fair enough.”

“It’s not funny, Joseph.” She hugged herself against the cold wind that made the candles flicker. “Fear can be a good thing, up to a point. It keeps you sharp, keeps you striving. But too much fear can paralyse you.”

“I know.” He came to sit down next to her. “That’s why I haven’t finished a poem since I got to Cambridge.”

She frowned at him. “Except for ‘A Taste of Stars.’”

He froze. The honesty of their conversation had caught him: he had been talking to her like she lived in his head, as if he didn’t have anything to hide. “Aye, except that one,” he said, trying to sound normal. “I guess the competition motivated me.” She was looking at him strangely. He could taste his own lies, sour and electric on his tongue. He cleared his throat. “What about you? What are you afraid of?”

She looked out into the dark. “I’m afraid of waking up one day in my thirties and realising I missed my chance.”

He stole a glance at her profile, serious in the low light. His heart filled with the knowledge of who she would be, of how completely her future would realise her hopes. He smiled. “You’re not going to miss your chance.”

She looked at him under her eyelashes. “Did your time traveller tell you that?”

He shook his head, gazing at her. “I don’t need a time traveller to tell me that you’re going to be a star.”

She drew in a heavy, shuddering sigh, as if he had given her a wonderful gift. “Do you ever just want to be...” She looked down at her hands. “More than you are?”

“Yes,” he said, his soul singing with it. “Every second.”

She leaned against him, a touch so brief he could have imagined it.

They sat side by side, looking out at the roof of King’s Chapel, the stars above dimmed by the floodlights. The moment was everything he had imagined Cambridge to be. It should have been glorious, transcendent, but he was so conscious of its significance that it felt like he was watching it happen to someone else.

Diana’s phone buzzed, and kept buzzing. “Fuck.” She didn’t need to say that it was Crispin. He read it in the tension of her shoulders as she pressed the phone to her ear and turned away. “Yes.”

A man’s voice, low and indecipherable. She said, “You’re really asking me why?”

A pause, then a questioning tone. She sighed. “Well, the thing is, Crisp, when you say those things, it makes me not want to be around you.”

The voice went softer, coaxing. She closed her eyes. “Okay,” she breathed. She hung up and stood, swaying. “I have to go.”

He got awkwardly to his feet. “Let me walk you back.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Don’t worry, Joseph. I’ll be careful, since you think my future is worth sticking around for.” She studied him, a cool, evaluating gaze that made him feel like he was under a microscope. “Are you doing anything for New Year?”

“Uh. No. I mean—I’ll be at home.” He should have made something up—who in their right mind admitted to having no plans for New Year beyond getting drunk with their parents?

“Sounds depressing.” She held out her hand. “Do you have a pen?”

“What kind of question is that?” he asked, producing one from his jacket pocket.

She smiled. “Ready to poesise at a moment’s notice.” She took the pen, then his hand—hers was icy cold—and wrote on it in prickly letters. He looked down as an address in London materialised on his skin. “Come to my party.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t bothered. Worried he’d overdone it, he added, “Thanks.”

“It’s the very least I can do,” she said archly. “You saved my life, after all.”

He laughed. “Not sure it counts if I’m the one who endangered it in the first place.”

“Oh, it counts.” She kissed him on the cheek, then dropped over the edge of the roof.

He touched the place where her lips had met his skin. He felt it burning long after she had gone.

Chapter Fifteen

They pulled up at the house in the afternoon drizzle. Behind them stretched the brown winter fields; ahead, a cluster of low-roofed houses lay between them and the sea. Joe stepped out of the car, tasting the salt in the air. Strange, the things you only noticed once you’d left.

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