After Eden

Chapter 7

Ryan knocked on the door at eleven o’clock on the dot, just as the beeps on the radio signalled the hour. I smiled to myself at the military precision of his timekeeping. How had he managed that? I’d been watching for him from my bedroom window, half expecting him to call and cancel. It was my turn to host the Sunday revision session and although I’d invited Ryan every week since we met, this was the first time he’d accepted.

I’d seen his silver car reach the top of Trenoweth Lane before heading around the corner, out of sight. A minute or two later, he’d strolled along the road, his backpack swinging from one shoulder, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Part of me hoped to catch him doing something self-conscious – like checking his reflection in the wing mirror of a car – but he had just ambled along the pavement, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

Miranda got to the door before me and I guessed she had been planning that all along.

‘Hi,’ I yelled, running down the stairs two steps at a time.

Ryan looked up at me and smiled. ‘I wasn’t sure what we were studying, so I brought everything,’ he said, holding up his backpack.

I was stunned for a moment by just how great he looked in his shirt and black jeans, and then I remembered my manners. I jumped to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Ryan, this is Miranda, my aunt.’

‘How do you do?’ Miranda said, shaking his hand enthusiastically. ‘Come inside and meet Travis, my partner.’

Partner. That was new. Travis had somehow skipped the boyfriend stage, jumping directly from friend to partner, passing Go and collecting two hundred pounds without me noticing. Not that I minded too much. Despite the vegetarian jibes, Travis was OK and he seemed to make Miranda happy.

Travis was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a coffee and reading the food section of the Sunday newspaper. He stood up and held out a hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Ryan.’

‘Likewise,’ said Ryan, shaking Travis’s hand.

‘Take a seat,’ said Miranda.

Inwardly I cringed. Miranda had warned me that she wouldn’t let Ryan and me go up to my room alone. What did she think we were going to get up to with her and Travis downstairs and Connor and Megan on their way over? And if she objected to me being alone in my room with a boy, why did she allow me to spend hours alone with Connor? It was typical of her random, half-thought-through rules that held no logic.

‘What part of the US are you from, Ryan?’ Travis asked, as he sat down again.

For a second Ryan looked alarmed, as if he’d been asked a trick question, but then he pulled out a chair and joined him. ‘New Hampshire.’

‘Live free or die,’ said Travis with a smile. ‘I’m from California myself.’

‘Eureka,’ said Ryan, smiling back.

‘Would one of you like to explain what you’re talking about?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Travis, winking at me. ‘You like puzzles. You work it out.’ He turned his attention back to Ryan. ‘What part of New Hampshire?’

‘Wolfeboro. Do you know the area?’

‘Not at all,’ Travis said. ‘But my college room-mate came from that area, so I’ve heard a little about that part of the country. What’s the hunting like out there? Mike used to shoot deer. He invited me but I never did make it out.’

‘Ryan’s vegetarian,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t hunt.’

Travis smirked. ‘Well then, this really is a match made in heaven. Shall we put an announcement in the paper?’

Ryan looked at me, one eyebrow raised in a question.

‘Just ignore Travis,’ I said. ‘It’s his aim in life to irritate and embarrass me as much as possible.’

‘You have an unusual accent, Ryan,’ said Travis. ‘You’re not originally from the east coast, are you?’

‘We move around a lot. Dad’s a writer and he likes quiet places. Every year or so we move. Wolfeboro is home, but I grew up all over the place.’

Miranda was pouring orange juice into a jug. ‘That sounds exciting.’

Ryan shrugged. ‘It’s OK.’

‘Has he written anything we might have read?’ she asked.

‘Not unless you enjoy books on palaeoclimatology and astrophysics.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Miranda, reaching for a set of tall glasses.

‘It’s the study of long-term climate change.’

‘He must be very clever.’

My phone vibrated with a text message. ‘Connor and Megan have just got off the bus,’ I said. ‘They’ll be here in a couple of minutes.’

‘Well then, you’d better take this up to your room,’ Miranda said, passing me a tray laden with biscuits and cakes and juices.

That morning I had tidied, dusted and vacuumed my room and even picked a bunch of daffodils from the garden to make the room smell nice. Miranda had noticed and she and Travis had teased me all through breakfast.

‘Voilà,’ I said, kicking the door open. ‘Chez moi.’ I put the tray down on my desk. Ryan shrugged off his black jacket and hung it on the hook on the back of my door.

He turned a full circle, taking it all in with a smile. ‘So this is where you dream,’ he said, almost to himself.

He leant on the window sill and gazed down into the back garden. A cool wind was blowing in from the Atlantic. Miranda had pegged out the washing and the sheets billowed and snapped on the washing line like sails.

‘Choose a seat,’ I said.

As well as the single bed, there was a desk with a chair, an armchair with a reading light and a beanbag on the floor. Plenty of options.

Ryan chose the bed. He leant back against the headboard.

‘Sorry about the interrogation,’ I said, sitting next to him.

‘They seem nice.’ He picked up a small framed photo from my bedside table. ‘Are these your parents?’

I nodded. It was my favourite photo of the three of us. We were standing in the back garden on a sunny day. My mother was wearing a pair of thin, rectangular sunglasses and her bright red hair, which fell almost to her waist, gleamed like copper. My dad, tall with wavy brown hair was grinning at the photographer. I was in between them, my darker auburn hair tied into two neat little plaits, squinting through the sun.

‘Your mother is beautiful,’ said Ryan. ‘You look like her.’

It was a sweet thing to say. My mother was beautiful but we didn’t look alike. Nor were we alike in personality. She was as vibrant and confident as the colour of her hair and, according to Miranda, was as reckless as I was cautious. My mother had jumped out of an airplane for charity when she was twelve and had once been rescued by the coastguard when her rubber dinghy floated more than a mile out to sea as she slept. Although Miranda had never said so, I was certain she would have been one of the kids jumping off the harbour wall as a teenager. The most reckless thing she’d done, however, was drop out of school aged sixteen when she’d discovered she was pregnant with me. Against everyone’s advice she had married my dad, who was only seventeen himself.

Ryan put the photo back on the bedside table and turned his attention to the books piled up next to my bed. ‘You’ve been working on Shakespeare.’

I nodded. ‘English is one of my first exams. I have a list of revision topics for Shakespeare.’

‘Let’s hear them.’

I shuffled through a file of papers. ‘Who is most responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet?’

‘The apothecary?’ suggested Ryan. ‘He sold Romeo the poison.’

‘I think that Shakespeare is the most responsible.’

Ryan raised an eyebrow. ‘Because he wrote the play?’

I shook my head. ‘Shakespeare spells out what will happen in the play at the beginning, in the prologue. The chorus tells the audience that “a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life”. I think that he means that their future was already written. It didn’t matter what they did, or what anyone else did, they were destined to take their lives. I guess I’m talking about Fate.’

‘You could be right. Romeo and Juliet frequently see omens that suggest their fate.’

‘Evidence, please, Mr Westland,’ I said, mocking Mr Kennedy, our English teacher.

Ryan lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. ‘Just before going to Capulet’s ball, Romeo has a premonition that things will end badly – “my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars,”’ he said quietly, his eyes still gazing at the ceiling as though the words were written there. ‘ “Shall bitterly begin his fearful date with this night’s revels, and expire the term of a despised life, closed in my breast, by some vile forfeit of untimely death.”’

‘I take it you studied this play back in New Hampshire?’

Ryan nodded.

‘It seems they teach literature more thoroughly than they teach history.’

‘That was a backhanded compliment,’ he said, swatting my thigh with a copy of Romeo and Juliet. ‘So, Miss Anfield, how does Shakespeare explore the theme of Fate in his plays?’

‘That’s a massive question,’ I said, groaning. ‘You’ll have to narrow it down a bit.’

‘In Macbeth, is Macbeth the victim of Fate or his own ambition?’

‘Macbeth believed in Fate. But he also tried to prevent Fate from determining his destiny. Like when he tried to kill Banquo’s sons. But the prophecies all came true.’

‘Forget Shakespeare. Do you believe in Fate?’

‘No. I believe we make our own destiny. I hate the idea of Fate. It’s a cop-out. It stops people taking responsibility for their actions. I think that, until we make a choice, the possibilities are infinite.’

Like the choices I was faced with now. He was lying on my bed; I was sitting next to him, mere inches separating us. I could stay where I was, and ask him what he thought about Fate. Keep it friendly and platonic. Or lean over impulsively and kiss him.

‘And once you’ve made a choice?’

‘All the other possibilities disappear.’

Ryan sat up, leant towards me and gently placed one hand on my arm. ‘So imagine this,’ he said, a mischievous twinkle in his voice. ‘Imagine you travel back to the Victorian period. And imagine you walk in on your great-grandfather meeting your great-grandmother. Would you look at them and think that their possibilities were infinite? Or would you think that Fate had already determined their future? That they were bound to make choices that would eventually lead to you being born?’

I hesitated, thinking through his question. Downstairs, I heard the ring of the doorbell, registered vaguely that Connor and Megan had arrived. ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said eventually. ‘That’s different. And ridiculous.’

‘Humour me. Imagine that you were able to prevent them from meeting at all?’

‘I don’t suppose I could do that,’ I said. ‘Because if I prevented them from meeting, then I would never be born, in which case I would be unable to travel back in time and prevent them meeting.’

Ryan grinned. ‘And there’s the paradox.’

I smiled back. ‘Do you believe in Fate?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Ask me in a hundred years.’

A herd of elephants stampeded up the stairs and my door swung open. Connor came in first, with Megan right behind him. Ryan removed his hand from my arm. Connor was all smiles until he saw Ryan sitting on my bed.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘You’re here.’

Connor sat in the armchair and pulled a physics textbook out of his backpack. ‘Let’s warm up with some science, shall we?’ he said.

‘We’ve already warmed up,’ I said.

Connor looked at Ryan and then at me. ‘Bet you have.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.

Connor shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll test you.’

Science – physics in particular – was his strongest subject and I suspected he chose this so that he could spar with Ryan in some silly intellectual showdown. Ryan answered every question Connor threw his way, in detail, a bored expression on his face.

‘If you already know all the answers,’ Connor said eventually, ‘why don’t you go home?’

‘Connor!’ I said.

‘It’s OK,’ Ryan said, standing up. ‘I’m quite good at science. Not so good at twentieth-century history. Let me know the next time you plan to study that and I’ll come along.’

He picked up his backpack and I walked him to the front door.

‘Wish you wouldn’t go,’ I said.

Ryan shrugged one shoulder. ‘I don’t want to, but Connor is going to be a jerk if I stay.’

‘I’ll tell him to leave.’

Ryan shook his head. ‘Don’t do that. Study with him. Maybe you and I could spend some time together tomorrow?’

My heart literally skipped a beat and I held on to the door frame to steady myself. ‘Let me give you my number.’

I picked up a marker from the phone table in the hall.

‘Do you have a scrap of paper in your backpack?’ I asked.

Ryan held out his hand. ‘Just write it on the back of my hand.’

His hand in my hand felt warm and almost too intimate. I dragged the pen across his skin, taking care to make the numbers clear.

Ryan read the numbers back to me. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ he said with a smile.

Back upstairs, Connor and Megan were tucking into biscuits and juice. Megan smiled sympathetically as I walked in.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked Connor.

He shrugged. ‘He’s such an asshole. Why come to a study session if you don’t need to study?’

‘He didn’t know we were going to be studying science,’ I said. ‘You chose the subject.’

‘He just came to show off.’

‘No. You tried to show off and it backfired.’

‘Why did you invite him anyway? You know how I feel about him!’

‘No, I don’t know how you feel about him, although it’s become quite clear this afternoon. What’s your problem with Ryan?’

‘He flirts with everyone. And it’s just irritating to see you fawning over him like every other girl in our year.’

‘I don’t fawn over him,’ I said.

‘Yes you do. And then I come over today and he’s lying on your bed.’

‘He doesn’t flirt with me,’ said Megan.

‘He flirts with most girls,’ said Connor irritably.

‘But not fat girls,’ said Megan.

‘You’re not fat,’ I said.

Megan laughed soundlessly and reached for another biscuit. ‘I’m just big-boned.’

Connor ignored her and glowered at me. ‘Are you going to the ball with him?’

‘No.’ I glared back at him.

‘You said no?’ His tone was disbelieving with the faintest flicker of a smile.

‘I didn’t have to. He hasn’t asked me.’

Connor looked confused. ‘But Friday, at the end of the day, I thought . . .’

‘You thought wrong. Ryan hasn’t asked me to the ball. Which is fine. Because I’m not going anyway.’

Both Connor and Megan looked at me.

‘You have to go,’ said Megan. ‘Everyone goes to the leavers’ ball.’

‘It’s a rite of passage,’ said Connor.

‘I’m not going,’ I said. ‘But since you two obviously feel so strongly about it, why don’t you go together?’