After Eden

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