Ryan turned towards her. ‘Hi, Cass,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
Time slowed down. I saw Cassie look from me to Ryan to me again. I saw her clock his arm along the back of the couch, how close to each other we were sitting.
‘Well, this is a good idea,’ she said after a pause. She turned and walked out.
Ryan leapt up off the couch and followed her into the hall. ‘Cass,’ I heard him hiss.
I strained my ears. ‘How does this help anything?’ she whispered. ‘You’re not supposed to bring anyone home.’
‘I didn’t invite her,’ I heard him say. ‘She just showed up at the door. But it’s not a problem.’
‘Get rid of her.’
I heard Ryan’s voice again, but it was too soft to make out. I went back to the sofa and gathered up my books. I wanted to get out of the house as quickly as possible. Clumsily, I knocked Ryan’s neat pile of books over. I straightened his pile and finished stuffing my things back into my backpack.
Ryan came back in. ‘Sorry about her. She’s socially inept.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, standing up. ‘I should get home anyway. Miranda will be wondering where I am.’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘I can walk.’
‘It’s blowing a gale and the forecast isn’t good. I’m not letting you walk.’
I didn’t argue; I didn’t much want to face the biting wind.
‘I’ll be back in five minutes,’ he shouted, as we went out through the front door.
The wind whipped my hair in my face and despite the early hour, dusk was falling fast.
‘Cassie’s your sister?’ I asked, once we were both inside the car. I was thinking about some of the rumours I had heard when they first arrived in town that he lived with his girlfriend, a beautiful blonde.
‘Yes.’
‘She seems . . .’ I hesitated. I wanted to say jealous. ‘Overprotective.’
‘Don’t take any notice of her,’ he said, backing out of the driveway. He pointed to a brooding band of clouds on the horizon. ‘Looks like there’s a storm coming.’
I got the distinct impression he was trying to change the subject.
He parked around the corner from my house so that Miranda and Travis wouldn’t see the car, and then he walked me to my door.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said, when we reached the front gate. ‘Do you still want to do something tomorrow?’
‘Definitely,’ he said with a grin. ‘We never got on to the fun stuff.’
After dinner, I left Travis and Miranda in the living room with the Sunday papers and a bottle of wine, and went up to my room. Ryan and I were going to hang out alone tomorrow.
I knew he liked me. He was always friendly and attentive. And I was pretty certain he had been about to kiss me just before Cassie arrived home.
I didn’t care that his sister was weird and unfriendly or that Ryan and his family had possibly escaped from a cult. I didn’t care that Connor hated his guts; he’d get over it. All I cared about was that exams would soon be over and spring would soon be summer and the most gorgeous boy in the universe was spending the day with me tomorrow. Alone.
I put on my happiest, most upbeat playlist and unpacked my backpack, stacking my books neatly on my desk. Right at the bottom was a book I didn’t recognise. I must have taken one of Ryan’s by mistake. The cover had a picture of a blue planet floating in black space, three small moons around it. The Journey to Eden, said the dust jacket. I smiled to myself. Ryan must have been reading up on the Eden Project. I was just about to put the book back, when I caught the name of the author on the spine. Connor Penrose. Connor would be amused by that. I turned the book over to read the blurb on the back.
As a teenager, I spent countless evenings gazing through my telescope into the black abyss of space. I never took much pleasure in the distant suns of our galaxy. Faraway galaxies left me cold. What captured my interest were the planets of my own solar system: Saturn with its weird rings, Jupiter with its many moons, Mars with its captivating red glow. I dreamed of one day finding a planet with conditions similar to those on Earth. And one day my dream came true. Serendipity led me to be in the right place at the right time and I managed to detect a small, elusive planet. A planet with an atmosphere and water. A planet filled with life. The rest, as we all know, is history.
Connor Penrose. 11th January, 2081
My heart rammed against my ribcage in a series of slow, hard thuds. Eden. Connor. 2081. None of this made sense.
Adrenalin coursing through my veins, I opened the book to the middle and looked at the photographs. The first was a picture of a baby. It looked like any baby. The next page showed a toddler. Cute but generic. Could be anyone. I turned the page.
There, smiling brightly at the camera was Connor. My Connor. I felt dizzy, like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. The caption read Perran School, 2012. It was the photo I had taken two days ago. I remembered the photo perfectly. Connor in his scrawled upon school shirt, the sun in his eyes.
I jumped up and pulled my phone out of my pocket. Scrolling through my recent pictures, I found the three I’d taken on Friday. I held each of them up against the photo in the book. The last one was a match.
None of this made any sense. Either I was in a dream or I was having some sort of mental breakdown. Ryan owned a book called The Journey To Eden that was written by Connor Penrose, published in 2081 – sixty-nine years in the future – and contained a photograph that only existed on my phone. Was I losing my sanity, or . . .
I ran to my mirror. The wild-haired, bright-eyed girl in the mirror was still me. For a moment there I had expected to see the reflection of a woman of eighty-five staring back. Just for an instant, I thought that I had lost sixty-nine years.
I opened my mobile and dialled Connor. He answered on the first ring.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, before I had the chance to say a thing. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘It’s me. Eden.’
‘I know it’s you, Eden. I’m apologising for being an asshole this afternoon.’
‘Connor, you remember the photos I took of you on the last day of school?’
‘Yeah. When are you gonna send me copies?’
‘I haven’t done that already?’
‘No. At least put them online so I can see them. I posted yours ages ago.’
‘I’ll do it later.’
So I hadn’t posted the photos online or sent them to Connor. I knew that, but I was beginning to doubt my own memory.
‘What do you think?’ Connor was saying.
‘I’m not sure.’ I hadn’t been listening.
‘Oh.’ He sounded glum. ‘I suppose you have other plans.’
‘What are we talking about Connor?’
‘I asked if you wanted to get together on Tuesday to revise for French.’
‘That would be great.’
‘We could study in the morning and then go to the beach or the arcade in the afternoon.’
‘Perfect. I have to go.’
I snapped my phone shut and picked up the book again, flicking through the pages until I wound up back at that photo.
I turned the page. The next photo was of a telescope. The caption read My first telescope: a sixteenth birthday present. Connor was fifteen. His birthday was exactly a week away.
My heart thumping wildly, I turned the page. The next picture was an older-looking Connor, aged about twenty perhaps, standing on the beach with a surfboard. Connor had been taking surfing lessons for weeks, which he really enjoyed, despite the fact he couldn’t stand up on the board. The next plate showed him sitting behind a desk of books. The caption read Studying for finals, University of Manchester, 2018. I turned the page. Connor, now older, standing next to a good-looking young man identified as Nathaniel Westland. Westland. A relative of Ryan’s? Connor looked middle-aged, though it was clearly him; Nathaniel looked as though he was in his early twenties.