But I wasn’t like that. I was practical and sensible. I knew that I had obligations here in Penpol Cove in my own time. So I sat at the kitchen table as I’d been told and stared at my watch as it ticked away the minutes till midnight, while Ryan, Cassie and Ben prepared to travel forward in time.
I did quite well. I watched the second hand make three complete revolutions before I went outside. I didn’t run. I walked calmly through the garden and around the back of the garage.
Directly in front of me, a huge translucent disc vibrated and shimmered. Through it I could see a blurry vision of a grey vehicle. The disc vibrated faster and the image beyond it blurred further. After a few seconds the disc appeared to stop vibrating and the blurry image disappeared. A flash of light blinded me. And then the disc collapsed inwards until it vanished. All that remained in front of me was the lawn.
I walked back to the front garden and our apple tree and sat beside it. My watch told me that it was thirty seconds after midnight. In another ninety seconds he would be back in his own time. I watched the second hand of my watch tick away. At precisely two minutes past midnight I gazed up at the clear night sky. High above me was the constellation Perseus with its demon star Algol. Out there somewhere was Eden, the birthplace of the most perfect boy in the universe. Ryan was gone. And it would be months before I would once again see the constellation Orion, his name written across the sky in stars. I shut my eyes and breathed in deeply. Where was he now? Was he thinking about me? I liked to imagine him sitting in the garden beside me, separated only by time.
Chapter 16
I woke early, the cheery sunshine bringing me back to the depressing reality of the rest of my life. I was sixteen. I wouldn’t live for another hundred and ten years, no matter how well I took care of myself. And if, by some miracle, I did live for a hundred and ten years, I would be the crinkliest, most wrinkled old woman on the planet. I would be one hundred and twenty-six. He would be seventeen.
I made another calculation. If I Iived until one hundred and nine, I would be around when he was born. I could see him as a baby. Of course the chances of living to a hundred and nine were not much better than living to one hundred and twenty-six. And the whole idea was, frankly, sick.
There would be no happy ending for Ryan and me.
Tears pricked the back of my eyes and I knew that if I didn’t take steps to pull myself together now, I would end up wallowing in a full-on pity-fest.
I heaved myself out of bed. My green dress was in a heap on the floor. I draped it on a hanger and hung it on my wardrobe door. At some point I would take it to the dry-cleaners.
I threw open my curtains. The rising sun was like a wound, staining the clouds a deep red and slowly spreading across the horizon. Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning. That meant bad weather would be arriving later. It didn’t look like bad weather. In fact, it looked sunny and hot – perfect beach weather. After breakfast I would call Connor and make plans for the day. Then with a shudder I remembered the night before. Perhaps he wouldn’t want to talk to me. I put on a short blue beach dress and then, as Cornish weather typically changes direction several times a day, tied a warm hoodie round my shoulders.
The smell of grilled bacon was drifting up the stairs, the only smell that could still tempt my vegetarian taste buds after six years of abstaining. Travis. He had started staying over at the weekends recently and he loved a full English on Sunday mornings.
I dragged myself downstairs into the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t in the mood for Travis’s sarcasm and I didn’t think I could stomach Miranda’s cheery questions about the ball.
Miranda was standing at the stove, pushing food around a hot, oily frying pan. Travis was standing just outside the back door, a half-smoked cigarette dangling between his lips. He removed it when he saw me and smirked.
‘I’ve been led to understand that a greasy fry-up is the perfect hangover cure,’ he said.
‘That’s not funny, Travis,’ said Miranda. ‘You know she doesn’t drink.’
Travis winked at me, as if to suggest that he didn’t believe that for a second, but was willing to keep it just between the two of us.
He stubbed out his cigarette on the doorstep. ‘I was merely offering you a fried breakfast. Miranda’s cooked enough for a family of ten.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sure it will involve too many slaughtered pigs for my taste.’
‘Why don’t you make an exception?’ he said. ‘You can’t deny that this smells good.’
‘I don’t want to feast on the misery of another being.’
‘You don’t know how to enjoy yourself,’ said Travis. ‘That’s your problem.’
I grabbed a cereal bowl and a box of muesli and plonked myself down at the table.
‘So tell us all about it,’ said Miranda. ‘Was it wonderful?’
‘It was a lovely evening,’ I said as I splashed milk into the bowl.
‘Did you take lots of photos?’
‘I didn’t take my phone, but Megan’s mum took some before we left her place and Connor took loads. I’ll get copies.’
Miranda served up two steaming plates of bacon, eggs, sausage, mushroom and fried bread. The smell of hot grease made me feel queasy.
‘Did your boyfriend leave last night?’ asked Travis. ‘He was due to leave after the ball, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he left,’ I said. ‘But he isn’t – wasn’t – my boyfriend.’
Miranda and Travis smiled at each other over the table.
‘You said you were in love with him.’ Travis dipped the end of a sausage into the runny yolk of his egg.
I groaned to myself. It was one thing to confess to being in love when it was dark and I was still a little drunk. It was quite another to talk about it now in front of Miranda and Travis. Especially when I was doing everything I could to not think about him.
‘Yes, I did. But that didn’t make him my boyfriend. We were just friends.’
Travis looked at me. I had the vague recollection of telling him that I had no plans to stay in touch with Ryan. That must have sounded weird.
‘We can keep in touch via email,’ I said. ‘But I doubt we will. You know what they say: out of sight, out of mind.’
Miranda laughed. ‘You have no heart.’
‘What are your plans today, Eden?’ asked Travis.
‘I’ll probably meet my friends at the beach. It looks like a hot one.’
‘There’s a storm coming in later,’ he said. ‘Late afternoon according to the forecast.’
‘We’ll probably spend a couple of hours at the beach and if it gets cold we’ll go to the arcade or somewhere like that.’
‘Who’s going to be there?’ he asked.
‘Why do you care?’
Miranda glared at me. ‘Don’t be rude.’
‘Just making conversation,’ said Travis.
‘Connor and Megan and probably Amy and Matt.’
‘Do you want a lift into Perran?’ asked Travis. ‘I need to pop home this morning.’
‘No thanks. I probably won’t go in until later.’ I pretended to be interested in Miranda’s fashion magazine and hoped they’d just leave me alone.
With some trepidation, I dialled Connor’s mobile. I knew he would still be cross with me, but Ryan was right. We’d been friends for too long for him to hate me for ever. It went straight to voicemail. He was probably still sleeping. While I’d gone to the farmhouse with Ryan, they had probably partied into the early hours. I would have to wait a couple of hours before I got to talk to anybody.