5

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

Athena, 19

Perth, 1993

At the first lecture, Athena didn’t really notice much about him other than his American accent. He was Visiting Professor David Chesterton speaking American English in their Western Australian lecture hall. Athena thought he sounded like he was doing the voiceover for a movie trailer.

‘This summer, consider the meaning of truth in beauty or beauty in truth…’

At the first tutorial, they sat in his office in the faculty. It was one of the smallest in the building. There were no windows, just a desk in front of an oak bookcase containing the course materials, and six chairs crammed into a semi-circle. The fan was spinning madly in the February heat. On his desk was a framed picture of autumnal foliage. Later, he told her it was the view of Central Park from his apartment.

There were three other students in her tutorial group: a girl and two guys, all in torn jeans with red-rimmed eyes and the unmistakable smell of marijuana. She found herself wanting to make a good impression on the visiting professor. She didn’t want him to think they all sat around smoking pot all day.

‘Goodness! What was that?’ he said, startled.

‘Just a bird outside,’ one of the guys said.

‘It’s so loud!’

Athena hadn’t even noticed the birds.

‘Birds tend to cheep and sing soft little songs where I’m from,’ he said. ‘These ones sound like they want to kill you.’

Athena smiled. Foreign visitors always noticed the birds.

After the bird episode he listened to everyone speak about the week’s reading while writing notes in his black leather-bound book. Occasionally he would interject with a comment or question.

When it was Athena’s turn to speak, he put his pen down and didn’t write anything. He listened and smiled. He didn’t ask her any questions, just waited until she was done. Then he looked at his watch.

‘Well, that’s it for today. See you next week,’ he said. The other students bolted out the door.

‘You didn’t write anything down for me,’ she said to him.

‘I just wanted to listen to you.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t forget anything you say. But the others, they just talk to talk. And they’re all stoned. I’m sure you’ve noticed,’ he said.

‘Well, yes,’ she smiled.

‘I’m sure you only speak if you actually have something to contribute, not just to talk. I wanted to listen to what you have to say. Your first essay was amazing.’

‘Oh, I didn’t think you’d marked them yet.’

‘I marked yours. Here you go,’ he said, handing her a brown envelope with her essay inside. Athena noticed the wedding ring on his finger as she took it from him.

She didn’t look at the mark until she was home, in her room, sitting on her bed. She slid the essay out of the envelope.

95%. Beautifully constructed with attention to detail and thorough analysis of the question. Impressive.

Athena traced her fingers over the words in black ink. David Chesterton from New York thought she had a beautifully constructed argument.

That she was impressive.

_____

When Athena wasn’t at classes, she was at the yoghurt factory. She helped her mother in the office on the mezzanine, above the hum of the machines on the ground floor. Her father was there all day, every day. He didn’t know how not to be there.

Her brothers loved being part of the family business, but Athena wasn’t convinced she had the yoghurt gene. Some of the other girls at uni worked in clothes stores or at the pub, but her mother, Koula, would have a total fit if Athena suggested she could get a job in one of those places. On Mondays, when her mother worked out that Athena didn’t have classes, she had to drive to the factory. At least it gave her time to think about him.

‘Athena, that label is crooked.’

‘Sorry, I just—’

‘You’re very distracted,’ said her mother.

‘Just thinking about my assignment.’

Athena waited for the lecture on how Chrissie’s daughters were going to study law and commerce and had joined the university Greek social club. They would meet much better husbands that way (Greek ones who were studying law and commerce).

‘I don’t understand why you don’t want to do a proper degree. You say that you don’t want to work in yoghurt, but then who is going to give you a job when you have an arts degree like everyone who works at McDonald’s?’

‘Where did you hear that expression?’

‘That’s what everyone is saying these days.’

‘I’ll be able to get a job somewhere,’ Athena said.

‘We paid for your education and this is what we get in return,’ said her mother. ‘The girl who loves stories and poems going to learn more stories and poems. Can you learn something useful please, Athena? Like computers or sales or—’

‘You mean something to help you with the business? Not something that I’m actually interested in?’

‘Can you actually be interested in something useful, Athena? Do you think you could do that for your family? For me?’

She looked at her mother’s face, her disapproving eyes. She was always pleading with Athena. It was exhausting fighting her all the time. The path of least resistance seemed appealing for once.

‘Okay,’ Athena said. ‘I guess I can do a commerce unit or something.’

‘Yes! Commerce!’ said her mother. ‘Thank you.’

So Athena capitulated and went to a commerce lecture. She left after ten minutes. Seriously. Who liked this stuff? Were they pretending? She didn’t tell her mother she had withdrawn from the unit and replaced it with an extra English class.

Athena didn’t have to pretend with poetry, literature, language. How could you not love it? How could you not?

_____

For her next literature tutorial, Athena found herself choosing her outfit carefully and applying lipgloss and mascara, just enough to accentuate her eyes. She had done all the required reading, of course, and even the extra suggested titles. She’d read it all. She had memorised a series of sparkling literary points and she intended to make them.

After the forty minutes of scholarly discussion with David Chesterton and the potheads who bolted out the door when the time was up, she lingered, pretending to search for an item in her bag. She ignored his eyes on her and was almost ready to walk out the door when he spoke.

‘Would you like to get a coffee? Sometimes I go to the little kiosk at the river,’ David said, and Athena thought she noticed a waver in his voice. ‘It’s much nicer than in here. And not many people go there.’

‘Now?’

‘Do you have another class?’

‘No, I’m free.’

‘I’ll meet you there in ten.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

His voice was so velvety. She replayed the invitation several times in her head as she crossed the main road and sat at a small table closest to the river, waiting for him. David Chesterton.

Athena breathed in the smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of the water as it lightly brushed against the shore. The black swans circled on the river, their necks looping as their red beaks pecked something from underneath the surface. The overhang of a white cloud was so low Athena felt she could almost touch it. A trail of moving cars crawled along Mounts Bay Road to the left like a line of ants.

The river was so still on that day, like glass, and where the sun hit the water in the distance it glittered. Puffy white buoys floated below the shadows of people in their yachts. The city buildings stretched to the sky behind the khaki scribble of Kings Park.

The trees shaded her and she shivered but not with cold, with something else.

What did he want from her? This is not what usually happened with students. Was it? Maybe it was. Did he like her? Why was she shivering?

‘Let me get the coffees. An Australian flat white?’ David asked.

‘Thanks, that would be great,’ said Athena.

He ordered for them, and then returned to the chair opposite her.

‘So, Athena,’ he said, as if walking out of her imagination. ‘Tell me all about you.’

She knew it was a line but it felt so good to be fed a line like that. Somebody actually taking an interest in her, sans alcohol. His voice. Was it more than the accent? Was it something else?

‘You’re the one from New York. You should tell me all about your life,’ she said. ‘How did you come to be on this side of the planet anyway?’

And, really, that was how it all started.

David was from an old New York family. He had always loved literature (obviously). He was writing a book. He was offered this position to visit for a year, and he accepted because someone he knew had visited Perth and said it was amazing. He wanted to see how a city on the other side of the planet could speak the same language (sort of) and how they taught American and English literature. And he wanted to see a koala in real life.

He was married, to a teacher. She was not liking Perth so much. They had a young son. They were here for two years and then they would return.

‘So now you know everything about me,’ he said, looking out towards the river.

‘Not everything. What’s your favourite poem?’ Athena dared to ask.

‘Of all time?’

‘Yes. I mean, hopefully it’s not something too obscure. You’ve been reading longer than me.’

‘Prufrock.’

Athena smiled.

‘So can we talk about you now, Athena?’ he asked. ‘You’re not Greek, are you? The goddess of wisdom.’

‘And war. Oh yes, I am,’ she said. ‘My parents were born here, though. But we are Greek in our hearts. And in our heads. It’s quite hard to escape it, even if you want to. Even though I don’t look very Greek. Nobody ever quite believes it. Unless they’ve met my mother.’

‘The Ancient Greeks were blonde, you know,’ he said softly, as if it were a secret. ‘The goddesses too.’

Athena smiled and touched the máti on her bracelet.

‘Is that a Greek máti?’

‘How did you know?’

‘I went to a lecture on Greek superstition at the Met last year. It was a fabulous lecture actually. They have a brilliant program.’

‘Oh, okay,’ she said. ‘It’s meant to keep me safe from the evil eye.’

‘Has it?’

‘So far, I guess,’ Athena said, shrugging. She was going to say something about safe being boring, but she didn’t want to use the word ‘boring’ in case she sounded like an ungrateful teenager, so she said nothing else on the subject.

‘So, Athena of Ancient Greece, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? You write so beautifully, especially for a second-year. The world is your oyster, as they say.’

And she replayed those words over and over in her head every night before she went to sleep and every morning when she woke up. He thought she wrote so beautifully. She looked like an Ancient Greek goddess. (But had he actually said that? He had definitely insinuated it.) She wanted him more than anyone she had ever met. She read Sappho again and again. Only Sappho could articulate what Athena felt, although she acknowledged that Sappho wasn’t writing about men from New York. Once again Love, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing, seizes me.

_____

Sally waved at Athena from the coffee shop under the library. Athena was walking on the lawn on the other side of the moat. It was just slightly too wide to jump over – although there were stories about people who had.

Athena couldn’t imagine David Chesterton running and attempting to leap over the moat.

‘Hi, I’m on my way in now,’ Athena called out to Sally.

She sprinted up the steps and then, once in the library, down the stairs until she was in the basement café. She rifled through her bag to find her Student Guild card that entitled her to one dollar coffee.

‘That was quick,’ said Sally.

‘Sorry, I’m late. I got stuck with my mother,’ said Athena, rolling her eyes. ‘Apparently there is a company that is making yoghurt and calling it Greek-style yoghurt, even though it is not, technically, Greek yoghurt. It’s Greek-style.’

‘Oh,’ Sally said. ‘There’s a difference?’

‘Yes, it’s not made the proper way. You know, with the straining,’ Athena said, shaking her head, knowing that Sally wouldn’t really understand. ‘It’s high drama. She wants to sue.’

‘How is this your problem?’

‘Have you not met my mother?’

‘What class do you have today?’

‘Literature.’

‘Ohhhhhhh, literature with the American.’

‘What does that mean?’ Athena said quickly.

‘You like him.’

‘Well, he’s interesting and nice to me.’

‘Oh yes, he’s very nice to you. I’m sure he likes you for your sparkling personality and insightful comments in your private riverside tutorials.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ Athena said, raising her eyebrows and sipping her coffee.

‘Not the fact that you’re twenty years younger than him and have a thing for older men and coffee spoons.’

‘Shhhhhhh! Shut up, Sally, you’re so loud. He comes here sometimes. What the hell are you talking about anyway?’ Athena said, whacking Sally’s shoulder with a book.

‘Sorry, I was alluding to a very boring poem—’

‘I know very well what you were alluding to, and you can shut up now.’

‘You’re the one who goes on and on and on about him. I feel like I know him.’

Sally was one to talk. She was often kissing random guys whose names she didn’t remember or didn’t even know in the first place. Athena had been a bit drunk now and then and sometimes she went along with it, but nobody really interested her in any meaningful way. They all seemed so – dare she say it – young. Boring. Australian. Jumping moats and sculling beer in the uni tavern. Nobody was reading poetry in their spare time.

She didn’t really understand how Sally could be interested in these guys. They had been pushed through private schools by doting parents, mothers chauffeuring them around and cooking them whatever they wanted. Well, that’s what her mother was like with her brothers. And she had witnessed it with her first real boyfriend, Drew, and his family. Drew’s mother loved Drew. Drew’s mother did not love Athena. Deep down, Athena thought she might have been a little bit racist. She was always sprinkling in the fact that Athena’s family was from a different country. Athena wanted to say that England was a different country from Australia too, but she doubted that Drew’s mother would get it. And nobody in Perth seemed to think that England and Australia were that different. English people always seemed to think of Australia as theirs, but with better weather.

Once, Drew’s mother asked Athena if she celebrated Christmas.

‘Yes,’ Athena said. ‘We have Christmas. And Easter. And birthdays. And everything. Just like you.’

Drew’s mother raised her eyebrows and smiled. ‘I thought you did some kind of ceremony where you sacrificed a lamb on a spit. I’m sure I saw it in a documentary once.’

That was what Athena was up against at Drew’s house. And of course they’d kept their relationship completely secret from her mother. When Drew came over, it was always with Sally. Athena had told her mother that Sally and Drew were together.

‘Sally’s boyfriend likes you,’ said her mother.

‘We’re just friends,’ Athena lied, but she knew her mother was suspicious.

If she ever officially introduced a boyfriend to her parents and her grandmother, it would be all on. And she wasn’t ready for that kind of fuss. And he was meant to be Greek anyway.

She barely felt anything when she saw Drew now, from a distance. It seemed like a very old memory. Someone she once knew and cared about. He had always liked her more than she liked him. Maybe she had used him. She went along with the whole thing. But she just didn’t feel that surge of electricity, that spark. That something. His mother’s comments probably hadn’t helped either.

‘Why are you interested in the American? He’s old, Athena, like old old. I learned just this week in psych that women who are attracted to older men have complexes about their fathers – absent fathers. But your dad was generally around,’ Sally said, frowning.

‘Well, he’s always at the yoghurt factory – does that count as around?’

‘Yoghurt factory. Absent father,’ Sally said. ‘Definitely a thing for older men.’

Athena rolled her eyes at Sally and smiled involuntarily.

Then her thoughts circled back to David. If this was a fairy tale, he would have cast a spell on her. She couldn’t think about anything or anyone else. It was only his class, his assignments, his tutorials, his recommended reading list. Him.

She stayed up all night and read anything and everything he mentioned or alluded to, then casually dropped it into conversation the next time they spoke. They had coffee at the river after every Tuesday tutorial. It had become, predictably, the highlight of her week.

What Athena found most unbelievable was that they hadn’t even had a drink together. Every interaction they had shared had been entirely sober. This was completely new for her. Surely it must mean something. Surely.

But it was killing her, softly at first, but lately not so softly.

Her journal was a detailed recap of every conversation, every literary reference or joke, every half-smile or flirtatious moment. Every conversation they shared was filled with jewels and gems to add to her treasure box.

After a few weeks of Tuesday coffees, he invited her to an amateur theatre dramatic interpretation of Prufrock.

‘It might be terrible,’ he added quickly. ‘Are you free on Thursday night?’

‘Oh, Thursday night, sure, I think I’m free,’ Athena said. She would have skipped anything for this. There was nobody’s birthday or name day or wedding or funeral or any other event that could have prevented her from going to Prufrock’s Plan.

It was an evening date.

If it was a date.

Was it a date?

_____

‘So here you are,’ said Sally as Athena raced towards the table. ‘How was the Prufrock night?’

‘It was – I don’t know,’ said Athena, thumping down her bag. ‘I don’t know, Sally. I just don’t know what happened.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, we met up at the theatre and saw the play – it was awful, we both agreed on that. It was literal and amateur and I can’t even describe how terrible. It was just, bad. Then we went out for a drink and were out for hours. Hours. It was like a date, but a really good date. When you talk and talk and never notice the time. We spoke about everything. Then the bar was closing. We stood out the front, and by that stage I was absolutely dying for something to happen. I wanted him to invite me back somewhere – anywhere – I would have done anything at that point.’

‘And?’

‘And he kissed me on the cheek and said goodnight and started walking in the direction of his place.’

‘And?’

‘And I was just standing there, at the taxi rank, like a total loser, out the front of the bar. Just – just standing there, watching him walk away. And nothing else happened, Sally. Nothing.’

She shivered as she thought of it. The blur of the red wine and the shape of him leaning over to kiss her on the cheek: ‘Well, goodnight.’ They had been so close then, so close. His lips on her cheek. And then his silhouette as he turned and walked away as she stood there before a line of taxis. So many taxis! Why were there so many taxis? Maybe if there hadn’t been so many taxis, he would have walked her home, or they would have gone together?

How could it have been the best and worst night of her life?

‘And then what did you do?’

‘I got into a taxi, went home, crawled into bed and cried. I thought about calling you, but it was nearly 2 am and I didn’t want to freak you out.’

‘Athena, I think he’s totally messing with you.’

‘Well, it’s worked and all I want now is for him to—’ Athena stopped.

‘You can’t even say it,’ said Sally. ‘You’re scared you’re going to be told off.’

Athena buried her head in her hands and tapped her head on the wooden table and then lifted it again.

‘Sally, what happened? Was it a date? Was it not a date? Why am I so confused?’

‘I think that’s the point. It could have been a date or not a date. But then he probably went home and ravaged his wife and pretended that she was you.’

‘What? You think he did that?’

‘Maybe that’s what people who are married or in relationships do when they don’t want to officially cheat. They have these non-date dates, have amazing conversations and look lustily at each other, and then the married person bails and still has someone to go home to.’ Sally shook her head. ‘It must be awful to be old.’

‘But a lot less confusing. It probably all makes sense to him,’ Athena said. She scanned the lawn for David. Sometimes he walked this way. Sometimes he came in here.

Athena replayed it for the thousandth time. The taxi stand. The goodnight. The kiss on the cheek. Now she couldn’t remember if she’d confused the order. It was definitely taxi stand then David saying ‘Well, goodnight.’ followed by the kiss on her cheek. Although the ‘Well, goodnight.’ and the kiss on her cheek were contemporaneous. Perhaps?

She had been so close to the collar of his striped shirt and the hair curling up from his chest. She could smell the shiraz they had been sharing. She was so, so close to him. His lips had grazed her skin. Surely that was something. Something.

‘I’m never going to get over this,’ Athena said, swirling her coffee and staring into it as if there were answers in the bottom of the cup.

‘Wow, he is good. I mean, you are totally in love with him and you’ve never even kissed him. He could be a terrible kisser or really bad in bed.’

‘Seriously, Sally, it’s not about that. He’s the only guy I’ve ever met who I feel properly understands me. I could tell him anything. We’re just – the same in a lot of ways. We spoke all about New York and I’ve told him all about when I lived in Clermont-Ferrand on exchange. About literature and writing. About families.’

‘But the thing is, my dear Athena, he has a wife. That must mean something to him. Look, let’s try and work through his motivations here. There must be at least three explanations for his behaviour. Let’s write them down.’

‘Write them down? Make sure nobody else sees it.’

‘Okay, I’ll give it to you when we’re done.’

Sally took out the blue-lined spiral-bound notebook she had been using for French.

After a series of irregular verbs, Sally started writing.

‘Okay, Athena. Option number one is that he’s totally messing with you for fun. So, option number one – he’s a total asshole. He does this all the time.’

Athena shook her head vigorously.

‘No, seriously, it can’t be that. Not after all the conversations we’ve had. I just cannot accept that he’s not a nice person.’

Sally twirled the biro in her fingers and rolled her eyes.

‘Okay. Option number two, he actually thinks of you as a student – because remember, you are his student, so he is just being professor-friendly, and remember he is American, so this may be a cultural thing that we don’t understand and it’s just how things go over there. And you have your mutual little Prufrock obsession to keep it going along. But it’s purely non-sexual, and nothing weird or out of the ordinary for him. He might have someone else who he meets for coffee on Wednesdays.’

Athena opened her mouth in horror. Wednesdays? ‘So, option number two is that it’s platonic and I’m obsessed with him?’

‘Yes, option number two, you’re the stalker – you’ve over-interpreted the whole thing. And remember, human brains are hardwired to make connections and pick up on little things. We spend our whole lives trying to attach meaning and connection to every detail. Especially people who like annoying, meandering existential poetry about nothing.’

‘Third option?’

‘I don’t want to say it.’

‘Say it!’

‘This is what you want to hear, Athena.’

‘Say the third option in words. I just need to hear it,’ she said, pounding the notebook with her closed fist. ‘And write it down for me.’

‘Option number three – he has feelings for you. He loves spending time with you. He is falling in love with you. But—’

‘No buts! I just want option number three. Say it again, Sally. Write it down.’

‘He is totally into you, or at least wants to sleep with you.’

‘Yes,’ Athena sighed.

Sally ripped out the page from her notebook and gave it to Athena. She looked at option number three.

‘But, Athena, he has a wife and a child, who he never talks to you about. And I think this might be one of these situations that resolves with time and you look back on it and you’re, like, “Oh, him. That was so weird. I’m so glad I got over it and started seeing someone else who wasn’t married and wasn’t twenty years older than me and my literature professor. What on earth was I thinking?”’

‘Is there an option number four?’

‘Option number four is possibly a combination of all three options. Maybe he’s just being friendly, maybe it’s also nothing, maybe he likes you a little bit too. But that makes it a sub-option of option number three because of the magnitude of option three. Because if there’s reciprocity or if he likes you in a non-professor way at all, then it’s serious.’

‘Okay, so where do I go from here? What should I do, Sally?’

‘Honestly, I don’t think you should do anything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you proceed on the basis of option number three but it’s really option number two, then he might totally freak out and you would be quite embarrassed. Maybe he would expel you from his class. The dean wouldn’t be happy. They will make it seem like your fault. It never ends well for the woman in these situations. You know that.’ Sally put down her pen and looked directly at Athena. ‘If you pursue this it will end in tears, and something tells me that there are a lot of people out there, just like us, a couple of years into uni, newish to the real world, who thought that it was option number three. And, even if it is, say if you go to his office and act all sexy and you do it on the desk – then what? You’re going to move in together? Go back to New York with him? What about the wife and child? They’re going to be there too. Or maybe he’ll ditch them and you can live happily ever after with him. And the child can visit every second Sunday and you can go to Central Park together. Buy him a bagel.’

‘Sally, seriously, how am I ever going to get over this?’

‘Maybe you should withdraw from the class. Or since it’s nearly the end of term, just suck it up until then and then do not enrol in anything to do with T.S. Eliot for the rest of your degree.’

‘Do you think he cares about me?’ Athena wiped her blurry eyes.

‘I don’t know! Yes. Probably,’ Sally said. ‘Look at it another way – if I ever got married and my husband acted like how he’s been acting with you, I would be hugely upset. There would be marriage counselling involved. Maybe a divorce. It’s not normal, Athena.’

‘It’s not normal,’ Athena repeated.

‘But you’re feeding it,’ said Sally. ‘It’s not like you want him to stop.’

‘No, I just want him,’ Athena said, staring into the moat between the coffee shop and the lawn.

‘But if you were a few years younger and this was high school, it would be a serious issue,’ said Sally.

‘We’re not in high school anymore. We’re all adults,’ Athena said.

‘Yes and no,’ said Sally. ‘Oh, I’ve got to tell you what happened the other night.’

Sally told her about her night out at the pub with a group of people she’d met in psychology and their drinking exploits. Athena stared into the dark water of the moat, thinking of David, how his lips had touched her cheek. She invented scenarios that started with that kiss on her face. He moved in to kiss her on the lips, he hailed a taxi and they went to his office, no, to a hotel. No, to his office. She couldn’t decide if a hotel would be better than his office. They would have to check into a hotel. It might seem a bit sordid. But his office? Maybe he could put some cushions in there. She really didn’t care where.

But it hadn’t happened that way. He had gone home to his wife.

Her mind was unable to think of anything else. In this loop of fictional endings. How could she change the end of the loop from fiction to reality?

_____

‘Athena!’ one of the grey-bearded professors called out in the hallway as she approached. It was kind, not telling her off as the teachers used to do at school, more like alerting her to something.

‘Ah, yes, that’s me,’ Athena said, as she approached him. She was about to hand in her final essay for the term. She had been up all night, perfecting it. A combination of coffee and tears. She’d eaten at least three bowls of her family’s Greek yoghurt drizzled with honey and sprinkled with flaked almonds. At one point she’d passed out on the rug next to her computer. She woke a couple of hours later, the imprint of carpet on her cheek, red and raw. The same side of her face where David had kissed her goodbye that night.

She had read through the essay one more time in the reality of morning before printing it out. And here she was.

‘David Chesterton left this for you,’ the professor said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Athena.

‘He had to leave in a hurry, unfortunately. His mother was in a car accident and they all flew back to the US last night. I’m not sure he’s coming back, from what he said. I’ll fill in for his undergrad classes for the rest of term and mark the assignments.’

Athena couldn’t speak.

‘He asked me to personally deliver this to you. I’m glad I ran into you. Have a good day,’ the professor said, smiling beneath his beard and passing her an oversize brown envelope with her name on it.

David. Was. Gone.

In the hallway of the English department Athena held the envelope and traced over her name on the front of it. Whatever was in here, it would mean everything. But he was with his wife and son flying back to New York. Twenty-four hours by plane. This, whatever had or had not happened between them, was terminated.

She thought about taking the envelope to their seat in front of the river where they had watched the yachts and the ripples. But that was the past now. She couldn’t go back there without him. Instead, she took it to the café under the library and handed it to Sally.

‘What’s this?’ asked Sally.

‘Oh my God, Sally, he’s gone. He’s gone back to New York. He left this for me,’ Athena said, holding back tears.

‘Seriously?’

‘He’s gone, Sally. Can you please open this for me?’

‘Right now?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want you to tell me what it says – unless it says anything from option number three. I want you to keep it and I don’t want you to give it to me until I’ve fallen in love with someone else. I want it to be history.’

‘Okay. Here we go,’ Sally shrugged and began to open it. She peered into the envelope.

‘Actually, forget what I just said!’ Athena snatched it back.

Inside was a thin chocolate leather-bound volume with gold writing. Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot.

Sally shook her head. ‘Athena, do not open this book. It will mess with your head for the rest of your life.’

Athena ignored her and opened the book. It smelled like him.

Inside the front cover he had written in a blue inky pen, ‘Dear Athena, Sorry I couldn’t say goodbye. Hope everything goes well for you. Hope to see you in New York one day. Best wishes, David.’ And then the date, written the American way. May 27, 1993.

Athena ran her fingers over the inscription and felt something drain from her. She had loved Prufrock and the other poems. And now she would never love them in the same way she had before she met David. It was part of their history, their story.

She held it and read the message again. It meant everything and nothing. Sally squeezed her arm and said something intended to be comforting that Athena would never remember.

She wiped away tears. She would have to think of it as just a stupid poem. A dusty old book.

As Athena touched the máti on her bracelet she recalled how he’d looked at it, how he’d known what it was.