Refrain

Chapter 3: Haydn

In a few minutes, Cadence had to attend a chanced meeting.

To enter The Queen's College, his undergrad self would have preferred the back door located on Queen's Lane, wedged between New College and All Souls. But now he couldn't, because his university card was probably rotting in a drawer somewhere ten years in the future. He'd have to try the main gate. As he climbed up the steps on High Street, bearing the cold, marble gaze of Queen Caroline of Ansbach in the cupola above, he was still figuring out a way to enter when, conveniently, someone pulled the oak door open from the other side.

'Hiya,' stepped out his rescuer, who seemed to recognise Cadence. '4th Week blues, huh? Cheer up now, mate. Why so glum?'

The undergrad, topped by bright ginger curls that should make his face indelible, didn't trigger any recognition in Cadence. Someone he used to know but hadn't seen since graduation, perhaps. That covered about everyone he knew from college. He was brewing a response when, alarmed by the clock showing twenty past three on the dining hall tower, he realised he'd better hurry.

Unlike most old colleges, Queen's has the luxury of a broad path that threads through its middle, an elegant solution to people seeking shortcuts across the sacred lawns. As he crossed the arch from the first quad to the second, Cadence went over the scenario again in his head.

Would Louis be there as expected? Would things run the same course as they did ten years ago? In the back of his head, he was dreading the possibility that his sudden intrusion into this past would in some way snuff the most precious coincidence of his life. A last-minute invitation. A match struck for him to light a firework in the distant sky which, his 20-year-old head had believed, could still be planted with the stars of fame and success.

To taste and be tempted by that wink of hope again, he'd do anything, give anything. It was exactly what he needed to get out of the rut in his thirties. It had to be.

With a trustfulness that bordered on superstition, he climbed up the stairs of the college library all the way to its upper reading room, the oldest and most ornate of the three parts. At midday, midterm, it was surprisingly not busy, with only two people sitting at the bay next to the door. The early afternoon sun, its high spirit unwavering, flooded through the giant triangular windows. It was too bright to see the trees outside, but he could hear their rustling.

Cadence traced his steps to the back of the room. Short of the glass cabinet containing an ancient globe covered in an obsolete world, he stopped. This was the aisle.

He took a deep breath—even closed his eyes—exhaled, and turned left.

The reading table was empty.

My Cadence panicked, of course. Blood was thrumming against his eardrums. Why was he not here? But just that moment, he heard footsteps sounding up the aged wooden stairs.

His entire body went still. He had just about enough time to go to the reading table, drag out a chair with as little sound as he could, and sit down, his eyes fixed on the shelf in front of him.

The reading room's door opened and shut with care. The footsteps, a little hurried, became more real as Cadence breathed. His spine prickled with anticipation.

The expected figure entered his vision. Louis was wearing the same white linen shirt from earlier under a dark gray blazer. He looked preoccupied.

Everything unfolded with a stunning accuracy to how it had happened back then. My brother, without so much as looking at Cadence, turned straight towards the bookcase. Staring at Louis's back, Cadence waited for him to turn around and notice him, but just as he'd remembered, Louis, though giving off more impatience than last time, spent a good minute at the shelf. At last, he raised his right hand and started tracing the shelfmarks, stopped at his target, and began taking out the four leather-bound volumes one after another.