بخش 17

Lost in the Library

‘Mrs Elm?’

‘Yes, Nora, what’s the matter?’

‘It’s dark.’

‘I had noticed.’

‘That’s not a good sign, is it?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Elm, sounding flustered. ‘You know perfectly well it’s not a good sign.’ ‘I can’t go on.’

‘You always say that.’

‘I have run out of lives. I have been everything. And yet I always end up back here. There is always something that stops my enjoyment. Always. I feel ungrateful.’ ‘Well, you shouldn’t. And you haven’t run out of anything.’ Mrs Elm paused to sigh. ‘Did you know that every time you choose a book it never returns to the shelves?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Which is why you can never go back into a life you have tried. There always needs to be some . . . variation on a theme. In the Midnight Library, you can’t take the same book out twice.’ ‘I don’t follow.’

‘Well, even in the dark you know these shelves are as full as the last time you looked. Feel them, if you like.’ Nora didn’t feel them. ‘Yeah. I know they are.’

‘They’re exactly as full as they were when you first arrived here, aren’t they?’ ‘I don’t—’

‘That means there are still as many possible lives out there for you as there ever were. An infinite number, in fact. You can never run out of possibilities.’ ‘But you can run out of wanting them.’

‘Oh Nora.’

‘Oh what?’

There was a pause, in the darkness. Nora pressed the small light on her watch, just to check.

00:00:00

‘I think,’ Mrs Elm said eventually, ‘if I may say so without being rude – I think you might have lost your way a little bit.’ ‘Isn’t that why I came to the Midnight Library in the first place? Because I had lost my way?’ ‘Well, yes. But now you are lost within your lostness. Which is to say, very lost indeed. You are not going to find the way you want to live like this.’ ‘What if there was never a way? What if I am . . . trapped?’

‘So long as there are still books on the shelves, you are never trapped. Every book is a potential escape.’ ‘I just don’t understand life,’ sulked Nora.

‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’

Nora shook her head. This was a bit too much for a Philosophy graduate to take.

‘But I don’t want to be like this,’ Nora told her. ‘I don’t want to be like Hugo. I don’t want to keep flicking between lives for ever.’ ‘All right. Then you need to listen carefully to me. Now, do you want my advice or don’t you?’ ‘Well, yeah. Of course. It feels a little late, but yes, Mrs Elm, I would be very grateful for your advice on this.’ ‘Right. Well. I think you have reached a point where you can’t see the wood for the trees.’ ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean.’

‘You are right to think of these lives like a piano where you’re playing tunes that aren’t really you. You are forgetting who you are. In becoming everyone, you are becoming no one. You are forgetting your root life. You are forgetting what worked for you and what didn’t. You are forgetting your regrets.’ ‘I’ve been through my regrets.’

‘No. Not all of them.’

‘Well, not every single minor one. No, obviously.’

‘You need to look at The Book of Regrets again.’

‘How can I do that in the pitch dark?’

‘Because you already know the whole book. Because it’s inside you. Just as . . . just as I am.’ She remembered Dylan telling her he had seen Mrs Elm near the care home. She thought about telling her this but decided against it. ‘Right.’ ‘We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”’ ‘You know Thoreau?’

‘Of course. If you do.’

‘The thing is, I don’t know what I regret any more.’

‘Okay, well, let’s see. You say that I am just a perception. Then why did you perceive me? Why am I – Mrs Elm – the person you see?’ ‘I don’t know. Because you were someone I trusted. You were kind to me.’ ‘Kindness is a strong force.’

‘And rare.’

‘You might be looking in the wrong places.’

‘Maybe.’

The dark was punctured by the slow rising glow of the light bulbs all around the library.

‘So where else in your root life have you felt that? Kindness?’

Nora remembered the night Ash knocked on her door. Maybe lifting a dead cat off the road and carrying it in the rain around to her flat’s tiny back garden and then burying it on her behalf because she was sobbing drunkenly with grief wasn’t the most archetypally romantic thing in the world. But it certainly qualified as kind, to take forty minutes out of your run and help someone in need while only accepting a glass of water in return.

She hadn’t really been able to appreciate that kindness at the time. Her grief and despair had been too strong. But now she thought about it, it had really been quite remarkable.

‘I think I know,’ she said. ‘It was right there in front of me, the night before I tried to kill myself.’ ‘Yesterday evening, you mean?’

‘I suppose. Yes. Ash. The surgeon. The one who found Volts. Who once asked me out for coffee. Years ago. When I was with Dan. I’d said no, well, because I was with Dan. But what if I hadn’t been? What if I had broken up with Dan and gone on that coffee date and had dared, on a Saturday, with all the shop watching, to say yes to a coffee? Because there must be a life in which I was single in that moment and where I said what I wanted to say. Where I said, ‘‘Yes, I would like to go for a coffee sometime, Ash, that would be lovely.’’ Where I picked Ash. I’d like to have a go at that life. Where would that have taken me?’ And in the dark she heard the familiar sound of the shelves beginning to move, slowly, with a creak, then faster, smoother, until Mrs Elm spotted the book, the life, in question.

‘Right there.’

A Pearl in the Shell

She opened her eyes from a shallow sleep and the first thing she noticed was that she was incredibly tired. She could see a picture on the wall, in the dark. She could just about make out that the picture was a mildly abstract interpretation of a tree. Not a tall and spindly tree. Something short and wide and flowery.

There was a man next to her, asleep. It was impossible to tell, as he was turned away from her, in the dark, and given that he was largely hidden under the duvet, whether this man was Ash.

Somehow this felt weirder than usual. Of course, to be in bed with a man who she hadn’t done anything more with than bury a cat and have a few interesting conversations from behind the counter of a music shop should have felt slightly strange in the normal run of things. But since entering the Midnight Library Nora had slowly got used to the peculiar.

And just because it was possible that the man was Ash, it was also possible that it wasn’t. There was no predicting every future outcome after a single decision. Going for a coffee with Ash might have led, for instance, to Nora falling in love with the person serving the coffee. That was simply the unpredictable nature of quantum physics.

She felt her ring finger.

Two rings.

The man turned over.

An arm landed across her in the dark and she gently raised it and placed it back on the duvet. Then she took herself out of bed. Her plan was to go downstairs and maybe lie on a sofa and, as usual, do some research about herself on her phone.

It was a curious fact that no matter how many lives she had experienced, and no matter how different those lives were, she almost always had her phone by the bed. And in this life, it was no different, so she grabbed it and sneaked out of the room quietly. Whoever the man was, he was a deep sleeper and didn’t stir.

She stared at him.

‘Nora?’ he mumbled, half-asleep.

It was him. She was almost sure of it. Ash.

‘I’m just going to the loo,’ she said.

He mumbled something close to an ‘okay’ and fell back asleep.

And she trod gently across the floorboards. But the moment she opened the door and stepped out of the room, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

For there, in front of her in the half-light of the landing, was another human. A small one. Child-size.

‘Mummy, I had a nightmare.’

By the soft light of the dimmed bulb in the hallway she could see the girl’s face, her fine hair wild from sleep, strands sticking to her clammy forehead.

Nora said nothing. This was her daughter.

How could she say anything?

The now familiar question raised itself: how could she just join in to a life that she was years late for? Nora closed her eyes. The other lives in which she’d had children had only lasted a couple of minutes or so. This one was already leading into unknown territory.

Her body shook with whatever she was trying to keep inside. She didn’t want to see her. Not just for herself but for the girl as well. It seemed a betrayal. Nora was her mother, but also, in another, more important way: she was not her mother. She was just a strange woman in a strange house looking at a strange child.

‘Mummy? Can you hear me? I had a nightmare.’

She heard the man move in his bed somewhere in the room behind her. This would only become more awkward if he woke up, properly. So, Nora decided to speak to the child.

‘Oh, oh that’s a shame,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not real, though. It was just a dream.’ ‘It was about bears.’

Nora closed the door behind her. ‘Bears?’

‘Because of that story.’

‘Right. Yes. The story. Come on, get back in your bed . . .’ This sounded harsh, she realised. ‘Sweetheart,’ she added, wondering what she – her daughter in this universe – was called. ‘There are no bears here.’ ‘Only teddy bears.’

‘Yes, only—’

The girl became a little more awake. Her eyes brightened. She saw her mother, so for a second Nora felt like that. Like her mother. She felt the strangeness of being connected to the world through someone else. ‘Mummy, what were you doing?’ She was speaking loudly. She was deeply serious in the way that only four-year-olds (she couldn’t have been much older) could be.

‘Ssh,’ Nora said. She really needed to know the girl’s name. Names had power. If you didn’t know your own daughter’s name, you had no control whatsoever. ‘Listen,’ Nora whispered, ‘I’m just going to go downstairs and do something. You go back to bed.’ ‘But the bears.’

‘There aren’t any bears.’

‘There are in my dreams.’

Nora remembered the polar bear speeding towards her in the fog. Remembered that fear. That desire, in that sudden moment, to live. ‘There won’t be this time. I promise.’ ‘Mummy, why are you speaking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like that.’

‘Whispering?’

‘No.’

Nora had no idea what the girl thought she was speaking like. What the gap was, between her now and her, the mother. Did motherhood affect the way you spoke?

‘Like you are scared,’ the girl clarified.

‘I’m not scared.’

‘I want someone to hold my hand.’

‘What?’

‘I want someone to hold my hand.’

‘Right.’

‘Silly Mummy!’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m silly.’

‘I’m really scared.’

She said this quietly, matter-of-fact. And it was then that Nora looked at her. Really, properly looked at her. The girl seemed wholly alien and wholly familiar all at once. Nora felt a swell of something inside her, something powerful and worrying.

The girl was staring at her in a way no one had stared at her before. It was scary, the emotion. She had Nora’s mouth. And that slightly lost look that people had sometimes attributed to her. She was beautiful and she was hers – or kind of hers – and she felt a swell of irrational love, a surge of it, and knew – if the library wasn’t coming for her right now (and it wasn’t) – that she had to get away.

‘Mummy, will you hold my hand . . .?’

‘I . . .’

The girl put her hand in Nora’s. It felt so small and warm and it made her feel sad, the way it relaxed into her, as natural as a pearl in a shell. She pulled Nora towards the adjacent room – the girl’s bedroom. Nora closed the door nearly-shut behind her and tried to check the time on her watch, but in this life it was a classic-looking analogue watch with no light display so it took a second or two for her eyes to adjust. She double-checked the time on her phone as well. It was 2:32 a.m. So, depending when she had gone to bed in this life, this version of her body hadn’t had much sleep. It certainly felt like it hadn’t.

‘What happens when you die, Mummy?’

It wasn’t totally dark in the room. There was a sliver of light coming in from the hallway and there was a nearby streetlamp that meant a thin glow filtered through the dog-patterned curtains. She could see the squat rectangle that was Nora’s bed. She could see the silhouette of a cuddly toy elephant on the floor. There were other toys too. It was a happily cluttered room.

Her eyes shone at Nora.

‘I don’t know,’ Nora said. ‘I don’t think anyone knows for sure.’

She frowned. This didn’t satisfy her. This didn’t satisfy her one bit.

‘Listen,’ Nora said. ‘There is a chance that just before you die, you’ll get a chance to live again. You can have things you didn’t have before. You can choose the life you want.’ ‘That sounds good.’

‘But you don’t have to have this worry for a very long time. You are going to have a life full of exciting adventures. There will be so many happy things.’ ‘Like camping!’

A burst of warmth radiated through Nora as she smiled at this sweet girl. ‘Yes. Like camping!’ ‘I love it when we go camping!’

Nora’s smile was still there but she felt tears behind her eyes. This seemed a good life. A family of her own. A daughter to go on camping holidays with.

‘Listen,’ she said, as she realised she wasn’t going to be able to escape the bedroom any time soon. ‘When you have worries about things you don’t know about, like the future, it’s a very good idea to remind yourself of things you do know.’ ‘I don’t understand,’ the girl said, snuggled under her duvet as Nora sat on the floor beside her.

‘Well, it’s like a game.’

‘I like games.’

‘Shall we play a game?’

‘Yes,’ smiled her daughter. ‘Let’s.’

The Game

‘I ask you something we already know and you say the answer. So, if I ask “What is Mummy’s name?”, you would say “Nora”. Get it?’ ‘I think so.’

‘So, what is your name?’

‘Molly.’

‘Okay, what is Daddy’s name?’

‘Daddy!’

‘But what is his actual name?’

‘Ash!’

Well. That was a really successful coffee date.

‘And where do we live?’

‘Cambridge!’

Cambridge. It kind of made sense. Nora had always liked Cambridge, and it was only thirty miles from Bedford. Ash must have liked it too. And it was still commutable distance from London, if he still worked there. Briefly, after getting her First from Bristol, she had applied to do an MPhil in Philosophy and had been offered a place at Caius College.

‘What part of Cambridge? Can you remember? What is our street called?’ ‘We live on . . . Bol . . . Bolton Road.’

‘Well done! And do you have any brothers or sisters!’

‘No!’

‘And do Mummy and Daddy like each other?’

Molly laughed a little at that. ‘Yes!’

‘Do we ever shout?’

The laugh became cheeky. ‘Sometimes! Especially Mummy!’

‘Sorry!’

‘You only shout when you are really, really, really tired and you say sorry so it is okay. Everything is okay if you say sorry. That’s what you say.’ ‘Does Mummy go out to work?’

‘Yes. Sometimes.’

‘Do I still work at the shop where I met Daddy?’

‘No.’

‘What does Mummy do when she goes out to work?’

‘Teaches people!’

‘How does she – how do I teach people? What do I teach?’

‘Fill-o . . . fill-o-wosso-fee . . .’

‘Philosophy?’

‘That’s what I said!’

‘And where do I teach that? At a university?’

‘Yes!’

‘Which university?’ Then she remembered where they lived. ‘At Cambridge University?’ ‘That’s it!’

She tried to fill in the gaps. Maybe in this life she had re-applied to do a Master’s, and on successfully completing that she had got into teaching there.

Either way, if she was going to bluff it in this life, she was probably going to have to read some more philosophy. But then Molly said: ‘But you are stopping now.’ ‘Stopping? Why am I stopping?’

‘To do books!’

‘Books for you?’

‘No, silly. To do a grown-up book.’

‘I’m writing a book?’

‘Yes! I just said.’

‘I know. I’m just trying to get you to say some things twice. Because it is doubly nice. And it makes bears even less scary. Okay?’ ‘Okay.’

‘Does Daddy work?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know what Daddy’s job is?’

‘Yes. He cuts people!’

For a brief moment she forgot Ash was a surgeon and wondered if she was in the house of a serial killer. ‘Cuts people?’ ‘Yes, he cuts people’s bodies and makes them better!’

‘Ah, yes. Of course.’

‘He saves people!’

‘Yes, he does.’

‘Except when he is sad and the person died.’

‘Yes, that is sad.’

‘Does Daddy work in Bedford still? Or does he work in Cambridge now?’

She shrugged. ‘Cambridge?’

‘Does he play music?’

‘Yes. Yes, he plays the music. But very very very very badly!’ She giggled as she said that.

Nora laughed too. Molly’s giggle was contagious. ‘It’s . . . Do you have any aunts and uncles?’ ‘Yes, I have Aunt Jaya.’

‘Who is Aunt Jaya?’

‘Daddy’s sister.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Yes, Uncle Joe and Uncle Ewan.’

Nora felt relieved her brother was alive in this timeline. And that he was with the same man he was with in her Olympic life. And he was clearly in their lives enough for Molly to know his name.

‘When did we last see Uncle Joe?’

‘Christmas!’

‘Do you like Uncle Joe?’

‘Yes! He’s funny! And he gave me Panda!’

‘Panda?’

‘My best cuddly!’

‘Pandas are bears too.’

‘Nice bears.’

Molly yawned. She was getting sleepy.

‘Do Mummy and Uncle Joe like each other?’

‘Yes! You always talk on the phone!’

This was interesting. Nora had assumed that the only lives in which she still got on with her brother were the lives in which she had never been in The Labyrinths (unlike her decision to keep swimming, the coffee date with Ash post-dated her experience in The Labyrinths). But this was throwing that theory. Nora couldn’t help but wonder if this lovely Molly herself was the missing link. Maybe this little girl in front of her had healed the rift between her and her brother.

‘Do you have grandparents?’

‘Only Grandma Sal.’

Nora wanted to ask more about her own parents’ deaths, but this probably wasn’t the time.

‘Are you happy? I mean, when you aren’t thinking about bears?’

‘I think so.’

‘Are Mummy and Daddy happy?’

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘Sometimes. When you are not tired!’

‘And do we have lots of fun times?’

She rubbed her eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘And do we have any pets?’

‘Yes. Plato.’

‘And who is Plato?’

‘Our dog.’

‘And what type of dog is Plato?’

But she got no answer, because Molly was asleep. And Nora lay there, on the carpet, and closed her eyes.

When she woke up, a tongue was licking her face.

A Labrador with smiling eyes and a waggy tail seemed amused or excited to see her.

‘Plato?’ she asked, sleepily.

That’s me, Plato seemed to wag.

It was morning. Light flooded through the curtains now. Cuddly toys – including Panda, and the elephant Nora had identified earlier – littered the floor. She looked at the bed and saw it was empty. Molly wasn’t in the room. And there were feet – heavier feet than Molly’s – coming up the stairs.

She sat up and knew she must look terrible after sleeping on the carpet in a baggy Cure T-shirt (which she recognised) and tartan pyjama bottoms (which she didn’t). She felt her face and it was creased from where she had been lying, and her hair – which was longer in this life – felt dirty and bedraggled. She tried to make herself look as presentable as it was possible to look in the two seconds before the arrival of a man she simultaneously slept with every night and also hadn’t ever slept with. Schrödinger’s husband, so to speak.

And then, suddenly, there he was.