بخش 4

The Three Horseshoes

Nora was standing outside in crisp, clean air. But unlike in Bedford, it wasn’t raining here.

‘Where am I?’ she whispered to herself.

There was a small row of quaint stone terraced houses on the other side of the gently curving road. Quiet, old houses, with all their lights off, nestled at the edge of a village before fading into the stillness of the countryside. A clear sky, an expanse of dotted stars, a waning crescent moon. The smell of fields. The two-way twit-twoo of tawny owls. And then quiet again. A quiet that had a presence, that was a force in the air.

Weird.

She had been in Bedford. Then in that strange library. And now she was here, on a pretty village road. Without hardly even moving.

On this side of the road, golden light filtered out of a downstairs window. She looked up and saw an elegantly painted pub sign creaking softly in the wind. Overlapping horseshoes underneath carefully italicised words: The Three Horseshoes.

In front of her, there was a chalkboard standing on the pavement. She recognised her own handwriting, at its neatest.

THE THREE HORSESHOES

Tuesday Night – Quiz Night

8.30 p.m.

‘True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.’

– Socrates (after losing our quiz!!!!)

This was a life where she put four exclamation marks in a row. That was probably what happier, less uptight people did.

A promising omen.

She looked down at what she was wearing. A denim shirt with sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms and jeans and wedge-heeled shoes, none of which she wore in her actual life. She had goose-bumps from the cold, and clearly wasn’t dressed to be outside for long.

There were two rings on her ring finger. Her old sapphire engagement ring was there – the same one she had taken off, through trembles and tears, over a year ago – accompanied by a simple silver wedding band.

Crackers.

She was wearing a watch. Not a digital one, in this life. An elegant, slender analogue one, with Roman numerals. It was about a minute after midnight.

How is this happening?

Her hands were smoother in this life. Maybe she used hand cream. Her nails shone with clear polish. There was some comfort in seeing the familiar small mole on her left hand.

Footsteps crunched on gravel. Someone was heading towards her down the driveway. A man, visible from the light of the pub windows and the solitary streetlamp. A man with rosy cheeks and grey Dickensian whiskers and a wax jacket. A Toby jug made flesh. He seemed, from his overly careful gait, to be slightly drunk.

‘Goodnight, Nora. I’ll be back on Friday. For the folk singer. Dan said he’s a good one.’ In this life she probably knew the man’s name. ‘Right. Yes, of course. Friday. It should be a great night.’ At least her voice sounded like her. She watched as the man crossed the road, looking left and right a few times despite the clear absence of traffic, and disappearing down a lane between the cottages.

It was really happening. This was actually it. This was the pub life. This was the dream made reality.

‘This is so very weird,’ she said into the night. ‘So. Very. Weird.’

A group of three left the pub then too. Two women and a man. They smiled at Nora as they walked past.

‘We’ll win next time,’ one of the women said.

‘Yes,’ replied Nora. ‘There’s always a next time.’

She walked up to the pub and peeked through the window. It seemed empty inside, but the lights were still on. That group must have been the last to leave.

The pub looked very inviting. Warm and characterful. Small tables and timber beams and a wagon wheel attached to a wall. A rich red carpet and a wood-panelled bar full of an impressive array of beer pumps.

She stepped away from the window and saw a sign just beyond the pub, past where the pavement became grass.

Quickly, she trotted over and read what it said.

LITTLEWORTH

Welcomes Careful Drivers

Then she noticed in the top centre of the sign a little coat of arms around which orbited the words Oxfordshire County Council.

‘We did it,’ she whispered into the country air. ‘We actually did it.’ This was the dream Dan had first mentioned to her while walking by the Seine in Paris, eating macarons they had bought on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.

A dream not of Paris but of rural England, where they would live together.

A pub in the Oxfordshire countryside.

When Nora’s mum’s cancer aggressively returned, reaching her lymph nodes and rapidly colonising her body, that dream was put on hold and Dan moved with her from London back to Bedford. Her mum had known of their engagement and had planned to stay alive long enough for the wedding. She had died four months too soon.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the life. Maybe this was first-time lucky, or second-time lucky.

She allowed herself an apprehensive smile.

She walked back along the path and crunched over the gravel, heading towards the side door the drunken, whiskery man in the wax jacket had recently departed from. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

It was warm.

And quiet.

She was in some kind of hallway or corridor. Terracotta floor tiles. Low wood panelling and, above, wallpaper full of illustrations of sycamore leaves.

She walked down the little corridor and into the main pub area which she had peeked at through the window. She jumped as a cat appeared out of nowhere.

An elegant, angular chocolate Burmese purring away. She bent down and stroked it and looked at the engraved name on the disc attached to the collar. Voltaire.

A different cat, with the same name. Unlike her dear beloved ginger tabby, she doubted this Voltaire was a rescue. The cat began to purr. ‘Hello, Volts Number Two. You seem happy here. Are we all as happy as you?’ The cat purred a possible affirmation and rubbed his head against Nora’s leg. She picked him up and went over to the bar. There was a row of craft beers on the pumps, stouts and ciders and pale ales and IPAs. Vicar’s Favourite. Lost and Found. Miss Marple. Sleeping Lemons. Broken Dream.

There was a charity tin on the bar for Butterfly Conservation.

She heard the sound of clinking glass. As if a dishwasher was being filled. Nora felt anxiety constrict her chest. A familiar sensation. Then a spindly twenty-something man in a baggy rugby top popped up from behind the bar, hardly giving any attention to Nora as he gathered the last remaining used glasses and put them in the dishwasher. He switched it on then pulled down his coat from a hook, put it on and took out some car keys.

‘Bye, Nora. I’ve done the chairs and wiped all the tables. Dishwasher’s on.’ ‘Ah, thanks.’

‘Till Thursday.’

‘Yes,’ Nora said, feeling like a spy about to have her cover blown. ‘See you.’ A moment after the man left, she heard footsteps rising up from somewhere below, heading across the tiles she had just walked down, coming from the back of the pub. And then he was there.

He looked different.

The beard had gone, and there were more wrinkles around his eyes, dark circles. He had a nearly finished pint of dark beer in his hand. He still looked a bit like a TV vet, just a few more series down the line.

‘Dan,’ she said, as if he was something that needed identifying. Like a rabbit by the road. ‘I just want to say I am so proud of you. So proud of us.’ He looked at her, blankly. ‘Was just turning the chiller units off. Got to clean the lines tomorrow. We’ve left it a fortnight.’ Nora had no idea what he was talking about. She stroked the cat. ‘Right. Yes. Of course. The lines.’ Her husband – for in this life, that was who he was – looked around at all the tables and upside-down chairs. He was wearing a faded Jaws T-shirt. ‘Have Blake and Sophie gone home?’ Nora hesitated. She sensed he was talking about people who worked for them. The young man in the baggy rugby top was presumably Blake. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to sound natural despite the fundamental bizarreness of the circumstances. ‘I think they have. They were pretty on top of things.’ ‘Cool.’

She remembered buying him the Jaws T-shirt on his twenty-sixth birthday. Ten years previously.

‘The answers tonight were something else. One of the teams – the one Pete and Jolie were on – thought Maradona painted the Sistine ceiling.’ Nora nodded and stroked Volts Number Two. As if she had any idea who on earth Pete and Jolie were.

‘To be fair, it was a tricky one tonight. Might take them from another website next time. I mean, who actually knows the name of the highest mountain in the Kara-whatsit range?’ ‘Karakoram?’ Nora asked. ‘That would be K2.’

‘Well, obviously you know,’ he said, a little too abruptly. A little too tipsily. ‘It’s the kind of thing you would know. Because while most people were into rock music you were into actual rocks and stuff.’ ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I was literally in a band.’

A band, she remembered then, that Dan had hated her being in.

He laughed. She recognised the laugh, but didn’t entirely like it. She had forgotten how often during their relationship Dan’s humour hinged on other people, specifically Nora. When they’d been together, she had tried not to dwell on this aspect of his personality. He’d had so many other aspects – he had been so lovely to her mum when she was ill, and he could talk at ease about anything, he was so full of dreams about the future, he was attractive and easy to be around, and he was passionate about art and always stopped to chat to the homeless. He cared about the world. A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.

He had listened to a lot of annoying podcasts that he thought Nora should listen to, and laughed in a way that grated on her, and gargled loudly with mouthwash. And yes, he hogged the duvet and could occasionally be arrogant in his opinions on art and film and music, but there was nothing overtly wrong with him. Well – now that she thought about it – he’d never been supportive of her music career, and had advised her that being in The Labyrinths and signing a music deal would be bad for her mental health, and that her brother was being a bit selfish. But at the time she had viewed that not so much as a red flag but a green one. Her thinking was: he cared, and it was nice to have someone who cared, who wasn’t bothered about fame and superficialities, and could help navigate the waters of life. And so when he had asked her to marry him, in the cocktail bar on the top floor of the Oxo Tower, she had agreed and maybe she had always been right to agree.

He stepped forward into the room, placed his pint down momentarily and was now on his phone, looking up better pub quiz questions.

She wondered how much he had drunk tonight. She wondered if the dream of owning a pub had really been a dream of drinking an endless supply of alcohol.

‘What is the name of a twenty-sided polygon?’

‘I don’t know,’ Nora lied, not wanting to risk a similar reaction to the one she’d received a moment ago.

He put the phone in his pocket.

‘We did well, though. They all drank loads tonight. Not bad for a Tuesday. Things are looking up. I mean, there’s something to tell the bank tomorrow. Maybe they’ll give us an extension on the loan . . .’ He stared at the beer in his glass, swilled it around a little, then downed it.

‘Though I’ve got to tell A.J. to change the lunch menu. No one in Littleworth wants to eat candied beetroot and broad bean salad and corn cakes. This isn’t pissing Fitzrovia. And I know they’re going down well, but I think those wines you chose aren’t worth it. Especially the Californian ones.’ ‘Okay.’

He turned and looked behind him. ‘Where’s the board?’

‘What?’

‘The chalkboard. Thought you’d brought it in?’

So that was what she had been outside for.

‘No. No. I’m going to do it now.’

‘Thought I saw you go out.’

Nora smiled away her nerves. ‘Yes, well, I did. I had to . . . I was worried about our cat. Volts. Voltaire. I couldn’t find him so I went outside to look for him and then I found him, didn’t I?’ Dan was back behind the bar, pouring himself a scotch.

He seemed to sense she was judging him. ‘This is only my third. Fourth, maybe. It’s quiz night. You know I get nervous doing the compering. And it helps me be funny. And I was funny, don’t you reckon?’ ‘Yes. Very funny. Total funniness.’

His face fell into a serious mode. ‘I saw you talking to Erin. What did she say?’ Nora wasn’t sure how best to answer this. ‘Oh, nothing much. The usual stuff. You know Erin.’ ‘The usual stuff? I didn’t think you’d ever spoken to her before.’

‘I meant the usual stuff that people say. Not what Erin says. Usual people stuff . . .’ ‘How’s Will doing?’

‘Er, really well,’ Nora guessed. ‘He says hi.’

Dan’s eyes popped wide with surprise. ‘Really?’

Nora had no idea what to say. Maybe Will was a baby. Maybe Will was in a coma. ‘Sorry, no, he didn’t say hi. Sorry, I’m not thinking. Anyway, I’ll . . . go and get the board.’ She put the cat down on the floor and headed back out. This time she noticed something she had missed on entering.

A framed newspaper article from the Oxford Times with a picture of Nora and Dan standing outside the Three Horseshoes. Dan had his arm around her. He was wearing a suit she had never seen before and she was in a smart dress she would never have worn (she rarely wore dresses) in her original life.

PUB OWNERS MAKE DREAM A REALITY

They had, according to the article, bought the pub cheaply and in a neglected state and then renovated it with a mix of a modest inheritance (Dan’s) and savings and bank loans. The article presented a success story, though it was two years old.

She stepped outside, wondering whether a life could really be judged from just a few minutes after midnight on a Tuesday. Or maybe that was all you needed.

The wind was picking up. Standing out on that quiet village street, the gusts pushed the board a little along the path, nearly toppling it over. Before she picked it up, she felt a buzz from a phone in her pocket. She hadn’t realised it was in there. She pulled it out. A text message from Izzy.

She noticed that her wallpaper was a photo of herself and Dan somewhere hot.

She unlocked the phone using facial recognition and opened the message. It was a photo of a whale rising high out of the ocean, the white spray soaking the air like a burst of champagne. It was a wonderful photo and just seeing it caused her to smile.

Izzy was typing.

Another message appeared:

This was one of the pics I took yesterday from the boat.

And another:

Humpback mother

Then another photo: two whales this time, their backs breaking the water.

With calf

The last message also included emojis of whales and waves.

Nora felt a warm glow. Not just from the pictures, which were indisputably lovely, but from the contact with Izzy.

When Nora backed out of her wedding to Dan, Izzy had insisted that she come to Australia with her.

They’d mapped it all out, a plan to live near Byron Bay and get jobs on one of the whale-watching boat cruises.

They had shared lots of clips of humpback whales in anticipation of this new adventure. But then Nora had wobbled and backed out. Just like she had backed out of a swimming career, and a band, and a wedding. But unlike those other things, there hadn’t even been a reason. Yes, she had started working at String Theory and, yes, she felt the need to tend to her parents’ graves, but she knew that staying in Bedford was the worse option. And yet she picked it. Because of some strange predictive homesickness that festered alongside a depression that told her, ultimately, she didn’t deserve to be happy. That she had hurt Dan and that a life of drizzle and depression in her hometown was her punishment, and she hadn’t the will or clarity or, hell, the energy to do anything.

So, in effect, she swapped her best friend for a cat.

In her actual life, she had never fallen out with Izzy. Nothing that dramatic. But after Izzy had gone to Australia, things had faded between them until their friendship became just a vapour trail of sporadic Facebook and Instagram likes and emoji-filled birthday messages.

She looked back through the text conversations between her and Izzy and realised that even though there was still ten thousand miles between them, they had a much better relationship in this version of things.

When she returned to the pub, carrying the sign this time, Dan was nowhere to be seen so she locked the back door and waited a while, in the pub hallway, working out where the stairs were, and unsure if she actually wanted to follow her tipsy sort-of husband up there.

She found the stairs at the rear of the building, through a door that said Staff Only. As she stepped on the beige raffia carpet heading towards the stairs, just after a framed poster of Things You Learn in the Dark – one of their favourite Ryan Bailey movies which they had watched together at the Odeon in Bedford – she noted a smaller picture on a sweet little window sill.

It was their wedding photo. Black and white, reportage-style. Walking out of a church into a shower of confetti. It was difficult to see their faces properly but they were both laughing and it was a shared laugh, and they seemed – as far as a photograph can tell you anything – to be in love. She remembered her mum talking about Dan. (‘He’s a good one. You’re so lucky. Keep hold of him.’) She saw her brother Joe too, shaven-headed and looking genuinely happy, champagne glass in hand and his short-lived, disastrous investment-banker boyfriend, Lewis, by his side. Izzy was there, and Ravi too, looking more like an accountant than a drummer, standing next to a bespectacled woman she’d never seen before.

While Dan was in the toilet Nora located the bedroom. Although they evidently had money worries – the nervous appointment with the bank confirmed that – the room was expensively furnished. Smart window blinds. A wide, comfortable-looking bed. The duvet crisp and clean and white.

There were books either side of the bed. In her actual life she hadn’t had a book by her bed for at least six months. She hadn’t read anything for six months. Maybe in this life she had a better concentration span.

She picked up one of the books, Meditation for Beginners. Underneath it was a copy of a biography of her favourite philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. There were books on Dan’s bedside table too. The last book she remembered him reading had been a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec – Tiny Giant – but in this life he was reading a business book called Zero to Hero: Harnessing Success in Work, Play and Life and the latest edition of The Good Pub Guide.

She felt different in her body. A little healthier, a little stronger, but tense. She patted her stomach and realised that in this life she worked out a bit more. Her hair felt different too. She had a heavy fringe, and – feeling it – she could tell her hair was longer at the back. Her mind felt a little woozy. She must have had at least a couple of glasses of wine.

A moment later she heard the toilet flush. Then she heard gargling. It seemed to be a bit noisier than necessary.

‘Are you all right?’ Dan asked, when he came into the bedroom. His voice, she realised, didn’t sound like she remembered. It sounded emptier. A bit colder. Maybe it was tiredness. Maybe it was stress. Maybe it was beer. Maybe it was marriage.

Maybe it was something else.

It was hard to remember, exactly, what he had sounded like before. What he had been like, precisely. But that was the nature of memory. At university she had done an essay drily titled ‘The Principles of Hobbesian Memory and Imagination’. Thomas Hobbes had viewed memory and imagination as pretty much the same thing, and since discovering that she had never entirely trusted her memories.

Outside the window the streetlamp’s yellow glow illuminated the desolate village road.

‘Nora? You’re acting strange. Why are you just standing in the middle of the room? Are you getting ready for bed or are you doing some kind of standing meditation?’ He laughed. He thought he was funny.

He went over to the window and pulled the curtains. Then he took off his jeans and put them on the back of a chair. She stared at him and tried to feel the attraction she had once felt so deeply. It seemed to require a Herculean effort. She hadn’t expected this.

Everyone’s lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways.

He collapsed heavily on the bed, a whale into the ocean. Picked up Zero to Hero. Tried to focus. Put it down. Picked up a laptop by the bed, shoved an earphone into his ear. Maybe he was going to listen to a podcast.

‘I’m just thinking about something.’

She began to feel faint. As if she was only half there. She remembered Mrs Elm talking about how disappointment in a life would bring her back to the library. It would feel, she realised, altogether too strange to climb into the same bed with a man she hadn’t seen for two years.

She noticed the time on the digital alarm clock. 12:23.

Still with the earphone in his ear, he looked at her again. ‘Right, listen, if you don’t want to make babies tonight you can just say, you know?’ ‘What?’

‘I mean, I know we’ll have to wait another month until you are ovulating again . . .’ ‘We’re trying for a baby? I want a baby?’

‘Nora, what’s with you? Why are you strange today?’

She took off her shoes. ‘I’m not.’

A memory came to her, related to the Jaws T-shirt.

A tune, actually. ‘Beautiful Sky’.

The day she had bought Dan the Jaws T-shirt had been the day she had played him a song she had written for The Labyrinths. ‘Beautiful Sky’. It was, she was convinced, the best song she had ever written. And – more than that – it was a happy song to reflect her optimism at that point in her life. It was a song inspired by her new life with Dan. And he had listened to it with a shruggish indifference that had hurt at the time and which she would have addressed if it hadn’t been his birthday.

‘Yeah,’ he’d said. ‘It’s okay.’

She wondered why that memory had stayed buried, only to rise up now, like the great white shark on his fading T-shirt.

There were other things coming back to her now too. His over-the-top reaction when she’d once told him about a customer – Ash, the surgeon and amateur guitar player who came into String Theory for the occasional songbook – casually asking Nora if she wanted to go for a coffee some time.

(‘Of course I said no. Stop shouting.’)

Worse, though, was when an A&R man for a major label (or rather, a boutique former indie label with Universal behind them) wanted to sign The Labyrinths. Dan had told her that it was unlikely they’d survive as a couple. He’d also heard a horror story from one of his university friends who’d been in a band that signed to a label and then the label ripped them off and they’d all become unemployed alcoholics or something.

‘I could take you with me,’ she said. ‘I’d get it in the contract. We could go everywhere together.’ ‘Sorry, Nora. But that’s your dream. It’s not mine.’

Which hurt even more with hindsight, knowing how much – before the wedding – she’d tried to make his dream of a pub in the Oxfordshire countryside become her dream as well.

Dan had always said his concern was for Nora: she’d been having panic attacks while she was in the band, especially when she got anywhere near a stage. But the concern had been at least a little manipulative, now she thought about it.

‘I thought,’ he was saying now, ‘that you were starting to trust me again.’ ‘Trust you? Dan, why wouldn’t I trust you?’

‘You know why.’

‘Of course I know why,’ she lied. ‘I just want to hear you say it.’

‘Well, since the stuff with Erin.’

She stared at him like he was a Rorschach inkblot in which she saw no clear image.

‘Erin? The one I was speaking to tonight?’

‘Am I going to be beaten up for ever about one stupid drunken moment?’ On the street outside, the wind was picking up, howling through trees as if attempting a language.

This was the life she had been in mourning for. This was the life she had beaten herself up for not living. This was the timeline she thought she had regretted not existing in.

‘One stupid mistake?’ she echoed.

‘Okay, two.’

It was multiplying.

‘Two?’

‘I was in a state. You know, the pressure. Of this place. And I was very drunk.’ ‘You had sex with someone else and it doesn’t seem you have been seeking much . . . atonement.’ ‘Seriously, why drag all this up? We’ve been through this. Remember what the counsellor said. About focusing on where we want to go rather than where we have been.’ ‘Do you ever think that maybe we just aren’t right for each other?’

‘What?’

‘I love you, Dan. And you can be a very kind person. And you were great with my mum. And we used to – I mean, we have great conversations. But do you ever feel that we passed where we were meant to be? That we changed?’ She sat down on the edge of the bed. The furthest corner away from him.

‘Do you ever feel lucky to have me? Do you realise how close I was to leaving you, two days before the wedding? Do you know how messed up you would have been if I hadn’t turned up at the wedding?’ ‘Wow. Really? You have yourself in quite high esteem there, Nora.’

‘Shouldn’t I? I mean, shouldn’t everyone? What’s wrong with self-esteem? And besides, it’s true. There’s another universe where you send me WhatsApp messages about how messed up you are without me. How you turn to alcohol, although it seems like you turn to alcohol with me too. You send me texts saying you miss my voice.’ He made a dismissive noise, somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. ‘Well, right now, I am most definitely not missing your voice.’ She couldn’t get beyond her shoes. She found it hard – maybe impossible – to take off another item of clothing in front of him.

‘And stop going on about my drinking.’

‘If you are using drink as an excuse for screwing someone else, I can go on about your drinking.’ ‘I am a country landlord,’ scoffed Dan. ‘It’s what country landlords do. Be jovial and merry and willing to partake in the many and manifold beverages we sell. Jeez.’ Since when did he speak like this? Did he always speak like this?

‘Bloody hell, Dan. ‘

He didn’t even seem bothered. To seem grateful in any way for the universe he was in. The universe she had felt so guilty for not allowing to happen. He reached for his phone, still with his laptop on the duvet. Nora watched him as he scrolled.

‘Is this what you imagined? Is the dream working out?’

‘Nora, let’s not do this heavy shit. Just get to bloody bed.’

‘Are you happy, Dan?’

‘No one’s happy, Nora.’

‘Some people are. You used to be. You used to light up when you talked about this. You know, the pub. Before you had it. This is the life you dreamed of. You wanted me and you wanted this and yet you’ve been unfaithful and you drink like a fish and I think you only appreciate me when you don’t have me, which is not a great trait to have. What about my dreams?’ He was hardly listening. Or trying to look like he wasn’t.

‘Big fires in California,’ he said, almost to himself.

‘Well, at least we’re not there.’

He put the phone down. Folded his laptop. ‘You coming to bed or what?’ She had shrunk for him, but he still hadn’t found the space he needed. No more.

‘Icosagon,’ she told him.

‘What?’

‘The quiz. Earlier. The twenty-sided polygon. Well, a twenty-sided polygon is called an icosagon. I knew the answer but didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to mock me. And now I don’t really care because I don’t think me knowing some things that you don’t should bother you. And also, I am going to go to the bathroom.’ And she left Dan, with his mouth open, and trod gently on the wide floorboards, out of the room.

She reached the bathroom. Switched a light on. There were tingles in her arms and legs and torso. Like electric static in search of a station. She was fading out, she was sure. There wasn’t long left here. The disappointment was complete.

It was an impressive bathroom. There was a mirror. She gasped at her reflection. She looked healthier but also older. Her hair made her look like a stranger.

This was not the life she imagined it to be.

And Nora wished the self in the mirror ‘Good luck’.

And the moment after that she was back, somewhere inside the Midnight Library, and Mrs Elm was staring at her from a small distance away with a curious smile.

‘Well, how did that go?’