The Midnight Library - Matt Haig Page 0,28

the chessboard, working out how to out-manoeuvre herself.

‘The rook is my favourite piece,’ she said. ‘It’s the one that you think you don’t have to watch out for. It is straightforward. You keep your eye on the queen, and the knights, and the bishop, because they are the sneaky ones. But it’s the rook that often gets you. The straightforward is never quite what it seems.’

Nora realised Mrs Elm was probably not talking just about chess. But the shelves were moving now. Fast as trains.

‘This life you’ve asked for,’ explained Mrs Elm, ‘is a little bit further away from the pub dream and the Australian adventure. Those were closer lives. This one involves a lot of different choices, going back further in time. And so the book is a little further away, you see?’

‘I see.’

‘Libraries have to have a system.’

The books slowed. ‘Ah, here we are.’

This time Mrs Elm didn’t stand up. She simply raised her left hand and a book flew towards her.

‘How did you do that?’

‘I have no idea. Now here’s the life you asked for. Off you go.’

Nora took hold of the book. Light, fresh, lime-coloured. She turned to the first page. And this time she was aware of feeling absolutely nothing at all.

The Last Update That Nora Had Posted Before She Found Herself Between Life and Death

I miss my cat. I’m tired.

The Successful Life

She had been asleep.

A deep, dreamless nothing, and now – thanks to the ring of a phone alarm – she was awake and didn’t know where she was.

The phone told her it was 6:30 a.m. A light switch beside the bed appeared, thanks to the glow of the screen. Switching it on, she could see she was in a hotel room. It was rather plush, in a bland and blue and corporate kind of way.

A tasteful semi-abstract sub-Cezanne painting of an apple – or maybe a pear – was framed on the wall.

There was a half-empty cylinder-shaped glass bottle of still mineral water beside the bed. And an unopened collection of shortbread biscuits. Some printed-out papers too, stapled together. A timetable of some sort.

She looked at it.

ITINERARY FOR NORA SEED OBE, GUEST SPEAKER, GULLIVER RESEARCH INSPIRING SUCCESS SPRING CONFERENCE

8.45 a.m. Meet Priya Navuluri (Gulliver Research) and Rory Longford (Celebrity Speakers) and J in lobby, InterContinental Hotel

9.00 a.m. Soundcheck.

9.05 a.m. Tech run-through.

9.30 a.m. Nora to wait in VIP area or watch first speaker in main hall (JP Blythe, inventor of MeTime app and author of Your Life, Your Terms)

10.15 a.m. Nora to deliver talk

10.45 a.m. Audience Q + A

11.00 a.m. Meet and greet

11.30 a.m. Finish

Nora Seed OBE.

Inspiring Success.

So, there was a life in which she was a success. Well, that was something.

She wondered who ‘J’ was, and the other people she was supposed to meet in the lobby, and then she put the sheet of paper down and got out of bed. She had a lot of time. Why was she getting up at 6:30 a.m.? Maybe she swam every morning. That would make sense. She pressed a button and the curtains slid open with a low whirr to reveal a view of water and skyscrapers and the white dome of the O2 arena. She had never seen this precise view from this precise angle before. London. Canary Wharf. About twenty storeys up.

She went to the bathroom – beige tiles, large shower cubicle, fluffy white towels – and realised she didn’t feel as bad as she usually did in the morning. There was a mirror filling half the opposing wall. She gasped at her appearance. And then she laughed. She looked so ridiculously healthy. And strong. And in this life had terrible taste in nightwear (pyjamas, mustard-and-green, plaid).

The bathroom was quite large. Large enough to get down on and do some push-ups. Ten full ones in a row – no knees – without even getting out of breath.

Then she held a plank. And tried it with one hand. Then the other hand, with hardly a tremor. Then she did some burpees.

No problem at all.

Wow.

She stood up and patted her rock-hard stomach. Remembered how wheezy she had been in her root life, walking up the high street, technically only yesterday.

She hadn’t felt this fit since she was a teenager. In fact, this might be the fittest she had ever felt. Stronger, certainly.

Searching Facebook for ‘Isabel Hirsh’, she found out that her former best friend was alive and still living in Australia and this made Nora happy. She didn’t even care that they weren’t social media