The Midnight Library - Matt Haig Page 0,57

I understand. It is just that in your recent Rolling Stone interview you talked a little about your former boyfriend, Dan Lord, and mentioned how difficult it was to get the . . . the . . . the restraining order against him, after he stalked you . . . Didn’t he try to break into your house? Then tell reporters that he wrote the lyrics for “Beautiful Sky”?’

‘Jesus.’

She hovered at the intersection of tears and laughter, and managed, somehow, to give neither.

‘I wrote it when I was still with him. But he didn’t like it. He didn’t like me being in this band. He hated it. He hated my brother. He hated Ravi. He hated Ella, who was one of the original members. Anyway, Dan was very jealous.’

This was so surreal. In one life, the life he’d supposedly wanted, Dan was so bored in his marriage to Nora he was having an affair, while in this life he was breaking into her house because he couldn’t stand her success.

‘He’s a dick,’ said Nora. ‘I don’t know the Portuguese swear word for a terrible person.’

‘Cabrão. It means someone’s a dick.’

‘Or an asshole,’ the younger guy added, stone-faced.

‘Yeah, well, he’s a cabrão. He turned out to be someone else entirely. It’s weird. The way when your life changes people act in different ways. The price of fame, I suppose.’

‘And you wrote a song called “Henry David Thoreau”. You don’t get many songs named after philosophers . . .’

‘I know. Well, when I studied Philosophy at university, he was my favourite. Hence my tattoo. And it made a marginally better song title than “Immanuel Kant”.’

She was getting into the swing of it now. It wasn’t too hard to act a life when it was the one she was destined for.

‘And “Howl”, obviously. Such a powerful song. Number one in twenty-two countries. Grammy award-winning video with a Hollywood A-list cast. I suppose you are done talking about it?’

‘I suppose, yes.’

Joanna went to get herself another honey cake.

Marcelo smiled, gently, as he pressed on. ‘For me it seemed so primal. The song, I mean. Like you were letting everything out. And then I discovered you wrote it on the very night you fired your last manager. Before Joanna. After you found out he’d been ripping you off . . .’

‘Yeah. That wasn’t good,’ she improvised. ‘It was such a betrayal.’

‘I was a big Labyrinths fan before “Howl”. But that was the one for me. That and “Lighthouse Girl”. “Howl” was where I was like, Nora Seed is a genius. The lyrics are pretty abstract, but the way you just let out that rage was so soft and soulful and powerful all at once. It’s like early Cure fused with Frank Ocean via The Carpenters and Tame Impala.’

Nora tried, and failed, to imagine what that could possibly sound like.

He started to sing, to everyone’s surprise: ‘“Silence the music to improve the tune / Stop the fake smiles and howl at the moon”.’

Nora smiled and nodded, as if she knew these lyrics. ‘Yeah. Yeah. I was just . . . howling.’

Marcelo’s face became serious. He seemed genuinely concerned for her. ‘You’ve had so much shit to deal with these last few years. Stalkers, bad managers, the fake feuds, the court case, the copyright issues, the messy break-up with Ryan Bailey, the reception of the last album, rehab, that incident in Toronto . . . that time you collapsed from exhaustion in Paris, personal tragedy, drama drama drama. And all that media intrusion. Why do you think the press hate you so much?’

Nora began to feel a bit queasy. Was this what fame was like? Like a permanent bittersweet cocktail of worship and assault? It was no wonder so many famous people went off the rails when the rails veered in every direction. It was like being slapped and kissed at the same time.

‘I . . . I don’t know . . . it’s pretty crackers . . .’

‘I mean, do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you had decided to take a different path?’

Nora listened to this as she stared at the bubbles rising in her mineral water.

‘I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths,’ she said, realising something for the first time. ‘But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths. In one life, I might be married. In another, I might be working in a shop. I might have said yes to this cute