The Midnight Library - Matt Haig Page 0,63

the sports centre, and pulling up in the small car park outside the modern, grey-bricked, single-storey rescue centre.

She spent the morning feeding and walking the dogs. The reason it was quite easy to blend into this life was at least partly because she had been greeted by an affable, down-to-earth woman with brown curly hair and a Yorkshire accent. The woman, Pauline, said Nora was to start work in the dog shelter, rather than the cat shelter, and so Nora had a legitimate excuse to ask what to do and look confused. Also, the issue of knowing people’s names was solved by the fact that all the workers had name badges.

Nora had walked a bullmastiff, a new arrival, around the field behind the shelter. Pauline told her that the bullmastiff had been horribly treated by its owner. She pointed out a few small round scars.

‘Cigarette burns.’

Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them. The bullmastiff was called Sally. She was scared of everything. Her shadow. Bushes. Other dogs. Nora’s legs. Grass. Air. Though she clearly took a liking to Nora, and even succumbed to a (very quick) tummy rub.

Later, Nora helped clean out some of the little dog huts. She imagined they called them huts because it sounded better than cages, which was really a more apt name for them. There was a three-legged Alsatian called Diesel, who had been there a while apparently. When they played catch, Nora discovered his reflexes were good, his mouth catching the ball almost every time. She liked this life – or more precisely, she liked the version of herself in this life. She could tell the kind of person she was from the way people spoke to her. It felt nice – comforting, solidifying – to be a good person.

Her mind felt different here. She thought a lot in this life, but her thoughts were gentle.

‘Compassion is the basis of morality,’ the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had written, in one of his softer moments. Maybe it was the basis of life too.

There was one man who worked there called Dylan, who had a natural way with all the dogs. He was about her age, maybe younger. He had a kind, gentle, sad look about him. His long surf-dude hair golden as a retriever. He came and sat next to Nora on a bench at lunch, overlooking the field.

‘What are you having today?’ he asked, sweetly, nodding to Nora’s lunchbox.

She honestly didn’t know – she had found it already prepared when she’d opened her magnet- and calendar-cluttered fridge that morning. She peeled off the lid to find a cheese and Marmite sandwich and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. The sky darkened and the wind picked up.

‘Oh crap,’ Nora said. ‘It’s going to rain.’

‘Maybe, but the dogs are all still in their cages.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Dogs can smell when rain is coming, so they often head indoors if they think it’s going to happen. Isn’t that cool? That they can predict the future with their nose?’

‘Yes,’ said Nora. ‘Way cool.’

Nora bit into her cheese sandwich. And then Dylan put his arm around her.

Nora jumped up.

‘—the hell?’ she said.

Dylan looked deeply apologetic. And a little horrified at himself. ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt your shoulder?’

‘No . . . I just . . . I . . . No. No. It’s fine.’

She discovered that Dylan was her boyfriend and that he had gone to the same secondary school as her. Hazeldene Comp. And that he was two years younger.

Nora could remember the day her dad died, when she was in the school library staring as a blond boy from a couple of years below ran past outside the rain-speckled window. Either chasing someone or being chased. That had been him. She had vaguely liked him, from a distance, but without really knowing him or thinking about him at all.

‘You all right, Norster?’ Dylan asked.

Norster?

‘Yeah. I was just . . . Yeah. I’m fine.’

Nora sat down again but left a bit more bench between them. There was nothing overtly wrong with Dylan. He was sweet. And she was sure that in this life she genuinely liked him. Maybe even loved him. But entering a life wasn’t the same as entering an emotion.

‘By the way, did you book Gino’s?’

Gino’s. The Italian. Nora had gone there as a teenager. She was surprised it was still going.

‘What?’

‘Gino’s? The pizza place? For tonight? You said you