The Midnight Library - Matt Haig Page 0,80

now, darling?’

‘It’s okay. It’s like on holiday.’

‘On holiday?’

‘Yes, Mummy . . .’ she said, a little upset Nora couldn’t remember. ‘The slide.’

‘Oh yes, of course. The slide. Yes. Silly me. Silly Mummy.’

Nora felt something inside her all at once. A kind of fear, as real as the fear she had felt on the Arctic skerry, face to face with the polar bear.

A fear of what she was feeling.

Love.

You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in São Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.

And when she thought of her root life, the fundamental problem with it, the thing that had left her vulnerable, really, was the absence of love. Even her brother hadn’t wanted her in that life. There had been no one, once Volts had died. She had loved no one, and no one had loved her back. She had been empty, her life had been empty, walking around, faking some kind of human normality like a sentient mannequin of despair. Just the bare bones of getting through.

Yet there, right there in that garden in Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall.

And yet she sensed deep down that it would all come to an end, soon. She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn’t be fixed because the flaw was the rightness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn’t earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn’t own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud. She wanted this to be her life. As in her real life. And it wasn’t and she just wished she could forget that fact. She really did.

‘Mummy, are you crying?’

‘No, Molly, no. I’m fine. Mummy’s fine.’

‘You look like you are crying.’

‘Let’s just get you cleaned up . . .’

Later that same day, Molly pieced together a jigsaw of jungle animals, Nora sat on the sofa stroking Plato as his warm, weighty head rested on her lap. She stared at the ornate chess set that was sitting there on the mahogany chest.

A thought rose slowly, and she dismissed it. But then it rose again.

As soon as Ash came home, she told him she wanted to see an old friend from Bedford and wouldn’t be back for a few hours.

No Longer Here

As soon as Nora entered Oak Leaf Residential Care Home, and before she’d even reached the reception, she saw a frail elderly man wearing glasses whom she recognised. He was having a slightly heated conversation with a nurse who looked exasperated. Like a sigh turned into a human.

‘I really would like to go in the garden,’ the old man said.

‘I’m sorry, but the garden is being used today.’

‘I just want to sit on the bench. And read the newspaper.’

‘Maybe if you’d signed up for the gardening activity session—’

‘I don’t want a gardening session. I want to call Dhavak. This was all a mistake.’

Nora had heard her old neighbour talk about his son Dhavak before, when she had dropped off his medication. Apparently his son had been pushing for him to go to a care home, but Mr Banerjee had insisted on holding on to his house. ‘Is there no way I can just—’

He noticed, at this point, that he was being stared at.

‘Mr Banerjee?’

He stared at Nora, confused. ‘Hello? Who are you?’

‘I’m Nora. You know, Nora Seed.’ Then, feeling too flustered to think, she added: ‘I’m your neighbour. On Bancroft Avenue.’

He shook his head. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake, dear. I haven’t lived there for three years. And I am very sure you were not my neighbour.’

The nurse tilted her head at Mr Banerjee, as if he was a confused puppy. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten.’

‘No,’ said Nora quickly, realising her mistake. ‘He was right. I was confused. I have memory issues sometimes.