The Midnight Library - Matt Haig Page 0,84

best life. This is the best life.’

But she knew she didn’t have long.

The Flowers Have Water

She pulled up at the house and ran inside, as Plato padded happily to greet her.

‘Hello?’ she asked, desperately. ‘Ash? Molly?’

She needed to see them. She knew she didn’t have long. She could feel the Midnight Library waiting for her.

‘Outside!’ said Ash, chirpily, from the back garden.

And so Nora went through to find Molly on her tricycle again, unfazed by her previous accident, while Ash was tending to a flower-bed.

‘How was your trip?’

Molly climbed off her tricycle and ran over. ‘Mummy! I missed you! I’m really good at biking now!’

‘Are you, darling?’

She hugged her daughter close and closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair and the dog and fabric conditioner and childhood, and she hoped the wonder of it would help keep her there. ‘I love you, Molly, I want you to know that. For ever and ever, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mummy. Of course.’

‘And I love your daddy too. And everything will be okay because whatever happens you will always have Daddy and you will have Mummy too, it’s just I might not be here in the exact same way. I’ll be here, but . . .’ She realised Molly needed to know nothing else except one truth. ‘I love you.’

Molly looked concerned. ‘You forgot Plato!’

‘Well, obviously I love Plato . . . How could I forget Plato? Plato knows I love him, don’t you, Plato? Plato, I love you.’

Nora tried to compose herself.

Whatever happens, they will be looked after. They will be loved. And they have each other and they will be happy.

Then Ash came over, with his gardening gloves on. ‘You okay, Nor? You seem a bit pale. Did anything happen?’

‘Oh, I’ll tell you about it later. When Molly’s in bed.’

‘Okay. Oh, there’s a shop coming any time . . . So keep an ear out for the lorry.’

‘Sure. Yeah. Yeah.’

And then Molly asked if she could get the watering can out and Ash explained that as it had been raining a lot recently it wasn’t necessary, because the sky had been looking after the flowers. ‘They’ll be okay. They’re looked after. The flowers have water.’ And the words echoed in Nora’s mind. They’ll be okay. They’re looked after . . . And then Ash said something about going to the cinema tonight and how the babysitter was all arranged and Nora had forgotten completely but just smiled and tried really hard to hold on, to stay there, but it was happening, it was happening, she knew it from within every hidden chamber of her being, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.

Nowhere to Land

‘NO!’

Unmistakably, it had happened.

She was back in the Midnight Library.

Mrs Elm was at the computer. The lights wobbled and shook and flickered overhead in fast arrhythmic blinks. ‘Nora, stop. Calm down. Be a good girl. I need to sort this out.’

Dust fell in thin wisps from the ceiling, from cracks fissuring and spreading like spider webs woven at unnatural speed. There was the sound of sudden, active destruction which, in her sad fury, Nora found herself managing to ignore.

‘You’re not Mrs Elm. Mrs Elm is dead . . . Am I dead?’

‘We’ve been through this. But now you mention it, maybe you’re about to be . . .’

‘Why aren’t I still there? Why aren’t I there? I could sense it was happening but I didn’t want it to. You said that if I found a life I wanted to live in – that I really wanted to live in – then I’d stay there. You said I’d forget about this stupid place. You said I could find the life I wanted. That was the life I wanted. That was the life!’

Moments ago she had been in the garden with Ash and Nora and Plato, a garden humming with life and love, and now she was here.

‘Take me back . . .’

‘You know it doesn’t work like that.’

‘Well, take me to the closest variation. Give me the closest possible thing to that life. Please, Mrs Elm, it must be possible. There must be a life where I went for the coffee with Ash and where we had Molly and Plato, but I . . . I did something slightly different. So it was technically another life. Like I chose a different dog collar for Plato. Or . . . or . . . Or where I – I don’t know – where I