The Midnight Library - Matt Haig Page 0,85

did Pilates instead of yoga? Or where I went to a different college at Cambridge? Or if it has to be further back, where it wasn’t coffee on the date but tea? That life. Take me to the life where I did that. Come on. Please. Help me out. I’d like to try one of those lives, please . . .’

The computer started to smoke. The screen went black. The whole monitor fell to pieces.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Mrs Elm, defeated, as she collapsed back into the office chair.

‘But that’s what happens, isn’t it? I pick a regret. Something I wished I had done differently . . . And then you find the book, I open the book, and I live the book. That’s how this library works, right?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why? Is there a transference problem? You know, like what happened before?’

Mrs Elm looked at her, sadly. ‘It’s more than that. There was always a strong possibility that your old life would end. I told you that, didn’t I? You wanted to die and maybe you would.’

‘Yes, but you said I just needed somewhere to go to. “Somewhere to land”, that’s what you said. “Another life.” Those exact words. And all I needed to do was think hard enough and choose the right life and—’

‘I know. I know. But it didn’t work out like that.’

The ceiling was falling down now, in pieces, as if the plaster was no more stable than the icing of a wedding cake.

Nora noticed something even more distressing. A spark flew from one of the lights and landed on a book, which consequently ignited into a glowing burst of fire. Pretty soon the fire was spreading along the entire shelf, the books burning as rapidly as if they were doused in petrol. A whole stream of hot, raging, roaring amber. Then another spark arced towards a different shelf and that too set alight. At about the same time a large chunk of dusty ceiling landed by Nora’s feet.

‘Under the table!’ ordered Mrs Elm. ‘Now!’

Nora hunched down and followed Mrs Elm – who was now on all fours – under the table, where she sat on her knees and was forced, like Mrs Elm, to keep her head down.

‘Why can’t you stop this?’

‘It’s a chain reaction now. Those sparks aren’t random. The books are going to be destroyed. And then, just as inevitably, the whole place is going to collapse.’

‘Why? I don’t understand. I was there. I had found the life for me. The only life for me. The best one in here . . .’

‘But that’s the problem,’ said Mrs Elm, nervously looking out from beneath the wooden legs of the table as more shelves caught on fire and as debris fell all around them. ‘It still wasn’t enough. Look!’

‘At what?’

‘At your watch. Any moment now.’

So Nora looked, and at first saw nothing untoward – but then it was happening. The watch was suddenly acting like a watch. The display was starting to move.

00:00:00

00:00:01

00:00:02

‘What’s happening?’ Nora asked, realising that whatever it was probably wasn’t good.

‘Time. That’s what’s happening.’

‘How are we going to leave this place?’

00:00:09

00:00:10

‘We’re not,’ said Mrs Elm. ‘There’s no we. I can’t leave the library. When the library disappears, so do I. But there is a chance that you can get out, though you don’t have long. No more than a minute . . .’

Nora had just lost one Mrs Elm, she didn’t want to lose this one too. Mrs Elm could see her distress.

‘Listen. I am part of the library. But this whole library is part of you. Do you understand? You don’t exist because of the library; this library exists because of you. Remember what Hugo said? He told you that this is the simplest way your brain translates the strange and multifarious reality of the universe. So, this is just your brain translating something. Something significant and dangerous.’

‘I gathered that.’

‘But one thing is clear: you didn’t want that life.’

‘It was the perfect life.’

‘Did you feel that? All the time?’

‘Yes. I mean . . . I wanted to. I mean, I loved Molly. I might have loved Ash. But I suppose, maybe . . . it wasn’t my life. I hadn’t made it by myself. I had walked into this other version of me. I was carbon-copied into the perfect life. But it wasn’t me.’

00:00:15

‘I don’t want to die,’ said Nora, her voice suddenly raised but also fragile. She was shaking from her very core. ‘I don’t want to die.’

Mrs Elm