The Midnight Library(14)

So, in effect, she swapped her best friend for a cat.

In her actual life, she had never fallen out with Izzy. Nothing that dramatic. But after Izzy had gone to Australia, things had faded between them until their friendship became just a vapour trail of sporadic Facebook and Instagram likes and emoji-filled birthday messages.

She looked back through the text conversations between her and Izzy and realised that even though there was still ten thousand miles between them, they had a much better relationship in this version of things.

When she returned to the pub, carrying the sign this time, Dan was nowhere to be seen so she locked the back door and waited a while, in the pub hallway, working out where the stairs were, and unsure if she actually wanted to follow her tipsy sort-of husband up there.

She found the stairs at the rear of the building, through a door that said Staff Only. As she stepped on the beige raffia carpet heading towards the stairs, just after a framed poster of Things You Learn in the Dark – one of their favourite Ryan Bailey movies which they had watched together at the Odeon in Bedford – she noted a smaller picture on a sweet little window sill.

It was their wedding photo. Black and white, reportage-style. Walking out of a church into a shower of confetti. It was difficult to see their faces properly but they were both laughing and it was a shared laugh, and they seemed – as far as a photograph can tell you anything – to be in love. She remembered her mum talking about Dan. (‘He’s a good one. You’re so lucky. Keep hold of him.’)

She saw her brother Joe too, shaven-headed and looking genuinely happy, champagne glass in hand and his short-lived, disastrous investment-banker boyfriend, Lewis, by his side. Izzy was there, and Ravi too, looking more like an accountant than a drummer, standing next to a bespectacled woman she’d never seen before.

While Dan was in the toilet Nora located the bedroom. Although they evidently had money worries – the nervous appointment with the bank confirmed that – the room was expensively furnished. Smart window blinds. A wide, comfortable-looking bed. The duvet crisp and clean and white.

There were books either side of the bed. In her actual life she hadn’t had a book by her bed for at least six months. She hadn’t read anything for six months. Maybe in this life she had a better concentration span.

She picked up one of the books, Meditation for Beginners. Underneath it was a copy of a biography of her favourite philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. There were books on Dan’s bedside table too. The last book she remembered him reading had been a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec – Tiny Giant – but in this life he was reading a business book called Zero to Hero: Harnessing Success in Work, Play and Life and the latest edition of The Good Pub Guide.

She felt different in her body. A little healthier, a little stronger, but tense. She patted her stomach and realised that in this life she worked out a bit more. Her hair felt different too. She had a heavy fringe, and – feeling it – she could tell her hair was longer at the back. Her mind felt a little woozy. She must have had at least a couple of glasses of wine.

A moment later she heard the toilet flush. Then she heard gargling. It seemed to be a bit noisier than necessary.

‘Are you all right?’ Dan asked, when he came into the bedroom. His voice, she realised, didn’t sound like she remembered. It sounded emptier. A bit colder. Maybe it was tiredness. Maybe it was stress. Maybe it was beer. Maybe it was marriage.

Maybe it was something else.

It was hard to remember, exactly, what he had sounded like before. What he had been like, precisely. But that was the nature of memory. At university she had done an essay drily titled ‘The Principles of Hobbesian Memory and Imagination’. Thomas Hobbes had viewed memory and imagination as pretty much the same thing, and since discovering that she had never entirely trusted her memories.

Outside the window the streetlamp’s yellow glow illuminated the desolate village road.

‘Nora? You’re acting strange. Why are you just standing in the middle of the room? Are you getting ready for bed or are you doing some kind of standing meditation?’

He laughed. He thought he was funny.

He went over to the window and pulled the curtains. Then he took off his jeans and put them on the back of a chair. She stared at him and tried to feel the attraction she had once felt so deeply. It seemed to require a Herculean effort. She hadn’t expected this.

Everyone’s lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways.

He collapsed heavily on the bed, a whale into the ocean. Picked up Zero to Hero. Tried to focus. Put it down. Picked up a laptop by the bed, shoved an earphone into his ear. Maybe he was going to listen to a podcast.

‘I’m just thinking about something.’

She began to feel faint. As if she was only half there. She remembered Mrs Elm talking about how disappointment in a life would bring her back to the library. It would feel, she realised, altogether too strange to climb into the same bed with a man she hadn’t seen for two years.

She noticed the time on the digital alarm clock. 12:23.

Still with the earphone in his ear, he looked at her again. ‘Right, listen, if you don’t want to make babies tonight you can just say, you know?’

‘What?’

‘I mean, I know we’ll have to wait another month until you are ovulating again . . .’

‘We’re trying for a baby? I want a baby?’