Мэтт Хейг - The Midnight Library

‘Oh, oh that’s a shame,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not real, though. It was just a dream.’

‘It was about bears.’

Nora closed the door behind her. ‘Bears?’

‘Because of that story.’

‘Right. Yes. The story. Come on, get back in your bed . . .’ This sounded harsh, she realised. ‘Sweetheart,’ she added, wondering what she – her daughter in this universe – was called. ‘There are no bears here.’

‘Only teddy bears.’

‘Yes, only—’

The girl became a little more awake. Her eyes brightened. She saw her mother, so for a second Nora felt like that. Like her mother. She felt the strangeness of being connected to the world through someone else. ‘Mummy, what were you doing?’

She was speaking loudly. She was deeply serious in the way that only four-year-olds (she couldn’t have been much older) could be.

‘Ssh,’ Nora said. She really needed to know the girl’s name. Names had power. If you didn’t know your own daughter’s name, you had no control whatsoever. ‘Listen,’ Nora whispered, ‘I’m just going to go downstairs and do something. You go back to bed.’

‘But the bears.’

‘There aren’t any bears.’

‘There are in my dreams.’

Nora remembered the polar bear speeding towards her in the fog. Remembered that fear. That desire, in that sudden moment, to live. ‘There won’t be this time. I promise.’

‘Mummy, why are you speaking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like that.’

‘Whispering?’

‘No.’

Nora had no idea what the girl thought she was speaking like. What the gap was, between her now and her, the mother. Did motherhood affect the way you spoke?

‘Like you are scared,’ the girl clarified.

‘I’m not scared.’

‘I want someone to hold my hand.’

‘What?’

‘I want someone to hold my hand.’

‘Right.’

‘Silly Mummy!’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m silly.’

‘I’m really scared.’

She said this quietly, matter-of-fact. And it was then that Nora looked at her. Really, properly looked at her. The girl seemed wholly alien and wholly familiar all at once. Nora felt a swell of something inside her, something powerful and worrying.

The girl was staring at her in a way no one had stared at her before. It was scary, the emotion. She had Nora’s mouth. And that slightly lost look that people had sometimes attributed to her. She was beautiful and she was hers – or kind of hers – and she felt a swell of irrational love, a surge of it, and knew – if the library wasn’t coming for her right now (and it wasn’t) – that she had to get away.

‘Mummy, will you hold my hand . . .?’

‘I . . .’

The girl put her hand in Nora’s. It felt so small and warm and it made her feel sad, the way it relaxed into her, as natural as a pearl in a shell. She pulled Nora towards the adjacent room – the girl’s bedroom. Nora closed the door nearly-shut behind her and tried to check the time on her watch, but in this life it was a classic-looking analogue watch with no light display so it took a second or two for her eyes to adjust. She double-checked the time on her phone as well. It was 2:32 a.m. So, depending when she had gone to bed in this life, this version of her body hadn’t had much sleep. It certainly felt like it hadn’t.

‘What happens when you die, Mummy?’

It wasn’t totally dark in the room. There was a sliver of light coming in from the hallway and there was a nearby streetlamp that meant a thin glow filtered through the dog-patterned curtains. She could see the squat rectangle that was Nora’s bed. She could see the silhouette of a cuddly toy elephant on the floor. There were other toys too. It was a happily cluttered room.

Her eyes shone at Nora.

‘I don’t know,’ Nora said. ‘I don’t think anyone knows for sure.’

She frowned. This didn’t satisfy her. This didn’t satisfy her one bit.

‘Listen,’ Nora said. ‘There is a chance that just before you die, you’ll get a chance to live again. You can have things you didn’t have before. You can choose the life you want.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘But you don’t have to have this worry for a very long time. You are going to have a life full of exciting adventures. There will be so many happy things.’

‘Like camping!’

A burst of warmth radiated through Nora as she smiled at this sweet girl. ‘Yes. Like camping!’

‘I love it when we go camping!’

Nora’s smile was still there but she felt tears behind her eyes. This seemed a good life. A family of her own. A daughter to go on camping holidays with.

‘Listen,’ she said, as she realised she wasn’t going to be able to escape the bedroom any time soon. ‘When you have worries about things you don’t know about, like the future, it’s a very good idea to remind yourself of things you do know.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the girl said, snuggled under her duvet as Nora sat on the floor beside her.

‘Well, it’s like a game.’

‘I like games.’

‘Shall we play a game?’

‘Yes,’ smiled her daughter. ‘Let’s.’

The Game

‘I ask you something we already know and you say the answer. So, if I ask “What is Mummy’s name?”, you would say “Nora”. Get it?’

‘I think so.’

‘So, what is your name?’

‘Molly.’

‘Okay, what is Daddy’s name?’

‘Daddy!’

‘But what is his actual name?’

‘Ash!’

Well. That was a really successful coffee date .

‘And where do we live?’

‘Cambridge!’

Cambridge. It kind of made sense. Nora had always liked Cambridge, and it was only thirty miles from Bedford. Ash must have liked it too. And it was still commutable distance from London, if he still worked there. Briefly, after getting her First from Bristol, she had applied to do an MPhil in Philosophy and had been offered a place at Caius College.

‘What part of Cambridge? Can you remember? What is our street called?’

‘We live on . . . Bol . . . Bolton Road.’

‘Well done! And do you have any brothers or sisters!’

‘No!’

‘And do Mummy and Daddy like each other?’

Molly laughed a little at that. ‘Yes!’

‘Do we ever shout?’

The laugh became cheeky. ‘Sometimes! Especially Mummy!’

‘Sorry!’

‘You only shout when you are really, really, really tired and you say sorry so it is okay. Everything is okay if you say sorry. That’s what you say.’

‘Does Mummy go out to work?’

‘Yes. Sometimes.’

‘Do I still work at the shop where I met Daddy?’

‘No.’

‘What does Mummy do when she goes out to work?’

‘Teaches people!’

‘How does she – how do I teach people? What do I teach?’

‘Fill-o . . . fill-o-wosso-fee . . .’

‘Philosophy?’

‘That’s what I said!’

‘And where do I teach that? At a university?’

‘Yes!’

‘Which university?’ Then she remembered where they lived. ‘At Cambridge University?’

‘That’s it!’

She tried to fill in the gaps. Maybe in this life she had re-applied to do a Master’s, and on successfully completing that she had got into teaching there.

Either way, if she was going to bluff it in this life, she was probably going to have to read some more philosophy. But then Molly said: ‘But you are stopping now.’

‘Stopping? Why am I stopping?’

‘To do books!’

‘Books for you?’

‘No, silly. To do a grown-up book.’

‘I’m writing a book?’

‘Yes! I just said.’

‘I know. I’m just trying to get you to say some things twice. Because it is doubly nice. And it makes bears even less scary. Okay?’