Мэтт Хейг: The Midnight Library

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. I never lived there. It was somewhere else. And someone else. I’m sorry.’

They resumed their conversation, as Nora thought about Mr Banerjee’s front garden full of irises and foxgloves.

‘Can I help you?’

She turned to look at the receptionist. A mild-mannered, red-haired man with glasses and blotched skin and a gentle Scottish accent.

She told him who she was and that she had phoned earlier.

He was a little confused at first.

‘And you say you left a message?’

He hummed a quiet tune as he searched for her email.

‘Yes, but on the phone. I was trying for ages to get through and I couldn’t so I eventually left a message. I emailed as well.’

‘Ah, right, I see. Well, I’m sorry about that. Are you here to see a family member?’

‘No,’ Nora explained. ‘I am not family. I am just someone who used to know her. She’d know me, though. Her name is Mrs Elm.’ Nora tried to remember the full name. ‘Sorry. It’s Louise Elm. If you told her my name, Nora. Nora Seed. She used to be my . . . She was the school librarian, at Hazeldene. I just thought she might like some company.’

The man stopped looking at his computer and stared up at Nora with barely suppressed surprise. At first Nora thought that she had got it wrong. Or Dylan had got it wrong, that evening at La Cantina. Or maybe the Mrs Elm in that life had experienced a different fate in this life. Though Nora didn’t quite know how her own decision to work in an animal shelter would have led to a different outcome for Mrs Elm in this life. But that made no sense. As in neither life had she been in touch with the librarian since school.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nora asked the receptionist.

‘I’m ever so sorry to tell you this, but Louise Elm is no longer here.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She . . . actually, she died three weeks ago.’

At first she thought it must be an admin error. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid I am very sure.’

‘Oh,’ said Nora. She didn’t really know what to say, or to feel. She looked down at her tote bag that had sat beside her in the car. A bag containing the chess set she had brought to play a game with her, and to keep her company. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t . . . You see, I haven’t seen her for years. Years and years. But I heard from someone who said that she was here . . .’

‘So sorry,’ the receptionist said.

‘No. No worries. I just wanted to thank her. For being so kind to me.’

‘She died very peacefully,’ he said, ‘literally in her sleep.’

And Nora smiled and retreated politely away. ‘That’s good. Thank you. Thank you for looking after her. I’ll just go now. Bye . . .’

An Incident With the Police

She stepped back out onto Shakespeare Road with her bag and her chess set and she really didn’t know what to do. There were tingles through her body. Not quite pins and needles. More that strange, fuzzy static feeling she had felt before when she was nearing the end of a particular existence.

Trying to ignore the feeling in her body, she headed in the vague direction of the car park. She passed her old garden flat at 33A Bancroft Avenue. A man she had never seen before was taking a box of recycling out. She thought of the lovely house in Cambridge she now had and couldn’t help but compare it to this shabby flat on a litter-strewn street. The tingles subsided a little. She passed Mr Banerjee’s house, or what had been Mr Banerjee’s house, and saw the only owned house on the street that hadn’t been divided into flats, though now it looked very different. The small front lawn was overgrown, and there was no sign of the clematis or busy lizzies in pots that Nora had watered for him last summer when he’d been recovering from his hip surgery.

On the pavement she noticed a couple of crumpled lager cans.

She saw a woman with a blonde bob and tanned skin walking towards her on the pavement with two small children in a double pushchair. She looked exhausted. It was the woman she had spoken to in the newsagent’s the day she had decided to die. The one who had seemed happy and relaxed. Kerry-Anne. She hadn’t noticed Nora because one child was wailing and she was trying to pacify the distressed, red-cheeked boy by waving a plastic dinosaur in front of him.

Me and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y’know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictures . . .

Then Kerry-Anne looked up and saw Nora.

‘I know you, don’t I? Is it Nora?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hi Nora.’

‘Hi Kerry-Anne.’

‘You remember my name? Oh wow. I was in awe of you in school. You seemed to have it all. Did you ever make the Olympics?’

‘Yes, actually. Kind of. One me did. But it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. But then, what is? Right?’

Kerry-Anne seemed momentarily confused. And then her son threw the dinosaur onto the pavement and it landed next to one of the crumpled cans. ‘Right.’

Nora picked up the dinosaur – a stegosaurus, on close inspection – and handed it to Kerry-Anne, who smiled her gratitude and headed into the house that should have belonged to Mr Banerjee, just as the boy descended into a full tantrum.

‘Bye,’ said Nora.

‘Yeah. Bye.’

And Nora wondered what the difference had been. What had forced Mr Banerjee to go to the care home he’d been determined not to go to? She was the only difference between the two Mr Banerjees but what was that difference? What had she done? Set up an online shop? Picked up his prescription a few times?

Never underestimate the big importance of small things , Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that .

She stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom – equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.