Page 112 - The Midnight Library
P. 112
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System Error
She arrived back in the Midnight Librar y.
But this time she was a little away from the bookshelves. is was the
loosely defined office area she had glimpsed earlier, in one of the broader
corridors. e desk was covered with administrative trays barely containing
scattered piles of papers and boxes, and the computer.
e computer was a really old-fashioned-looking, cream-coloured boxy
one on the desk by the papers. e kind that Mrs Elm would once have had
in her school librar y. She was at the keyboard now, typing with urgency,
staring at the monitor as Nora stood behind her.
e lights above – the same bare light bulbs hanging down from wires –
were flickering wildly.
‘My dad was alive because of me. But he’d also had an affair, and my mum
died earlier, and I got on with my brother because I had never let him down,
but he was still the same brother, really, and he was only really okay with me
in that life because I was helping him make money and . . . and . . . it wasn’t
the Olympic dream I imagined. It was the same me. And somet hing had
happened in Portugal. I’d probably tried to kill myself or something . . . Are
there any other lives at all or is it just the furnishings that change?’
But Mrs Elm wasn’t listening. Nora noticed something on the desk. An
old plastic orange fountain pen. e exact same kind that Nora had once
owned at school.
‘Hello? Mrs Elm, can you hear me? ’
Something was wrong.
e librarian’s face was tight with worr y. She read from the screen, to
herself. ‘System error.’
