Page 186 - The Midnight Library

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A Gentle Life

It turned out that this particular existence was quite easy to slip into.

Sleep was good in this life, and she didn’t wake up until the alarm went off
at a quarter to eight. She drove to work in a tatty old Hyundai that smelled
of dogs and biscuits and was decorated with crumbs, passing the hospital
and the sports centre, and pulling up in the small car park outside the
modern, grey-bricked, single-storey rescue centre.

She spent the morning feeding and walking the dogs. e reason it was
quite easy to blend into this life was at least partly because she had been
greeted by an affable, down-to-earth woman with brown curly hair and a

Yorkshire accent. e woman, Pauline, said Nora was to start work in the
dog shelter, rather than the cat shelter, and so Nora had a legitimate excuse
to ask what to do and look confused. Also, the issue of knowing people’s
names was solved by the fact that all the workers had name badges.
Nora had walked a bullmastiff, a new arrival, around the field behind the

shelter. Pauline told her that the bullmastiff had been horribly treated by its
owner. She pointed out a few small round scars.
‘Cigarette burns.’

Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only
worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them. e
bullmastiff was called Sally. She was scared of ever ything. Her shadow.
Bushes. Other dogs. Nora’s legs. Grass. Air. ough she clearly took a liking
to Nora, and even succumbed to a (ver y quick) tummy rub.

Later, Nora helped clean out some of the little dog huts. She imagined
they called them huts because it sounded better than cages, which was really
a more apt name for them. ere was a three-legged Alsatian called Diesel,