Page 207 - The Midnight Library

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‘I’ve been through my regrets.’

‘No. Not all of them.’
‘Well, not ever y single minor one. No, obviously.’
‘You need to look at e Book of Regrets again.’
‘How can I do that in the pitch dark?’

‘Because you already know the whole book. Because it’s inside you. Just as
. . . just as I am.’
She remembered Dylan telling her he had seen Mrs Elm near the care
home. She thought about telling her this but decided against it. ‘Right.’

‘We only know what we perceive. Ever ything we experience is ultimately
just our perception of it. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you
see.”’
‘You know oreau?’

‘Of course. If you do.’
‘ e thing is, I don’t know what I regret any more.’
‘Okay, well, let’s see. You say that I am just a perception. en why did you
perceive me? Why am I – Mrs Elm – the person you see? ’

‘I don’t know. Because you were someone I trusted. You were kind to me.’
‘Kindness is a strong force.’
‘And rare.’
‘You might be looking in the wrong places.’

‘Maybe.’
e dark was punctured by the slow rising glow of the light bulbs all
around the librar y.
‘So where else in your root life have you felt that? Kindness?’

Nora remembered the night Ash knocked on her door. Maybe liing a
dead cat off the road and carr ying it in the rain around to her flat’s tiny back
garden and then bur ying it on her behalf because she was sobbing
drunkenly with grief wasn’t the most archet ypally romantic thing in the

world. But it certainly qualified as kind, to take forty minutes out of your
run and help someone in need while only accepting a glass of water in
return.
She hadn’t really been able to appreciate that kindness at the time. Her

grief and despair had been too strong. But now she thought about it, it had
really been quite remarkable.