Page 238 - The Midnight Library

www.urdukutabkhanapk.blogspot.com
www.urdukutabkhanapk.blogspot.com

en Kerr y-Anne looked up and saw Nora.

‘I know you, don’t I? Is it Nora?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hi Nora.’
‘Hi Kerr y-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?’

Kerr y-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 Kerr y-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.
en someone appeared at her own window. A woman who wasn’t her,

holding a cat that wasn’t Voltaire.
is was her hope, anyway, even as she began to feel faint and fuzzy again.
She headed into town. Walked down the high street .