Page 240 - The Midnight Library

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Leo the difference between major and minor seventh chords and thought he

was a great boy, eager to learn.
Doreen had seen Leo was ‘getting caught up in the wrong set’, but when he
got into music he started doing well in other things too. And suddenly he
wasn’t getting into trouble with teachers any more, and he’d play ever ything

from Chopin through Scott Joplin to Frank Ocean and John Legend and Rex
Orange County with the same care and commitment.
Something Mrs Elm had said on an early visit to the Midnight Librar y
came to her.

Ever y life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But
ever y time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An
irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations . . .
In this timeline right now, the one where she had studied a Master’s at

Cambridge, and married Ash and had a baby, she hadn’t been in String
eor y on the day four years ago when Doreen and Leo came by. In this
timeline, Doreen never found a music teacher who was cheap enough, and
so Leo never persisted with music for long enough to realise he had a talent.

He never sat there, side-by-side with Nora on a Tuesday evening, pursuing a
passion that he extended at home, producing his own tunes.
Nora felt herself weaken. Not just tingles and fuzziness but somet hing
stronger, a sense of plunging into nothingness, accompanied by a brief

darkening of her vision. A feeling of another Nora right there in the wings,
ready to pick up where this one le off. Her brain ready to fill in the gaps
and have a perfectly legitimate reason to be on a day trip to Bedford, and to
fill in ever y absence as if she was here the whole time.

Worried she knew what it meant, she turned away from Leo and his
friend as they were escorted away to the police car, the eyes of the whole of
Bedford high street upon them, and she started to quicken her pace towards
the car park.

is is a good life . . . is is a good life . . . is is a good life . . .