Page 245 - The Midnight Library

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Nowhere to Land

‘NO!’

Unmistakably, it had happened.
She was back in the Midnight Librar y.
Mrs Elm was at the computer. e lights wobbled and shook and flickered
overhead in fast arrhythmic blinks. ‘Nora, stop. Calm down. Be a good girl. I
need to sort this out.’

Dust fell in thin wisps from the ceiling, from cracks fissuring and
spreading like spider webs woven at unnatural speed. ere was the sound
of sudden, active destruction which, in her sad fur y, Nora found herself

managing to ignore.
‘You’re not Mrs Elm. Mrs Elm is dead . . . Am I dead?’
‘We’ve been through this. But now you mention it, maybe you’re about to
be . . .’
‘Why aren’t I still there? Why aren’t I there? I could sense it was

happening but I didn’t want it to. You said that if I found a life I wanted to
live in – that I really wanted to live in – then I’d stay there. You said I’d forget
about this stupid place. You said I could find the life I wanted. at was the

life I wanted. at was the life!’
Moments ago she had been in the garden with Ash and Nora and Plato, a
garden humming with life and love, and now she was here.
‘ Take me back . . .’
‘You know it doesn’t work like that.’

‘Well, take me to the closest variation. Give me the closest possible thing
to that life. Please, Mrs Elm, it must be possible. ere must be a life where I
went for the coffee with Ash and where we had Molly and Plato, but I . . . I