Page 52 - The Midnight Library

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

She walked up to the pub and peeked through the window. It seemed

empty inside, but the lights were still on. at group must have been the last
to leave.
e pub looked ver y inviting. Warm and characterful. Small tables and
timber beams and a wagon wheel attached to a wall. A rich red carpet and a

wood-panelled bar full of an impressive array of beer pumps.
She stepped away from the window and saw a sign just beyond the pub,
past where the pavement became grass.
Quickly, she trotted over and read what it said.

LIT TLEWORTH
Welcomes Careful Drivers

en she noticed in the top centre of the sign a little coat of arms around

which orbited the words Oxfordshire County Council.
‘We did it,’ she whispered into the countr y air. ‘We actually did it.’
is was the dream Dan had first mentioned to her while walking by the
Seine in Paris, eating macarons they had bought on the Boulevard Saint-

Michel.
A dream not of Paris but of rural England, where they would live toget her.
A pub in the Oxfordshire countr yside.
When Nora’s mum’s cancer aggressively returned, reaching her lymph

nodes and rapidly colonising her body, that dream was put on hold and Dan
moved with her from London back to Bedford. Her mum had known of
their engagement and had planned to stay alive long enough for the
wedding. She had died four months too soon.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the life. Maybe this was first-time lucky,
or second-time lucky.
She allowed herself an apprehensive smile.

She walked back along the path and crunched over the gravel, heading

towards the side door the drunken, whisker y man in the wax jacket had
recently departed from. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.
It was warm.
And quiet.