Page 54 - The Midnight Library

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He looked at her, blankly. ‘Was just turning the chiller units off. Got to

clean the lines tomorrow. We’ve le it a fortnight.’
Nora had no idea what he was talking about. She stroked the cat. ‘Right.
Yes. Of course. e lines.’
Her husband – for in this life, that was who he was – looked around at all

the tables and upside-down chairs. He was wearing a faded Jaws T-shirt.
‘Have Blake and Sophie gone home? ’
Nora hesitated. She sensed he was talking about people who worked for
them. e young man in the bagg y rugby top was presumably Blake. ere

didn’t seem to be anyone else around.
‘Yes,’ she said, tr ying to sound natural despite the fundamental bizarreness
of the circumstances. ‘I think they have. ey were pretty on top of things.’
‘Cool.’

She remembered buying him the Jaws T-shirt on his twenty-sixth
birthday. Ten years previously.
‘ e answers tonight were somet hing else. One of the teams – the one
Pete and Jolie were on – thought Maradona painted the Sistine ceiling.’

Nora nodded and stroked Volts Number Two. As if she had any idea who
on earth Pete and Jolie were.
‘ To be fair, it was a tricky one tonight. Might take them from another
website next time. I mean, who actually knows the name of the highest

mountain in the Kara-whatsit range?’
‘Karakoram?’ Nora asked. ‘ at would be K2.’
‘Well, obviously you know,’ he said, a little too abruptly. A little too tipsily.
‘It’s the kind of thing you would know. Because while most people were into

rock music you were into actual rocks and stuff.’
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I was literally in a band.’
A band, she remembered then, that Dan had hated her being in.
He laughed. She recognised the laugh, but didn’t entirely like it. She had

forgotten how oen during their relationship Dan’s humour hinged on other
people, specifically Nora. When they’d been together, she had tried not to
dwell on this aspect of his personality. He’d had so many other aspects – he
had been so lovely to her mum when she was ill, and he could talk at ease

about anything, he was so full of dreams about the future, he was attractive
and easy to be around, and he was passionate about art and always stopped
to chat to the homeless. He cared about the world. A person was like a city.