Page 59 - The Midnight Library

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She saw her brother Joe too, shaven-headed and looking genuinely happy,

champagne glass in hand and his short-lived, disastrous investment-banker
boyfriend, Lewis, by his side. Izzy was there, and Ravi too, looking more like
an accountant than a drummer, standing next to a bespectacled woman she’d
never seen before.

While Dan was in the toilet Nora located the bedroom. Although they
evidently had money worries – the ner vous appointment with the bank
confirmed that – the room was expensively furnished. Smart window blinds.
A wide, comfortable-looking bed. e duvet crisp and clean and white.

ere were books either side of the bed. In her actual life she hadn’t had a
book by her bed for at least six months. She hadn’t read anything for six
months. Maybe in this life she had a better concentration span.
She picked up one of the books, Meditation for Beginners. Underneath it

was a copy of a biography of her favourite philosopher, Henr y David
oreau. ere were books on Dan’s bedside table too. e last book she
remembered him reading had been a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec – Tiny
Giant – but in this life he was reading a business book called Zero to Hero:

Harnessing Success in Work, Play and Life and the latest edition of e Good
Pub Guide.
She felt different in her body. A little healthier, a little stronger, but tense.
She patted her stomach and realised that in this life she worked out a bit

more. Her hair felt different too. She had a heavy fringe, and – feeling it –
she could tell her hair was longer at the back. Her mind felt a little woozy.
She must have had at least a couple of glasses of wine.
A moment later she heard the toilet flush. en she heard gargling. It

seemed to be a bit noisier than necessar y.
‘Are you all right?’ Dan asked, when he came into the bedroom. His voice,
she realised, didn’t sound like she remembered. It sounded emptier. A bit
colder. Maybe it was tiredness. Maybe it was stress. Maybe it was beer.

Maybe it was marriage.
Maybe it was something else.
It was hard to remember, exactly, what he had sounded like before. What
he had been like, precisely. But that was the nature of memor y. At university

she had done an essay drily titled ‘ e Principles of Hobbesian Memor y and
Imagination’. omas Hobbes had viewed memor y and imagination as