Page 60 - The Midnight Library

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pretty much the same thing, and since discovering that she had never

entirely trusted her memories.
Outside the window the streetlamp’s yellow glow illuminated the desolate
village road.
‘Nora? You’re acting strange. Why are you just standing in the middle of

the room? Are you getting ready for bed or are you doing some kind of
standing meditation?’
He laughed. He thought he was funny.
He went over to the window and pulled the curtains. en he took off his

jeans and put them on the back of a chair. She stared at him and tried to feel
the attraction she had once felt so deeply. It seemed to require a Herculean
effort. She hadn’t expected this.
Ever yone’s lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways.

He collapsed heavily on the bed, a whale into the ocean. Picked up Zero to
Hero. Tried to focus. Put it down. Picked up a laptop by the bed, shoved an
earphone into his ear. Maybe he was going to listen to a podcast.
‘I’m just thinking about something.’

She began to feel faint. As if she was only half there. She remembered Mrs
Elm talking about how disappointment in a life would bring her back to the
librar y. It would feel, she realised, altogether too strange to climb into the
same bed with a man she hadn’t seen for two years.

She noticed the time on the digital alarm clock. 12:23.
Still with the earphone in his ear, he looked at her again. ‘Right, listen, if
you don’t want to make babies tonight you can just say, you know?’
‘What?’

‘I mean, I know we’ll have to wait another month until you are ovulating
again . . .’
‘We’re tr ying for a baby? I want a baby?’
‘Nora, what’s with you? Why are you strange today?’

She took off her shoes. ‘I’m not.’
A memor y came to her, related to the Jaws T-shirt.
A tune, actually. ‘Beautiful Sky’.
e day she had bought Dan the Jaws T-shirt had been the day she had

played him a song she had written for e Labyrinths. ‘Beautiful Sky’. It was,
she was convinced, the best song she had ever written. And – more than that
– it was a happy song to reflect her optimism at that point in her life. It was a