Page 61 - The Midnight Library

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song inspired by her new life with Dan. And he had listened to it with a

shruggish indifference that had hurt at the time and which she would have
addressed if it hadn’t been his birthday.
‘Yeah,’ he’d said. ‘It’s okay.’
She wondered why that memor y had stayed buried, only to rise up now,

like the great white shark on his fading T-shirt.
ere were other things coming back to her now too. His over-the-top
reaction when she’d once told him about a customer – Ash, the surgeon and
amateur guitar player who came into String eor y for the occasional

songbook – casually asking Nora if she wanted to go for a coffee some time.
(‘Of course I said no. Stop shouting.’)
Worse, though, was when an A&R man for a major label (or rather, a
boutique former indie label with Universal behind them) wanted to sign e

Labyrinths. Dan had told her that it was unlikely they’d sur vive as a couple.
He’d also heard a horror stor y from one of his university friends who’d been
in a band that signed to a label and then the label ripped them off and they’d
all become unemployed alcoholics or something.

‘I could take you with me,’ she said. ‘I’d get it in the contract. We could go
ever ywhere together.’
‘Sorr y, Nora. But that’s your dream. It’s not mine.’
Which hurt even more with hindsight, knowing how much – before the

wedding – she’d tried to make his dream of a pub in the Oxfordshire
countr yside become her dream as well.
Dan had always said his concern was for Nora: she’d been having panic
attacks while she was in the band, especially when she got anywhere near a

stage. But the concern had been at least a little manipulative, now she
thought about it.
‘I thought,’ he was saying now, ‘that you were starting to trust me again.’
‘ Trust you? Dan, why wouldn’t I trust you?’

‘You know why.’
‘Of course I know why,’ she lied. ‘I just want to hear you say it.’
‘Well, since the stuff with Erin.’
She stared at him like he was a Rorschach inkblot in which she saw no

clear image.
‘Erin? e one I was speaking to tonight?’
‘Am I going to be beaten up for ever about one stupid drunken moment?’