Page 95 - The Midnight Library

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‘Yeah. Well, listen, I need to talk to you at some point about your father’s

birthday.’
‘What?’
‘I know he’d love it if you could come up and see us.’
Her whole body went cold and weak, as if she had seen a ghost.

She remembered her father’s funeral, hugging her brother as they cried on
each other’s shoulders.
‘My dad?’
My dad. My dead dad.

‘He’s just come in from the garden. Do you want a word with him?’
is was so remarkable, so world-shattering, it was totally out of synch
with her tone of voice. She said it casually, almost as if it was nothing at all.
‘What?’

‘Do you want a word with Dad?’
It took her a moment. She felt suddenly off-balance.
‘I—’
She could hardly speak. Or breathe. She didn’t know what to say.

Ever ything felt unreal. It was like time travel. As though she had fallen
through two decades.
It was too late to respond because the next thing she heard was Nadia
saying: ‘Here he is . . .’

Nora nearly hung up the phone. Maybe she should have. But she didn’t.
Now she knew it was a possibility, she needed to hear his voice again.
His breath first.
en: ‘Hi Nora, how are you?’

Just that. Casual, non-specific, ever yday. It was him. His voice. His strong
voice that had always been so clipped. But a little thinner, maybe, a little
weaker. A voice fieen years older than it was meant to be.
‘Dad,’ she said. Her voice was a stunned whisper. ‘It’s you.’

‘You all right, Nora? Is this a bad line? Do you want to FaceTime? ’
FaceTime. To see his face. No. at would be too much. is was already
too much. Just the idea that there was a version of her dad alive at a time
aer FaceTime was invented. Her dad belonged in a world of landlines.

When he died, he was only just warming to radical concepts like emails and
text messages.