Page 212 - The Midnight Library

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‘Silly Mummy!’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m silly.’
‘I’m really scared.’
She said this quietly, matter-of-fact. And it was then that Nora looked at
her. Really, properly looked at her. e girl seemed wholly alien and wholly

familiar all at once. Nora felt a swell of somet hing inside her, somet hing
powerful and worr ying.
e girl was staring at her in a way no one had stared at her before. It was
scar y, the emotion. She had Nora’s mouth. And that slightly lost look that

people had sometimes attributed to her. She was beautiful and she was hers
– or kind of hers – and she felt a swell of irrational love, a surge of it, and
knew – if the librar y wasn’t coming for her right now (and it wasn’t) – that
she had to get away.

‘Mummy, will you hold my hand . . .?’
‘I . . .’
e girl put her hand in Nora’s. It felt so small and warm and it made her
feel sad, the way it relaxed into her, as natural as a pearl in a shell. She pulled

Nora towards the adjacent room – the girl’s bedroom. Nora closed the door
nearly-shut behind her and tried to check the time on her watch, but in this
life it was a classic-looking analogue watch with no light display so it took a
second or two for her eyes to adjust. She double-checked the time on her

phone as well. It was 2:32 a.m. So, dep ending when she had gone to bed in
this life, this version of her body hadn’t had much sleep. It certainly felt like
it hadn’t.
‘What happens when you die, Mummy?’

It wasn’t totally dark in the room. ere was a sliver of light coming in
from the hallway and there was a nearby street lamp that meant a thin glow
filtered through the dog-patterned curtains. She could see the squat
rectangle that was Nora’s bed. She could see the silhouette of a cuddly toy

elephant on the floor. ere were other toys too. It was a happily cluttered
room.
Her eyes shone at Nora.
‘I don’t know,’ Nora said. ‘I don’t think anyone knows for sure.’

She frowned. is didn’t satisfy her. is didn’t satisfy her one bit.
‘Listen,’ Nora said. ‘ ere is a chance that just before you die, you’ll get a
chance to live again. You can have things you didn’t have before. You can