by Matt Haig
‘That was years ago, sis. Lot of water under the bridge since then.’
‘You wanted to be a rock star, though.’
‘He still is a rock star,’ said Ewan, laughing. ‘But he’s all mine.’
‘I always feel like I let you down, Joe.’
‘Well, don’t . . . But I feel like I let you down too. Because I was such an idiot . . . I was horrid to you for a little while.’
These words felt like a tonic she had been waiting years to hear. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she managed.
‘Before I was with Ewan, I was so dumb about mental health. I thought panic attacks were a big nothing . . . You know, mind over matter. Man up, sis. But then when Ewan started having them, I understood how real they are.’
‘It wasn’t just the panic attacks. It just felt wrong. I don’t know . . . For what it’s worth, I think you’re happier in this life than the one where you’re’ - she nearly said dead - ‘in the band.’
Her brother smiled and looked at Ewan. She doubted he believed it, but Nora had to accept that – as she now knew only too well – some truths were just impossible to see.
Tricycle
As the weeks went by, Nora began to feel something remarkable start to happen.
She began to remember aspects of her life that she had never actually lived.
For instance, one day someone she had never known in her root life – a friend she had apparently known while studying and teaching at the university – phoned her about meeting for lunch. And as the caller ‘Lara’ came up on the phone, a name came to her – ‘Lara Bryan’ – and she pictured her completely, and somehow knew her partner was called Mo, and that they had a baby called Aldous. And then she met her and had all these things confirmed.
This sort-of déjà-vu happened increasingly. Yes, of course there were the occasional slip-ups she made – like ‘forgetting’ Ash had asthma (which he tried to keep under control via running):
‘How long have you had it?’
‘Since I was seven.’
‘Oh yes, of course. I thought you’d said eczema.’
‘Nora, are you okay?’
‘Yes. Um, fine. It’s just I had some wine with Lara at lunch and I feel a bit spaced out.’
But slowly, these slip-ups became less frequent. It was as though each day was a piece fitting into a puzzle and, with each piece added, it became easier to know what the absent pieces were going to look like.
Whereas in every other life she had been continually grasping for clues and feeling like she was acting, in this one she increasingly found that the more she relaxed into it, the more things came to her.
Nora also loved spending time with Molly.
The cosy anarchy of her playing in her bedroom, or the delicate bonding that happened at story time, reading the simple magical brilliance of The Tiger Who Came to Tea, or hanging out in the garden.
‘Watch me, Mummy,’ said Molly, as she pedalled away on her tricycle one Saturday morning. ‘Mummy, look! Are you watching?’
‘That’s very good, Molly. Good pedalling.’
‘Mummy, look! Zoomy!’
‘Go, Molly!’
But then the front wheel of the tricycle slipped off the lawn and down into the flowerbed. Molly fell off and knocked her head hard on a small rock. Nora rushed over and picked her up and had a look at her. Molly was clearly hurt, with a scrape on her forehead, the skin grazed and bleeding, but she didn’t want to show it even as her chin wobbled.
‘I’m all right,’ she said slowly, in a voice as fragile as porcelain. ‘I’m all right. I’m all right. I’m all right. I’m all right.’ Each ‘all right’ got progressively closer to tears, then horse-shoed back around to calm again. For all her nocturnal fears about bears, she had a resilience to her that Nora couldn’t help but admire and be inspired by. This little human being had come from her, was in some way a part of her, and if she had hidden strength then maybe Nora did too.
Nora hugged her. ‘It’s all right, baby . . . My brave girl. It’s okay. How does it feel now, darling?’
‘It’s okay. It’s like on holiday.’
‘On holiday?’
‘Yes, Mummy . . .’ she said, a little upset Nora couldn’t remember. ‘The slide.’
‘Oh yes, of course. The slide. Yes. Silly me. Silly Mummy.’
Nora felt something inside her all at once. A kind of fear, as real as the fear she had felt on the Arctic skerry, face to face with the polar bear.
A fear of what she was feeling.
Love.
You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in São Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.
And when she thought of her root life, the fundamental problem with it, the thing that had left her vulnerable, really, was the absence of love. Even her brother hadn’t wanted her in that life. There had been no one, once Volts had died. She had loved no one, and no one had loved her back. She had been empty, her life had been empty, walking around, faking some kind of human normality like a sentient mannequin of despair. Just the bare bones of getting through.
Yet there, right there in that garden in Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall.
And yet she sensed deep down that it would all come to an end, soon. She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn’t be fixed because the flaw was the rightness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn’t earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn’t own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud. She wanted this to be her life. As in her real life. And it wasn’t and she just wished she could forget that fact. She really did.
‘Mummy, are you crying?’
‘No, Molly, no. I’m fine. Mummy’s fine.’
‘You look like you are crying.’
‘Let’s just get you cleaned up . . .’
Later that same day, Molly pieced together a jigsaw of jungle animals, Nora sat on the sofa stroking Plato as his warm, weighty head rested on her lap. She stared at the ornate chess set that was sitting there on the mahogany chest.
A thought rose slowly, and she dismissed it. But then it rose again.
As soon as Ash came home, she told him she wanted to see an old friend from Bedford and wouldn’t be back for a few hours.
No Longer Here
As soon as Nora entered Oak Leaf Residential Care Home, and before she’d even reached the reception, she saw a frail elderly man wearing glasses whom she recognised. He was having a slightly heated conversation with a nurse who looked exasperated. Like a sigh turned into a human.
‘I really would like to go in the garden,’ the old man said.
‘I’m sorry, but the garden is being used today.’
‘I just want to sit on the bench. And read the newspaper.’
‘Maybe if you’d signed up for the gardening activity session—’
‘I don’t want a gardening session. I want to call Dhavak. This was all a mistake.’
Nora had heard her old neighbour talk about his son Dhavak before, when she had dropped off his medication. Apparently his son had been pushing for him to go to a care home, but Mr Banerjee had insisted on holding on to his house. ‘Is there no way I can just—’
He noticed, at this point, that he was being stared at.
‘Mr Banerjee?’
He stared at Nora, confused. ‘Hello? Who are you?’
‘I’m Nora. You know, No
ra Seed.’ Then, feeling too flustered to think, she added: ‘I’m your neighbour. On Bancroft Avenue.’
He shook his head. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake, dear. I haven’t lived there for three years. And I am very sure you were not my neighbour.’
The nurse tilted her head at Mr Banerjee, as if he was a confused puppy. ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten.’
‘No,’ said Nora quickly, realising her mistake. ‘He was right. I was confused. I have memory issues sometimes. I never lived there. It was somewhere else. And someone else. I’m sorry.’
They resumed their conversation, as Nora thought about Mr Banerjee’s front garden full of irises and foxgloves.
‘Can I help you?’
She turned to look at the receptionist. A mild-mannered, red-haired man with glasses and blotched skin and a gentle Scottish accent.
She told him who she was and that she had phoned earlier.
He was a little confused at first.
‘And you say you left a message?’
He hummed a quiet tune as he searched for her email.
‘Yes, but on the phone. I was trying for ages to get through and I couldn’t so I eventually left a message. I emailed as well.’
‘Ah, right, I see. Well, I’m sorry about that. Are you here to see a family member?’
‘No,’ Nora explained. ‘I am not family. I am just someone who used to know her. She’d know me, though. Her name is Mrs Elm.’ Nora tried to remember the full name. ‘Sorry. It’s Louise Elm. If you told her my name, Nora. Nora Seed. She used to be my . . . She was the school librarian, at Hazeldene. I just thought she might like some company.’
The man stopped looking at his computer and stared up at Nora with barely suppressed surprise. At first Nora thought that she had got it wrong. Or Dylan had got it wrong, that evening at La Cantina. Or maybe the Mrs Elm in that life had experienced a different fate in this life. Though Nora didn’t quite know how her own decision to work in an animal shelter would have led to a different outcome for Mrs Elm in this life. But that made no sense. As in neither life had she been in touch with the librarian since school.
‘What’s the matter?’ Nora asked the receptionist.
‘I’m ever so sorry to tell you this, but Louise Elm is no longer here.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She . . . actually, she died three weeks ago.’
At first she thought it must be an admin error. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid I am very sure.’
‘Oh,’ said Nora. She didn’t really know what to say, or to feel. She looked down at her tote bag that had sat beside her in the car. A bag containing the chess set she had brought to play a game with her, and to keep her company. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t . . . You see, I haven’t seen her for years. Years and years. But I heard from someone who said that she was here . . .’
‘So sorry,’ the receptionist said.
‘No. No worries. I just wanted to thank her. For being so kind to me.’
‘She died very peacefully,’ he said, ‘literally in her sleep.’
And Nora smiled and retreated politely away. ‘That’s good. Thank you. Thank you for looking after her. I’ll just go now. Bye . . .’
An Incident With the Police
She stepped back out onto Shakespeare Road with her bag and her chess set and she really didn’t know what to do. There were tingles through her body. Not quite pins and needles. More that strange, fuzzy static feeling she had felt before when she was nearing the end of a particular existence.
Trying to ignore the feeling in her body, she headed in the vague direction of the car park. She passed her old garden flat at 33A Bancroft Avenue. A man she had never seen before was taking a box of recycling out. She thought of the lovely house in Cambridge she now had and couldn’t help but compare it to this shabby flat on a litter-strewn street. The tingles subsided a little. She passed Mr Banerjee’s house, or what had been Mr Banerjee’s house, and saw the only owned house on the street that hadn’t been divided into flats, though now it looked very different. The small front lawn was overgrown, and there was no sign of the clematis or busy lizzies in pots that Nora had watered for him last summer when he’d been recovering from his hip surgery.
On the pavement she noticed a couple of crumpled lager cans.
She saw a woman with a blonde bob and tanned skin walking towards her on the pavement with two small children in a double pushchair. She looked exhausted. It was the woman she had spoken to in the newsagent’s the day she had decided to die. The one who had seemed happy and relaxed. Kerry-Anne. She hadn’t noticed Nora because one child was wailing and she was trying to pacify the distressed, red-cheeked boy by waving a plastic dinosaur in front of him.
Me and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y’know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictures . . .
Then Kerry-Anne looked up and saw Nora.
‘I know you, don’t I? Is it Nora?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hi Nora.’
‘Hi Kerry-Anne.’
‘You remember my name? Oh wow. I was in awe of you in school. You seemed to have it all. Did you ever make the Olympics?’
‘Yes, actually. Kind of. One me did. But it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. But then, what is? Right?’
Kerry-Anne seemed momentarily confused. And then her son threw the dinosaur onto the pavement and it landed next to one of the crumpled cans. ‘Right.’
Nora picked up the dinosaur – a stegosaurus, on close inspection – and handed it to Kerry-Anne, who smiled her gratitude and headed into the house that should have belonged to Mr Banerjee, just as the boy descended into a full tantrum.
‘Bye,’ said Nora.
‘Yeah. Bye.’
And Nora wondered what the difference had been. What had forced Mr Banerjee to go to the care home he’d been determined not to go to? She was the only difference between the two Mr Banerjees but what was that difference? What had she done? Set up an online shop? Picked up his prescription a few times?
Never underestimate the big importance of small things, Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that.
She stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom – equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.
Then someone appeared at her own window. A woman who wasn’t her, holding a cat that wasn’t Voltaire.
This was her hope, anyway, even as she began to feel faint and fuzzy again.
She headed into town. Walked down the high street.
Yes, she was different now. She was stronger. She had untapped things inside her. Things she might never have known about if she’d never sung in an arena or fought off a polar bear or felt so much love and fear and courage.
There was a commotion outside Boots. Two boys were being arrested by police officers as a nearby store detective spoke into a walkie-talkie.
She recognised one of the boys and went up to him.
‘Leo?’
A police officer motioned for her to back away.
‘Who are you?’ Leo asked.
‘I—’ Nora realised she couldn’t say ‘your piano teacher’. And she realised how mad it was, given the fraught context, to say what she was about to say. But still, she said it. ‘Do you have music lessons?’
Leo looked down as the handcuffs were put on him. ‘I ain’t done no music lessons . . .’
His voice had lost its bravado.
The police officer was frustrated now. ‘Please, miss, leave this to us.’
‘He’s a good kid,’ Nora told him. ‘Please don’t be too hard on him.’
‘Wel
l, this good kid just stole two hundred quid’s worth from there. And has also just been found to be in possession of a concealed weapon.’
‘Weapon?’
‘A knife.’
‘No. There must be some mix-up. He’s not that sort of kid.’
‘Hear that,’ the police officer said to his colleague. ‘Lady here thinks our friend Leo Thompson isn’t the kind of kid to get into trouble.’
The other police officer laughed. ‘He’s always in and out of bother, this one.’
‘Now, please,’ the first police officer said, ‘let us do our jobs here . . .’
‘Of course,’ said Nora, ‘of course. Do everything they say, Leo . . .’
He looked at her as if she’d been sent as a practical joke.
A few years ago his mum Doreen had come into String Theory to buy her son a cheap keyboard. She’d been worried about his behaviour at school and he’d expressed an interest in music and so she wanted to get him piano lessons. Nora explained she had an electric piano, and could play, but had no formal teacher training. Doreen had explained she didn’t have much money but they struck a deal, and Nora had enjoyed her Tuesday evenings teaching Leo the difference between major and minor seventh chords and thought he was a great boy, eager to learn.
Doreen had seen Leo was ‘getting caught up in the wrong set’, but when he got into music he started doing well in other things too. And suddenly he wasn’t getting into trouble with teachers any more, and he’d play everything from Chopin through Scott Joplin to Frank Ocean and John Legend and Rex Orange County with the same care and commitment.
Something Mrs Elm had said on an early visit to the Midnight Library came to her.
Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations . . .
In this timeline right now, the one where she had studied a Master’s at Cambridge, and married Ash and had a baby, she hadn’t been in String Theory on the day four years ago when Doreen and Leo came by. In this timeline, Doreen never found a music teacher who was cheap enough, and so Leo never persisted with music for long enough to realise he had a talent. He never sat there, side-by-side with Nora on a Tuesday evening, pursuing a passion that he extended at home, producing his own tunes.
