A Spiritual Quest for a Deeper Connection with the Universe
She found the medicine drawer in the kitchen and rummaged through the plasters and ibuprofen and Calpol and multivitamins and runnersโ knee bandages but couldnโt ๏ฌnd any sign of any anti-depressants.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was, ๏ฌnally, the life she was going to stay put in.ย ๎ขe life she would choose.ย ๎ขe one she would not return to the shelves.
I could be happy here.
A little later, in the shower, she scanned her body for new marks.ย ๎ขere were no tattoos but there was a scar. Not a self-in๏ฌicted scar but a surgical-looking one โ a long, delicate horizontal line below her navel. She had seen a caesarean scar before, and now she stroked her thumb along it, thinking that even if she stayed in this life she would have always turned up late for it.
Ash came back home from dropping Molly o๏ฌ. She hastily dressed so he wouldnโt see her naked.
๎ขey had breakfast together.ย ๎ขey sat at their kitchen table and scrolled the dayโs news and ate sourdough toast and were very much like a living endorsement for marriage.
And then Ash went to the hospital and she stayed home to research
๎ขoreau all day. She read her work-in-progress, which already had an impressive word-count of 42,729, and sat eating toast before picking Molly up from school.
Molly wanted to go to the park โlike normalโ to feed the ducks, and so Nora took her, disguising the fact that she was using Google Maps to navigate her way there.
Nora pushed her on a swing till her arms ached, slid down slides with her and crawled behind her through large metallic tunnels.ย ๎ขey then threw dry oats into the pond for the ducks, scooped from a box of porridge.
๎ขen she sat down with Molly in front of the telly and then she fed her her dinner and read a bedtime story, all before Ash returned home.
A๎er Ash came home, a man came to the door and tried to get in and Nora shut the door in his face.
โNora?โ
โYes.โ
โWhy were you so weird to Adam?โ โWhat?โ
โI think he was a little bit put out.โ โWhat do you mean?โ
โYou acted like he was a stranger.โ โOh.โ Nora smiled. โSorry.โ
โHeโs been our neighbour for three years. We went camping with him and Hannah in the Lake District.โ
โYes. I know. Of course.โ
โYou looked like you werenโt letting him in. Like he was an intruder or something.โ
โDid I?โ
โYou shut the door in his face.โ
โI shut the door. It wasnโt in his face. I mean, yes, his face was there.
Technically. But I just didnโt want him to think he could barge in.โ โHe was bringing the hose back.โ
โOh, right. Well, we donโt need the hose. Hoses are bad for the planet.โ โAre you okay?โ
โWhy wouldnโt I be?โ
โI just worry about you . . .โ
Generally, though, things turned out pretty good, and every time she wondered if she would wake up back in the library, she didnโt. One day, a๎er her yoga class, Nora sat on a bench by the River Cam and re-read some
๎ขoreau.ย ๎ขe day a๎er, she watched Ryan Bailey on daytime TV being interviewed on the set ofย Last Chance Saloon 2,ย in which he said he was โon a spiritual quest for a deeper connection with the universeโ rather than worrying about โsettling down in a romantic contextโ.
She received whale photos from Izzy, and WhatsApped her to say that she had heard about a horrid car crash in Australia recently, and made Izzy promise she would always drive safely.
Nora was comforted to know she had no inclination whatsoever to see what Dan was doing with his life. Instead, she felt very grateful to be with Ash. Or rather, and more precisely: she imagined she was grateful, because he was lovely, and there were so many moments of joy and laughter and love.
Ash did long shi๎s but was easy to be around when he was in, even a๎er days of blood and stress and gall bladders. He was also a bit of a nerd. He always said โgood morningโ to elderly people in the street when walking the dog and sometimes they ignored him. He sang along to the car radio. He generally didnโt seem to need sleep. And was always ๏ฌne doing the Molly night shi๎ย even when he was in surgery the next day.
He loved to gross Molly out with facts โ a stomach gets a new lining every four days! Ear wax is a type of sweat! You have creatures called mites living in your eyelashes! โ and loved to be inappropriate. He (at the duck pond, the ๏ฌrst Saturday, within Mollyโs earshot) enthusiastically told a random stranger that male ducks have penises shaped like corkscrews.
On nights when he was home early enough to cook, he made a great lentil dal and a pretty good penne arrabbiata, and tended to put a whole bulb of garlic in every meal he created. But Molly had been absolutely right: his artistic talents didnโt extend to musical ability. In fact, when he sang โ๎ขe Sound of Silenceโ, accompanied by his guitar, she found herself guiltily wishing he would take the title literally.
He was, in other words, a bit of a dork โ a dork who saved lives on a daily basis, but still a dork. Which was good. Nora liked dorks, and she felt one herself, and it helped make her get over the fundamentalย peculiarityย of being with a husband you were only just getting to know.
๎ปis is a good life,ย Nora would think to herself, over and over again.
Yes, being a parent was exhausting, but Molly was easy to love, at least in daylight hours. In fact, Nora o๎en preferred it when Molly was home from school because it added a bit of challenge to what was otherwise a rather frictionless existence. No relationship stress, no work stress, no money stress.
It was a lot to be grateful for.
๎ขere were inevitably shaky moments. She felt the familiar feeling of being in a play for which she didnโt know the lines.
โIs anything wrong?โ she asked Ash one night.
โItโs just . . .โ He looked at her with his kind smile and intense, scrutinising eyes. โI donโt know. You forgot our anniversary was coming up. You think you havenโt seen ๏ฌlms youโve seen. And vice versa. You forgot you had a bike. You forget where the plates are. Youโve been wearing my slippers. You get into my side of the bed.โ
โJeez, Ash,โ she said, a little bit too tense. โItโs like being interrogated by the three bears.โ
โI just worry . . .โ
โIโm ๏ฌne. Just, you know, lost in research world. Lost in the woods.
๎ขoreauโs woods.โ
And she felt in those moments that maybe sheโd return to the Midnight Library. Sometimes she remembered the words of Mrs Elm on her ๏ฌrst visit there.ย If you really want to live a life hard enough, you donโt have to worry . . .
๎ปe moment you decide you want that life, really want it, then everything that exists in your head now, including this Midnight Library, will eventually be a dream. A memory so vague and intangible it will hardly be there at all.
Which begged the question: if this was the perfect life, why hadnโt she forgotten the library?
How long did it take to forget?
Occasionally she felt wisps of gentle depression ๏ฌoat around her, for no real reason, but it wasnโt comparable to how terrible she had felt in her root life, or indeed many of her other lives. It was like comparing a bit of a sni๏ฌe to pneumonia. When she thought about how bad she had felt the day she lost her job at Stringย ๎ขeory, of the despair, of the lonely and desperate yearning to not exist, then this wasย nowhere near.
Every day she went to bed thinking she was going to wake up in this life again, because it was โ on balance, and all things considered โ the best she had known. Indeed, she progressed from going to bed casually assuming sheโd stay in this life, to being scared to fall asleep in case she wouldnโt.
And yet, night a๎er night she would fall asleep and day a๎er day she would wake up in the same bed. Or occasionally on the carpet, but she
shared that pain with Ash, and more o๎en than not it was a bed as Molly was getting better and better at sleeping through.
๎ขere were awkward moments, of course. Nora never knew the way to anything, or where things were in the house, and Ash sometimes wondered out loud if she should see a doctor. And at ๏ฌrst she had avoided s*x with him, but one night it happened and a๎erwards Nora felt guilty about the lie she was living.
๎ขey lay in the dark for a while, in post-coital silence, but she knew she had to broach the subject. Test the water.
โAsh,โ she said. โWhat?โ
โDo you believe in the theory of parallel universes?โ
She could see his face stretch into a smile.ย ๎ขis was the kind of conversation on his wavelength. โYes, I think so.โ
โMe too. I mean, itโs science, isnโt it? Itโs not like some geeky physicist just thought, โHey, parallel universes are cool. Letโs make a theory about them.โโ
โYeah,โ he agreed. โScience distrusts anything that sounds too cool. Too sci-๏ฌ. Scientists are sceptics, as a rule.โ
โExactly, yet physicists believe in parallel universes.โ
โItโs just where the science leads, isnโt it? Everything in quantum mechanics and string theory all points to there being multiple universes. Many, many universes.โ
โWell, what would you say if I said that I have visited my other lives, and I think I have chosen this one?โ
โI would think you were insane. But Iโd still like you.โ โWell, I have. I have had many lives.โ
He smiled. โGreat. Is there one where you kiss me again?โ โ๎ขere is one where you buried my dead cat.โ
He laughed. โ๎ขatโs so cool, Nor.ย ๎ขe thing I like about you is that you always make me feel normal.โ
And that was it.
She realised that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality. Asย ๎ขoreau wrote, โItโs not what you look at that matters, itโs what you see.โ And Ash only saw the Nora he had fallen in love with and married, and so, in a way, that was the Nora she was becoming.
