But where was he?
‘Volts?’
She climbed out of bed.
‘Volts?’
She looked all over her flat and couldn’t find him anywhere. The rain patted against the windows – that much hadn’t changed. Her new box of anti-depressants was out on the kitchen unit. The electric piano stood by the wall, silent.
‘Voltsy?’
There was her yucca plant and her three tiny potted cacti, there were her bookshelves, with exactly the same mix of philosophy books and novels and untried yoga manuals and rock star biographies and pop science books. An oldNational Geographicwith a shark on the cover and a five-month-old copy ofEllemagazine, which she’d bought mainly for the Ryan Bailey interview. No new additions in a long time.
There was a bowl still full of cat food.
She looked everywhere, calling his name. It was only when she went back into her bedroom and looked under the bed that she saw him.
‘Volts!’
The cat wasn’t moving.
As her arms weren’t long enough to reach him, she moved the bed.
‘Voltsy. Come on, Voltsy,’ she whispered.
But the moment she touched his cold body she knew, and she was flooded with sadness and confusion. She immediately found herself back in the Midnight Library, facing Mrs Elm, who was sat this time in a comfy chair, deeply absorbed in one of the books.
‘I don’t understand,’ Nora told her.
Mrs Elm kept her eyes on the page she was reading. ‘There will be many things you don’t understand.’
‘I asked for the life in which Voltaire was still alive.’
‘Actually, you didn’t.’
‘What?’
She put her book down. ‘You asked for the life where you kept him indoors. That is an entirely different thing.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. Entirely. You see, if you’d have asked for the life where he was still alive I would have had to say no.’
‘But why?’
‘Because it doesn’t exist.’
‘I thought every life exists.’
‘Everypossiblelife. You see, it turns out that Voltaire had a serious case of’ – she read carefully from the book – ‘restrictive cardiomyopathy, a severe case of it, which he was born with, and which was destined to cause his heart to go at a young age.’
‘But he was hit by a car.’
‘There is a difference, Nora, between dying in a road and being hit by a car. In your root life Voltaire lived longer than almost any other life, except the one you’ve just encountered, where he died only three hours ago. Although he had a tough few early years, the year you had him was the best of his life. Voltaire has had much worse lives, believe me.’
‘You didn’t even know his name a moment ago. Now you know he had restrictive cardio-whatever?’
‘I knew his name. And it wasn’t a moment ago. It was the same moment, check your watch.’
