She opened her eyes from a shallow sleep and the first thing she noticed was that she was incredibly tired. She could see a picture on the wall, in the dark. She could just about make out that the picture was a mildly abstract interpretation of a tree. Not a tall and spindly tree. Something short and wide and flowery.
There was a man next to her, asleep. It was impossible to tell, as he was turned away from her, in the dark, and given that he was largely hidden under the duvet, whether this man was Ash.
Somehow this felt weirder than usual. Of course, to be in bed with a man who she hadn’t done anything more with than bury a cat and have a few interesting conversations from behind the counter of a music shop should have felt slightly strange in the normal run of things. But since entering the Midnight Library Nora had slowly got used to the peculiar.
And just because it was possible that the man was Ash, it was also possible that it wasn’t. There was no predicting every future outcome after a single decision. Going for a coffee with Ash might have led, for instance, to Nora falling in love with the person serving the coffee. That was simply the unpredictable nature of quantum physics.
She felt her ring finger.
Two rings.
The man turned over.
An arm landed across her in the dark and she gently raised it and placed it back on the duvet. Then she took herself out of bed. Her plan was to go downstairs and maybe lie on a sofa and, as usual, do some research about herself on her phone.
It was a curious fact that no matter how many lives she had experienced, and no matter how different those lives were, she almost always had her phone by the bed. And in this life, it was no different, so she grabbed it and sneaked out of the room quietly. Whoever the man was, he was a deep sleeper and didn’t stir.
She stared at him.
‘Nora?’ he mumbled, half-asleep.
It was him. She was almost sure of it. Ash.
‘I’m just going to the loo,’ she said.
He mumbled something close to an ‘okay’ and fell back asleep.
And she trod gently across the floorboards. But the moment she opened the door and stepped out of the room, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
For there, in front of her in the half-light of the landing, was another human. A small one. Child-size.
‘Mummy, I had a nightmare.’
By the soft light of the dimmed bulb in the hallway she could see the girl’s face, her fine hair wild from sleep, strands sticking to her clammy forehead.
Nora said nothing. This was her daughter.
How could she say anything?
The now familiar question raised itself: how could she just join in to a life that she was years late for? Nora closed her eyes. The other lives in which she’d had children had only lasted a couple of minutes or so. This one was already leading into unknown territory.
Her body shook with whatever she was trying to keep inside. She didn’t want to see her. Not just for herself but for the girl as well. It seemed a betrayal. Nora was her mother, but also, in another, more important way: she was not her mother. She was just a strange woman in a strange house looking at a strange child.
‘Mummy? Can you hear me? I had a nightmare.’
She heard the man move in his bed somewhere in the room behind her. This would only become more awkward if he woke up, properly. So, Nora decided to speak to the child.
‘Oh, oh that’s a shame,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not real, though. It was just a dream.’
‘It was about bears.’
Nora closed the door behind her. ‘Bears?’
‘Because of that story.’
‘Right. Yes. The story. Come on, get back in your bed ...’ This sounded harsh, she realised. ‘Sweetheart,’ she added, wondering what she – her daughter in this universe – was called. ‘There are no bears here.’
‘Only teddy bears.’
