Nora felt herself weaken. Not just tingles and fuzziness but something stronger, a sense of plunging into nothingness, accompanied by a brief darkening of her vision. A feeling of another Nora right there in the wings, ready to pick up where this one left off. Her brain ready to fill in the gaps and have a perfectly legitimate reason to be on a day trip to Bedford, and to fill in every absence as if she was here the whole time.
Worried she knew what it meant, she turned away from Leo and his friend as they were escorted away to the police car, the eyes of the whole of Bedford high street upon them, and she started to quicken her pace towards the car park.
This is a good life ... This is a good life ... This is a good life ...
A New Way of Seeing
She got closer to the station, passing the garish red-and-yellow zigzags of La Cantina, like a Mexican migraine, with a waiter inside taking chairs off tables. And String Theory too, closed, with a handwritten notice on the door:
Alas, String Theory is no longer able to trade in these premises. Due to an increase in rent we simply couldn’t afford to go on. Thanks to all our loyal customers. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right. You Can Go Your Own Way. God Only Knows What We’ll Be Without You.
It was the exact same note she had seen with Dylan. Judging by the date, written in small felt-tip letters from Neil’s hand, it was from nearly three months ago.
She felt sad, because String Theory had meant a lot to people. Yet Nora hadn’t been working at String Theory when it got into trouble.
Well.I suppose I did sell a lot of electric pianos. And some rather nice guitars too.
Growing up, she and Joe had always joked about their hometown, the way teenagers do, and used to say that HMP Bedford was the inner prison and the rest of the town was just the outer prison, and any chance you had to escape you should take it.
But the sun was out now, as she neared the station, and it seemed that she had been looking at the place wrong all these years. As she passed the statue of prison reformer John Howard in St Paul’s Square, with the trees all around and the river just behind, refracting light, she marvelled at it as if she were seeing it for the first time.It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Driving back to Cambridge cocooned in her expensive Audi, smelling almost nauseatingly of vinyl and plastic and other synthetic materials, weaving through busy traffic, the cars sliding by like forgotten lives, she was deeply wishing she had been able to see Mrs Elm, the real one, before she had died. It would have been good to have one last game of chess with her before she passed away. And she thought of poor Leo, sat in a small windowless cell at a Bedford police station, waiting for Doreen to come and collect him.
‘This is the best life,’ she told herself, a little desperately now. ‘This is the best life. I am staying here. This is the life for me. This is the best life.Thisis the best life.’
But she knew she didn’t have long.
The Flowers Have Water
She pulled up at the house and ran inside, as Plato padded happily to greet her.
‘Hello?’ she asked, desperately. ‘Ash? Molly?’
She needed to see them. She knew she didn’t have long. She could feel the Midnight Library waiting for her.
‘Outside!’ said Ash, chirpily, from the back garden.
And so Nora went through to find Molly on her tricycle again, unfazed by her previous accident, while Ash was tending to a flower-bed.
‘How was your trip?’
Molly climbed off her tricycle and ran over. ‘Mummy! I missed you! I’m really good at biking now!’
‘Are you, darling?’
She hugged her daughter close and closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair and the dog and fabric conditioner and childhood, and she hoped the wonder of it would help keep her there. ‘I love you, Molly, I want you to know that. For ever and ever, do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mummy. Of course.’
‘And I love your daddy too. And everything will be okay because whatever happens you will always have Daddy and you will have Mummy too, it’s just I might not be here in the exact same way. I’ll be here, but ...’ She realised Molly needed to know nothing else except one truth. ‘I love you.’
Molly looked concerned. ‘You forgot Plato!’
‘Well,obviouslyI love Plato ... How could I forget Plato? Plato knows I love him, don’t you, Plato? Plato, I love you.’
Nora tried to compose herself.
Whatever happens, they will be looked after. They will be loved. And they have each other and they will be happy.
