The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

  A Gentle Life

  It turned out that this particular existence was quite easy to slip into.

  Sleep was good in this life, and she didn’t wake up until the alarm went off at a quarter to eight. She drove to work in a tatty old Hyundai that smelled of dogs and biscuits and was decorated with crumbs, passing the hospital and the sports centre, and pulling up in the small car park outside the modern, grey-bricked, single-storey rescue centre.

  She spent the morning feeding and walking the dogs. The reason it was quite easy to blend into this life was at least partly because she had been greeted by an affable, down-to-earth woman with brown curly hair and a Yorkshire accent. The woman, Pauline, said Nora was to start work in the dog shelter, rather than the cat shelter, and so Nora had a legitimate excuse to ask what to do and look confused. Also, the issue of knowing people’s names was solved by the fact that all the workers had name badges.

  Nora had walked a bullmastiff, a new arrival, around the field behind the shelter. Pauline told her that the bullmastiff had been horribly treated by its owner. She pointed out a few small round scars.

  ‘Cigarette burns.’

  Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them. The bullmastiff was called Sally. She was scared of everything. Her shadow. Bushes. Other dogs. Nora’s legs. Grass. Air. Though she clearly took a liking to Nora, and even succumbed to a (very quick) tummy rub.

  Later, Nora helped clean out some of the little dog huts. She imagined they called them huts because it sounded better than cages, which was really a more apt name for them. There was a three-legged Alsatian called Diesel, who had been there a while apparently. When they played catch, Nora discovered his reflexes were good, his mouth catching the ball almost every time. She liked this life – or more precisely, she liked the version of herself in this life. She could tell the kind of person she was from the way people spoke to her. It felt nice – comforting, solidifying – to be a good person.

  Her mind felt different here. She thought a lot in this life, but her thoughts were gentle.

  ‘Compassion is the basis of morality,’ the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had written, in one of his softer moments. Maybe it was the basis of life too.

  There was one man who worked there called Dylan, who had a natural way with all the dogs. He was about her age, maybe younger. He had a kind, gentle, sad look about him. His long surf-dude hair golden as a retriever. He came and sat next to Nora on a bench at lunch, overlooking the field.

  ‘What are you having today?’ he asked, sweetly, nodding to Nora’s lunchbox.

  She honestly didn’t know – she had found it already prepared when she’d opened her magnet- and calendar-cluttered fridge that morning. She peeled off the lid to find a cheese and Marmite sandwich and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. The sky darkened and the wind picked up.

  ‘Oh crap,’ Nora said. ‘It’s going to rain.’

  ‘Maybe, but the dogs are all still in their cages.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Dogs can smell when rain is coming, so they often head indoors if they think it’s going to happen. Isn’t that cool? That they can predict the future with their nose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nora. ‘Way cool.’

  Nora bit into her cheese sandwich. And then Dylan put his arm around her.

  Nora jumped up.

  ‘—the hell?’ she said.

  Dylan looked deeply apologetic. And a little horrified at himself. ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt your shoulder?’

  ‘No . . . I just . . . I . . . No. No. It’s fine.’

  She discovered that Dylan was her boyfriend and that he had gone to the same secondary school as her. Hazeldene Comp. And that he was two years younger.

  Nora could remember the day her dad died, when she was in the school library staring as a blond boy from a couple of years below ran past outside the rain-speckled window. Either chasing someone or being chased. That had been him. She had vaguely liked him, from a distance, but without really knowing him or thinking about him at all.

  ‘You all right, Norster?’ Dylan asked.

  Norster?

  ‘Yeah. I was just . . . Yeah. I’m fine.’

  Nora sat down again but left a bit more bench between them. There was nothing overtly wrong with Dylan. He was sweet. And she was sure that in this life she genuinely liked him. Maybe even loved him. But entering a life wasn’t the same as entering an emotion.

  ‘By the way, did you book Gino’s?’

  Gino’s. The Italian. Nora had gone there as a teenager. She was surprised it was still going.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gino’s? The pizza place? For tonight? You said you kind of know the manager there.’

  ‘My dad used to, yeah.’

  ‘So, did you manage to call?’

  ‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘But actually, it is fully booked.’

  ‘On a weeknight? Weird. That’s a shame. I love pizza. And pasta. And lasagne. And—’

  ‘Right,’ said Nora. ‘Yes. I get it. I completely get it. I know it was strange. But they had a couple of big bookings.’

  Dylan already had his phone out. He was eager. ‘I’ll try La Cantina. You know. The Mexican. Tons of vegan options. I love a Mexican, don’t you?’

  Nora couldn’t think of a legitimate reason for her not to do this, aside from Dylan’s not-entirely-riveting conversation, and compared to the sandwich she was currently eating and the state of the rest of her fridge, Mexican food sounded promising.

  So, Dylan booked them a table. And they carried on talking as dogs barked in the building behind them. It emerged during the conversation that they were thinking of moving in together.

  ‘We could watch Last Chance Saloon,’ he said.

  She wasn’t really listening. ‘What’s that?’

  He was shy, she realised. Bad with eye contact. Quite endearing. ‘You know, that Ryan Bailey film you wanted to watch. We saw the trailer for it. You said it’s meant to be funny and I did some research and it has an eighty-six per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and it’s on Netflix so . . .’

  She wondered if Dylan would believe her if she told him that in one life she was a lead singer of an internationally successful pop-rock band and global icon who had actually dated and voluntarily broken up with Ryan Bailey.

  ‘Sounds good,’ she said, as she stared at an empty crisp packet floating across the sparse grass.

  Dylan rushed off the bench to grab the packet and dropped it into the bin next to the bench.

  He flopped back to Nora, smiling. Nora understood what this other Nora saw in him. There was something pure about him. Like a dog himself.

  Why Want Another Universe If This One Has Dogs?

  The restaurant was on Castle Road, around the corner from String Theory, and they had to walk past the shop to get there. The familiarity of it felt strange. When she reached the shop she saw that something wasn’t right. There were no guitars in the window. There was nothing in the window, except a faded piece of A4 paper stuck on the inside of the glass.

  She recognised Neil’s handwriting.

  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.

  Dylan was amused. ‘I see what they did there.’ Then a moment later. ‘I was named after Bob Dylan. Did I ever tell you that?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘You know, the musician.’

  ‘Yes. I have heard of Bob Dylan, Dylan.’

  ‘My older sister is called Suzanne. After the Leonard Cohen song.’

  Nora smiled. ‘My parents loved Leonard Cohen.’

  ‘Ever been in there?’ Dylan asked her. ‘Looked like a great shop.’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Thought you would have been
, what with you being musical. You used to play the piano, didn’t you?’

  Used to.

  ‘Yeah. Keyboards. A little.’

  Nora saw the notice looked old. She remembered what Neil had said to her. I can’t pay you to put off customers with your face looking like a wet weekend.

  Well, Neil, maybe it wasn’t my face after all.

  They carried on walking.

  ‘Dylan, do you believe in parallel universes?’

  He shrugged. ‘I think so.’

  ‘What do you think you are doing in another life? Do you think this is a good universe? Or would you rather be in a universe where you left Bedford?’

  ‘Not really. I am happy here. Why want another universe if this one has dogs? Dogs are the same here as they are in London. I had a place, you know. I’d got into Glasgow University to do Veterinary Medicine. And I went for a week but I missed my dogs too much. Then my dad lost his job and couldn’t really afford for me to go. So yeah, I never got to be a vet. And I really wanted to be a vet. But I don’t regret it. I have a good life. I’ve got some good friends. I’ve got my dogs.’

  Nora smiled. She liked Dylan, even if she doubted she could be as attracted to him as this other Nora. He was a good person, and good people were rare.

  As they reached the restaurant, they saw a tall dark-haired man in running gear jogging towards them. It took a disorientating moment for Nora to realise it was Ash – the Ash who had been a surgeon, the Ash who had been a customer at String Theory and who had asked her out for coffee, the Ash who had comforted her in the hospital and who had knocked on her door, in another world, last night, to tell her that Voltaire was dead. It seemed so recent, that memory, and yet it was hers alone. He was obviously doing some training for the half-marathon on Sunday. There was no reason to believe that the Ash in this life was any different from the one in her root life, except the chances were that he probably hadn’t found a dead Voltaire last night. Or maybe he had, though Voltaire wouldn’t have been called Voltaire.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, forgetting which timeline she was in.

  And Ash smiled back at her, but it was a confused smile. Confused, but kind, which somehow made Nora feel even more cringey. Because of course in this life there had not been the knock on her door, there had never even been the asking for a coffee, or the purchase of a Simon & Garfunkel songbook.

  ‘Who was that?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘Oh, just someone I knew in another life.’

  Dylan was confused but shook it away like rain.

  And then they were there.

  Dinner with Dylan

  La Cantina had hardly changed in years.

  Nora had a flashback to the evening she had taken Dan there years ago, on his first visit to Bedford. They’d sat at a table in a corner and had too many margaritas and talked about their joint future. It was the first time that Dan had expressed his dream of living in a pub in the country. They had been on the verge of moving in together, just as Nora and Dylan apparently were in this life. Now she remembered it, Dan had been pretty rude to the waiter, and Nora had overcompensated with excessive smiles. It was one of life’s rules – Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff – and Dan had failed at that one, and many of the others. Although Nora had to admit, La Cantina would not have been her top choice to return to.

  ‘I love this place,’ Dylan said now, looking around at the busy, garish red-and-yellow décor. Nora wondered, quietly, if there was any place Dylan didn’t or wouldn’t love. He seemed like he would be able to sit in a field near Chernobyl and marvel at the beautiful scenery.

  Over black bean tacos, they talked about dogs and school. Dylan had been two years below Nora and remembered her primarily as ‘the girl who was good at swimming’. He even remembered the school assembly – which Nora had long tried to repress – where she had been called on stage and given a certificate for being an exceptional representative of Hazeldene Comp. Now she thought about it, that was possibly the moment Nora had begun to go off swimming. The moment she found it harder being with her friends, the moment she slunk away into the margins of school life.

  ‘I used to see you in the library during breaks,’ he said, smiling at the memory. ‘I remember seeing you playing chess with that librarian we used to have . . . what was her name?’

  ‘Mrs Elm,’ Nora said.

  ‘That’s it! Mrs Elm!’ And then he said something even more startling. ‘I saw her the other day.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yeah. She was on Shakespeare Road. With someone dressed in a uniform. Like a nurse’s outfit. I think she was heading into the care home after a walk. She looked very frail. Very old.’

  For some reason, Nora had assumed Mrs Elm had died years ago, and that the version of Mrs Elm she always saw in the library had made that idea more likely, as that version was always the exact version she had been at school, preserved in Nora’s memory like a mosquito in amber.

  ‘Oh no. Poor Mrs Elm. I loved her.’

  Last Chance Saloon

  After the meal Nora went back to Dylan’s house to watch the Ryan Bailey movie. They had a half-drunk bottle of wine that the restaurant let them take home. Her self-justification regarding going to Dylan’s was that he was sweet and open and would reveal a lot about their life without having to pry too deep.

  He lived in a small terraced house on Huxley Avenue that he had inherited from his mum. The house was made even smaller by the amount of dogs there. There were five that Nora could see, though there may have been more lurking upstairs. Nora had always imagined she liked the smell of dog, but she suddenly realised there was a limit to this fondness.

  Sitting down on the sofa she felt something hard beneath her – a plastic ring for the dogs to gnaw on. She put it on the carpet amid the other chew toys. The toy bone. The foam yellow ball with chunks bitten out of it. A half-massacred soft toy.

  A Chihuahua with cataracts tried to have sex with her right leg.

  ‘Stop that, Pedro,’ said Dylan, laughing, as he pulled the little creature away from her.

  Another dog, a giant, meaty, chestnut-coloured Newfoundland, was sitting next to her on the sofa, licking Nora’s ear with a tongue the size of a slipper, meaning that Dylan had to sit on the floor.

  ‘Do you want the sofa?’

  ‘No. I’m fine on the floor.’

  Nora didn’t push it. In fact, she was quite relieved. It made it easier to watch Last Chance Saloon without any further awkwardness. And the Newfoundland stopped licking her ear and rested its head on her knee and Nora felt – well, not happy exactly, but not depressed either.

  And yet, as she watched Ryan Bailey tell his on-screen love interest that ‘Life is for living, cupcake’ while simultaneously being informed by Dylan that he was thinking of letting another dog sleep in his bed (‘He cries all night. He wants his daddy’), Nora realised she wasn’t too enamoured with this life.

  And also, Dylan deserved the other Nora. The one who had managed to fall in love with him. This was a new feeling – as if she was taking someone’s place.

  Realising she had a high tolerance for alcohol in this life, she poured herself some more wine. It was a pretty ropey Zinfandel from California. She stared at the label on the back. There was for some reason a mini co-autobiography of a woman and a man, Janine and Terence Thornton, who owned the vineyard which had made the wine. She read the last sentence: When we were first married we always dreamed of opening our own vineyard one day. And now we have made that dream a reality. Here at Dry Creek Valley, our life tastes as good as a glass of Zinfandel.

  She stroked the large dog who’d been licking her and whispered a ‘goodbye’ into the Newfoundland’s wide, warm brow as she left Dylan and his dogs behind.

  Buena Vista Vineyard

  In the next visit to the Midnight Library, Mrs Elm helped Nora find the life she could have lived that was closest to the life depicted on the label of that bottle of wine from the restaurant. So, she
gave Nora a book that sent her to America.

  In this life Nora was called Nora Martìnez and she was married to a twinkle-eyed Mexican-American man in his early forties called Eduardo, who she had met during the gap year she’d regretted never having after leaving university. After his parents had died in a boating accident (she had learned, from a profile piece on them in The Wine Enthusiast magazine, which they had framed in their oak-panelled tasting room), Eduardo had been left a modest inheritance and they bought a tiny vineyard in California. Within three years they had done so well – particularly with their Syrah varietals – that they were able to buy the neighbouring vineyard when it came up for sale. Their winery was called the Buena Vista vineyard, situated in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and they had a child called Alejandro, who was at boarding school near Monterey Bay.

  Much of their business came from wine-trail tourists. Coachloads of people arrived at hourly intervals. It was quite easy to improvise, as the tourists were genuinely quite gullible. It went like this: Eduardo would decide which wines to put out in the glasses before each coach load arrived, and hand Nora the bottles – ‘Woah, Nora, despacio, un poco too much’ he reprimanded in his good-humoured Spanglish, when she was a bit too liberal with the measures – and then when the tourists came Nora would inhale the wines as they sipped and swilled them, and try to echo Eduardo and say the right things.

  ‘There is a woodiness to the bouquet with this one’ or ‘You’ll note the vegetal aromas here – the bright robust blackberries and fragrant nectarine, perfectly balanced with the echoes of charcoal’.

  Each life she had experienced had a different feeling, like different movements in a symphony, and this one felt quite bold and uplifting. Eduardo was incredibly sweet-natured, and their marriage seemed to be a successful one. Maybe even one to rival the life of the couple on the wine label of the bottle of ropey wine she’d drank with Dylan, while being licked by his astronomically large dog. She even remembered their names. Janine and Terence Thornton. She felt like she too was now living in a label on a bottle. She also looked like it. Perfect Californian hair and expensive-looking teeth, tanned and healthy despite the presumably quite substantial consumption of Syrah. She had the kind of flat, hard stomach that suggested hours of Pilates every week.