The Midnight Library Read online

  ‘I’m happy here.’

  ‘Except you aren’t.’

  He was right. A soul-sickness festered within her. Her mind was throwing itself up. She widened her smile.

  ‘I mean, I am happy with the job. Happy as in, you know, satisfied. Neil, I need this job.’

  ‘You are a good person. You worry about the world. The homeless, the environment.’

  ‘I need a job.’

  He was back in his Confucius pose. ‘You need freedom.’

  ‘I don’t want freedom.’

  ‘This isn’t a non-profit organisation. Though I have to say it is rapidly becoming one.’

  ‘Look, Neil, is this about what I said the other week? About you needing to modernise things? I’ve got some ideas of how to get younger peo—’

  ‘No,’ he said, defensively. ‘This place used to just be guitars. String Theory, get it? I diversified. Made this work. It’s just that when times are tough I can’t pay you to put off customers with your face looking like a wet weekend.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m afraid, Nora’ – he paused for a moment, about the time it takes to lift an axe into the air – ‘I’m going to have to let you go.’

  To Live Is to Suffer

  Nine hours before she decided to die, Nora wandered around Bedford aimlessly. The town was a conveyor belt of despair. The pebble-dashed sports centre where her dead dad once watched her swim lengths of the pool, the Mexican restaurant where she’d taken Dan for fajitas, the hospital where her mum had her treatment.

  Dan had texted her yesterday.

  Nora, I miss your voice. Can we talk? D x

  She’d said she was stupidly hectic (big lol). Yet it was impossible to text anything else. Not because she didn’t still feel for him, but because she did. And couldn’t risk hurting him again. She’d ruined his life. My life is chaos, he’d told her, via drunk texts, shortly after the would-be wedding she’d pulled out of two days before.

  The universe tended towards chaos and entropy. That was basic thermodynamics. Maybe it was basic existence too.

  You lose your job, then more shit happens.

  The wind whispered through the trees.

  It began to rain.

  She headed towards the shelter of a newsagent’s, with the deep – and, as it happened, correct – sense that things were about to get worse.

  Doors

  Eight hours before she decided to die, Nora entered the newsagent’s.

  ‘Sheltering from the rain?’ the woman behind the counter asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Nora kept her head down. Her despair growing like a weight she couldn’t carry.

  A National Geographic was on display.

  As she stared now at the magazine cover – an image of a black hole – she realised that’s what she was. A black hole. A dying star, collapsing in on itself.

  Her dad used to subscribe. She remembered being enthralled by an article about Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. She’d never seen a place that looked so far away. She’d read about scientists doing research among glaciers and frozen fjords and puffins. Then, prompted by Mrs Elm, she’d decided she wanted to be a glaciologist.

  She saw the scruffy, hunched form of her brother’s friend – and their own former bandmate – Ravi by the music mags, engrossed in an article. She stood there for a fraction too long, because when she walked away she heard him say, ‘Nora?’

  ‘Ravi, hi. I hear Joe was in Bedford the other day?’

  A small nod. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did he, um, did you see him?’

  ‘I did actually.’

  A silence Nora felt as pain. ‘He didn’t tell me he was coming.’

  ‘Was just a fly-by.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  Ravi paused. Nora had once liked him, and he’d been a loyal friend to her brother. But, as with Joe, there was a barrier between them. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms. (He’d thrown his drumsticks on the floor of a rehearsal room and stropped out when Nora told him she was out of the band.) ‘I think he’s depressed.’

  Nora’s mind grew heavier at the idea her brother might feel like she did.

  ‘He’s not himself,’ Ravi went on, anger in his voice. ‘He’s going to have to move out of his shoebox in Shepherd’s Bush. What with him not being able to play lead guitar in a successful rock band. Mind you, I’ve got no money either. Pub gigs don’t pay these days. Even when you agree to clean the toilets. Ever cleaned pub toilets, Nora?’

  ‘I’m having a pretty shit time too, if we’re doing the Misery Olympics.’

  Ravi cough-laughed. A hardness momentarily shadowed his face. ‘The world’s smallest violin is playing.’

  She wasn’t in the mood. ‘Is this about The Labyrinths? Still?’

  ‘It meant a lot to me. And to your brother. To all of us. We had a deal with Universal. Right. There. Album, singles, tour, promo. We could be Coldplay now.’

  ‘You hate Coldplay.’

  ‘Not the point. We could be in Malibu. Instead: Bedford. And so, no, your brother’s not ready to see you.’

  ‘I was having panic attacks. I’d have let everyone down in the end. I told the label to take you on without me. I agreed to write the songs. It wasn’t my fault I was engaged. I was with Dan. It was kind of a deal-breaker.’

  ‘Well, yeah. How did that work out?’

  ‘Ravi, that isn’t fair.’

  ‘Fair. Great word.’

  The woman behind the counter gawped with interest.

  ‘Bands don’t last. We’d have been a meteor shower. Over before we started.’

  ‘Meteor showers are fucking beautiful.’

  ‘Come on. You’re still with Ella, aren’t you?’

  ‘And I could be with Ella and in a successful band, with money. We had that chance. Right there.’ He pointed to the palm of his hand. ‘Our songs were fire.’

  Nora hated herself for silently correcting the ‘our’ to ‘my’.

  ‘I don’t think your problem was stage fright. Or wedding fright. I think your problem was life fright.’

  This hurt. The words took the air out of her.

  ‘And I think your problem,’ she retaliated, voice trembling, ‘is blaming others for your shitty life.’

  He nodded, as if slapped. Put his magazine back.

  ‘See you around, Nora.’

  ‘Tell Joe I said hi,’ she said, as he walked out of the shop and into the rain. ‘Please.’

  She caught sight of the cover of Your Cat magazine. A ginger tabby. Her mind felt loud, like a Sturm und Drang symphony, as if the ghost of a German composer was trapped inside her mind, conjuring chaos and intensity.

  The woman behind the counter said something to her she missed.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nora Seed?’

  The woman – blonde bob, bottle tan – was happy and casual and relaxed in a way Nora no longer knew how to be. Leaning over the counter, on her forearms, as if Nora was a lemur at the zoo.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’m Kerry-Anne. Remember you from school. The swimmer. Super-brain. Didn’t whatshisface, Mr Blandford, do an assembly on you once? Said you were going to end up at the Olympics?’

  Nora nodded.

  ‘So, did you?’

  ‘I, um, gave it up. Was more into music . . . at the time. Then life happened.’

  ‘So what do you do now?’

  ‘I’m . . . between things.’

  ‘Got anyone, then? Bloke? Kids?’

  Nora shook her head. Wishing it would fall off. Her own head. Onto the floor. So she never had to have a conversation with a stranger ever again.

  ‘Well, don’t hang about. Tick-tock tick-tock.’

  ‘I’m thirty-five.’ She wished Izzy was here. Izzy never put up with any of this kind of shit. ‘And I’m not sure I want—’

  ‘Me and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y’know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictur
es.’

  ‘I get headaches, with . . . phones.’

  Dan had wanted kids. Nora didn’t know. She’d been petrified of motherhood. The fear of a deeper depression. She couldn’t look after herself, let alone anyone else.

  ‘Still in Bedford, then?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘Thought you’d be one who got away.’

  ‘I came back. My mum was ill.’

  ‘Aw, sorry to hear that. Hope she’s okay now?’

  ‘I better go.’

  ‘But it’s still raining.’

  As Nora escaped the shop, she wished there were nothing but doors ahead of her, which she could walk through one by one, leaving everything behind.

  How to Be a Black Hole

  Seven hours before she decided to die, Nora was in free fall and she had no one to talk to.

  Her last hope was her former best friend Izzy, who was over ten thousand miles away in Australia. And things had dried up between them too.

  She took out her phone and sent Izzy a message.

  Hi Izzy, long time no chat. Miss you, friend. Would be WONDROUS to catch up. X

  She added another ‘X’ and sent it.

  Within a minute, Izzy had seen the message. Nora waited in vain for three dots to appear.

  She passed the cinema, where a new Ryan Bailey film was playing tonight. A corny cowboy-romcom called Last Chance Saloon.

  Ryan Bailey’s face seemed to always know deep and significant things. Nora had loved him ever since she’d watched him play a brooding Plato in The Athenians on TV, and since he’d said in an interview that he’d studied philosophy. She’d imagined them having deep conversations about Henry David Thoreau through a veil of steam in his West Hollywood hot tub.

  ‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,’ Thoreau had said. ‘Live the life you’ve imagined.’

  Thoreau had been her favourite philosopher to study. But who seriously goes confidently in the direction of their dreams? Well, apart from Thoreau. He’d gone and lived in the woods, with no contact from the outside world, to just sit there and write and chop wood and fish. But life was probably simpler two centuries ago in Concord, Massachusetts, than modern life in Bedford, Bedfordshire.

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  Maybe she was just really crap at it. At life.

  Whole hours passed by. She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing. Not even the small purpose of picking up Mr Banerjee’s medication, as she had done that two days ago. She tried to give a homeless man some money but realised she had no money.

  ‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen,’ someone said.

  Nothing ever did, she thought to herself. That was the whole problem.

  Antimatter

  Five hours before she decided to die, as she began walking home, her phone vibrated in her hand.

  Maybe it was Izzy. Maybe Ravi had told her brother to get in touch.

  No.

  ‘Oh hi, Doreen.’

  An agitated voice. ‘Where were you?’

  She’d totally forgotten. What time is it?

  ‘I’ve had a really crap day. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘We waited outside your flat for an hour.’

  ‘I can still do Leo’s lesson when I get back. I’ll be five minutes.’

  ‘Too late. He’s with his dad now for three days.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  She was a waterfall of apologies. She was drowning in herself.

  ‘To be honest, Nora, he’s been thinking about giving up altogether.’

  ‘But he’s so good.’

  ‘He’s really enjoyed it. But he’s too busy. Exams, mates, football. Something has to give . . .’

  ‘He has a real talent. I’ve got him into bloody Chopin. Please—’

  A deep, deep sigh. ‘Bye, Nora.’

  Nora imagined the ground opening up, sending her down through the lithosphere, and the mantle, not stopping until she reached the inner core, compressed into a hard unfeeling metal.

  *

  Four hours before she decided to die, Nora passed her elderly neighbour, Mr Banerjee.

  Mr Banerjee was eighty-four years old. He was frail but was slightly more mobile since his hip surgery.

  ‘It’s terrible out, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ mumbled Nora.

  He glanced at his flowerbed. ‘The irises are out, though.’

  She looked at the clusters of purple flowers, forcing a smile as she wondered what possible consolation they could offer.

  His eyes were tired, behind their spectacles. He was at his door, fumbling for keys. A bottle of milk in a carrier bag that seemed too heavy for him. It was rare to see him out of the house. A house she had visited during her first month here, to help him set up an online grocery shop.

  ‘Oh,’ he said now. ‘I have some good news. I don’t need you to collect my pills any more. The boy from the chemist has moved nearby and he says he will drop them off.’

  Nora tried to reply but couldn’t get the words out. She nodded instead.

  He managed to open the door, then closed it, retreating into his shrine to his dear dead wife.

  That was it. No one needed her. She was superfluous to the universe.

  Once inside her flat the silence was louder than noise. The smell of cat food. A bowl still out for Voltaire, half eaten.

  She got herself some water and swallowed two anti-depressants and stared at the rest of the pills, wondering.

  Three hours before she decided to die, her whole being ached with regret, as if the despair in her mind was somehow in her torso and limbs too. As if it had colonised every part of her.

  It reminded her that everyone was better off without her. You get near a black hole and the gravitational pull drags you into its bleak, dark reality.

  The thought was like a ceaseless mind-cramp, something too uncomfortable to bear yet too strong to avoid.

  Nora went through her social media. No messages, no comments, no new followers, no friend requests. She was antimatter, with added self-pity.

  She went on Instagram and saw everyone had worked out how to live, except her. She posted a rambling update on Facebook, which she didn’t even really use any more.

  Two hours before she decided to die, she opened a bottle of wine.

  Old philosophy textbooks looked down at her, ghost furnishings from her university days, when life still had possibility. A yucca plant and three tiny, squat potted cacti. She imagined being a non-sentient life form sitting in a pot all day was probably an easier existence.

  She sat down at the little electric piano but played nothing. She thought of sitting by Leo’s side, teaching him Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor. Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.

  There was an old musician’s cliché, about how there were no wrong notes on a piano. But her life was a cacophony of nonsense. A piece that could have gone in wonderful directions, but now went nowhere at all.

  Time slipped by. She stared into space.

  After the wine a realisation hit her with total clarity. She wasn’t made for this life.

  Every move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she’d imagined she’d be.

  Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved.

  Nothing.

  She couldn’t even manage ‘cat owner’. Or ‘one-hour-a-week piano tutor’. Or ‘human capable of conversation’.

  The tablets weren’t working.

  She finished the wine. All of it.

  ‘I miss you,’ she said into the air, as if the spirits of every person she’d loved were in the room with her.

  She called her brother and left a voicemail when he didn’t pick up.

  ‘I love you, Joe. I just wanted you to know that. There’s nothing you could have done. This is about me. Thank you for being my brother. I love you. Bye.’

  It began to rain again, so she sat
there with the blinds open, staring at the drops on the glass.

  The time was now twenty-two minutes past eleven.

  She knew only one thing with absolute certainty: she didn’t want to reach tomorrow. She stood up. She found a pen and a piece of paper.

  It was, she decided, a very good time to die.

  Dear Whoever,

  I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them. Through my own carelessness and misfortune, the world has retreated from me, and so now it makes perfect sense that I should retreat from the world.

  If I felt it was possible to stay, I would. But I don’t. And so I can’t. I make life worse for people.

  I have nothing to give. I’m sorry.

  Be kind to each other.

  Bye,

  Nora

  00:00:00

  At first the mist was so pervasive that she could see nothing else, until slowly she saw pillars appear on either side of her. She was standing on a path, some kind of colonnade. The columns were brain-grey, with specks of brilliant blue. The misty vapours cleared, like spirits wanting to be unwatched, and a shape emerged.

  A solid, rectangular shape.

  The shape of a building. About the size of a church or a small supermarket. It had a stone facade, the same colouration as the pillars, with a large wooden central door and a roof which had aspirations of grandeur, with intricate details and a grand-looking clock on the front gable, with black-painted Roman numerals and its hands pointing to midnight. Tall dark arched windows, framed with stone bricks, punctuated the front wall, equidistant from each other. When she first looked it seemed there were only four windows, but a moment later there were definitely five of them. She thought she must have miscounted.

  As there was nothing else around, and since she had nowhere else to be, Nora stepped cautiously towards it.

  She looked at the digital display of her watch.

  00:00:00

  Midnight, as the clock had told her.

  She waited for the next second to arrive, but it didn’t. Even as she walked closer to the building, even as she opened the wooden door, even as she stepped inside, the display didn’t change. Either something was wrong with her watch, or something was wrong with time. In the circumstances, it could have been either.