‘And . . . and the thing is . . . the thing is . . . what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn’t. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement – an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win. It’s all . . . bollocks, actually . . .’

The audience definitely looked uncomfortable now. Clearly this was not the speech they were expecting. She scanned the crowd and saw a single face smiling up at her. It took a second, given the fact that he was smartly dressed in a blue cotton shirt and with hair far shorter than it was in his Bedford life, for her to realise it was Ravi. This Ravi looked friendly, but she couldn’t shake the knowledge of the other Ravi, the one who had stormed out of the newsagent’s, sulking about not being able to afford a magazine and blaming her for it.

‘You see, I know that you were expecting my TED talk on the path to success. But the truth is that success is a delusion. It’s all a delusion. I mean, yes, there are things we can overcome. For instance, I am someone who gets stage fright and yet, here I am, on a stage. Look at me . . . on a stage! And someone told me recently, they told me that my problem isn’t actually stage fright. My problem is life fright. And you know what? They’re fucking right. Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn’t matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do. The damp rots the whole useless thing . . .’

Joe was desperately slicing his hand in the air around his neck, making a ‘cut it’ gesture.

‘Anyway, just be kind and . . . Just be kind. I have a feeling I am about to go, so I would just like to say I love my brother Joe. I love you, brother, and I love everyone in this room, and it was very nice to be here.’

And the moment she had said it was nice to be there, was also the moment she wasn’t there at all.

System Error

She arrived back in the Midnight Library.

But this time she was a little away from the bookshelves. This was the loosely defined office area she had glimpsed earlier, in one of the broader corridors. The desk was covered with administrative trays barely containing scattered piles of papers and boxes, and the computer.

The computer was a really old-fashioned-looking, cream-coloured boxy one on the desk by the papers. The kind that Mrs Elm would once have had in her school library. She was at the keyboard now, typing with urgency, staring at the monitor as Nora stood behind her.

The lights above – the same bare light bulbs hanging down from wires – were flickering wildly.

‘My dad was alive because of me. But he’d also had an affair, and my mum died earlier, and I got on with my brother because I had never let him down, but he was still the same brother, really, and he was only really okay with me in that life because I was helping him make money and . . . and . . . it wasn’t the Olympic dream I imagined. It was the same me. And something had happened in Portugal. I’d probably tried to kill myself or something . . . Are there any other lives at all or is it just the furnishings that change?’

But Mrs Elm wasn’t listening. Nora noticed something on the desk. An old plastic orange fountain pen. The exact same kind that Nora had once owned at school.

‘Hello? Mrs Elm, can you hear me?’

Something was wrong.

The librarian’s face was tight with worry. She read from the screen, to herself. ‘System error.’

‘Mrs Elm? Hello? Yoo-hoo! Can you see me?’

She tapped her shoulder. That seemed to do it.

Mrs Elm’s face broke out in massive relief as she turned away from the computer. ‘Oh Nora, you got here?’

‘Were you expecting me not to? Did you think that life would be the one I wanted to live?’

She shook her head without really moving it. If that was possible. ‘No. It’s not that. It’s just that it looked fragile.’

‘What looked fragile?’

‘The transfer.’

‘Transfer?’

‘From the book to here. The life you chose to here. It seems there is a problem. A problem with the whole system. Something beyond my immediate control. Something external.’

‘You mean, in my actual life?’

She stared back at the screen. ‘Yes. You see, the Midnight Library only exists because you do. In your root life.’

‘So, I’m dying?’

Mrs Elm looked exasperated. ‘It’s a possibility. That is to say, it’s a possibility that we are reaching the end of possibility.’

Nora thought of how good it had felt, swimming in the pool. How vital and alive. And then something happened inside her. A strange feeling. A pull in her stomach. A physical shift. A change in her. The idea of death suddenly troubled her. At that same time the lights stopped flickering overhead and shone brightly.

Mrs Elm clapped her hands as she absorbed new information on the computer screen.

‘Oh, it’s back. That’s good. The glitch is gone. We are running again. Thanks, I believe, to you.’

‘What?’

‘Well, the computer says the root cause within the host has been temporarily fixed. And you are the root cause. You are the host.’ She smiled. Nora blinked, and when she opened her eyes both she and Mrs Elm were standing in a different part of the library. Between stacks of bookshelves again. Standing, stiffly, awkwardly, facing each other.

‘Right. Now, settle,’ said Mrs Elm, before releasing a deep and meaningful exhale. She was clearly talking to herself.

‘My mum died on different dates in different lives. I’d like a life where she is still here. Does that life exist?’

Mrs Elm’s attention switched to Nora.

‘Maybe it does.’

‘Great.’

‘But you can’t get there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because this library is about your decisions. There was no choice you could have made that led to her being alive beyond yesterday. I’m sorry.’

A light bulb flickered above Nora’s head. But the rest of the library stayed as it was.

‘You need to think about something else, Nora. What was good about the last life?’

Nora nodded. ‘Swimming. I liked swimming. But I don’t think I was happy in that life. I don’t know if I am truly happy in any life.’

‘Is happiness the aim?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I want my life to mean something. I want to do something good.’

‘You once wanted to be a glaciologist,’ Mrs Elm appeared to remember.

‘Yeah.’

‘You used to talk about it. You said you were interested in the Arctic, so I suggested you become a glaciologist.’

‘I remember. I liked the sound of it straight away. My mum and dad never liked the idea, though.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t really know. They encouraged swimming. Well, Dad did. But anything that involved academic work, they were funny about.’

Nora felt a deep sadness, down in her stomach. From her arrival into life, she was considered by her parents in a different way to her brother.

‘Other than swimming, Joe was the one expected to pursue things,’ she told Mrs Elm. ‘My mum put me off anything that could take me away. Unlike Dad, she didn’t even push me to swim. But surely there must be a life where I didn’t listen to my mum and where I am now an Arctic researcher. Far away from everything. With a purpose. Helping the planet. Researching the impact of climate change. On the front line.’

‘So, you want me to find that life for you?’

Nora sighed. She still had no idea what she wanted. But at least the Arctic Circle would be different.

‘All right. Yes.’

Svalbard

She woke in a small bed in a little cabin on a boat. She knew it was a boat because it was rocking, and indeed the rocking, gentle as it was, had woken her up. The cabin was spare and basic. She was wearing a thick fleece sweater and long johns. Pulling back the blanket, she noticed that she had a headache. Her mouth was so dry her cheeks felt sucked-in against her teeth. She coughed a deep, chesty cough and felt a million pool-lengths away from the body of an Olympian. Her fingers smelt of tobacco. She sat up to see a pale-blonde, robust, hard-weathered woman sitting on another bed staring at her.

‘God morgen, Nora.’

She smiled. And hoped that in this life she wasn’t fluent in whichever Scandinavian language this woman spoke.

‘Good morning.’

She noticed a half-empty bottle of vodka and a mug on the floor beside the woman’s bed. A dog calendar (April: Springer Spaniel) was propped up on the chest between the beds. The three books on top of it were all in English. The one nearest to the woman said Principles of Glacier Mechanics. Two on Nora’s: A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic and a Penguin Classic edition of The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. She noticed something else. It was cold. Properly cold. The cold that almost burns, that hurts your fingers and toes and stiffens your cheeks. Even inside. With layers of thermal underwear. With a sweater on. With the bars of two electric heaters glowing orange. Every exhale made a cloud.

‘Why are you here, Nora?’ the woman asked, in heavily accented English.

A tricky question, when you didn’t know where ‘here’ was.