‘But that’s what happens, isn’t it? I pick a regret. Something I wished I had done differently . . . And then you find the book, I open the book, and I live the book. That’s how this library works, right?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why? Is there a transference problem? You know, like what happened before?’

Mrs Elm looked at her, sadly. ‘It’s more than that. There was always a strong possibility that your old life would end. I told you that, didn’t I? You wanted to die and maybe you would.’

‘Yes, but you said I just needed somewhere to go to. “Somewhere to land”, that’s what you said. “Another life.” Those exact words. And all I needed to do was think hard enough and choose the right life and—’

‘I know. I know. But it didn’t work out like that.’

The ceiling was falling down now, in pieces, as if the plaster was no more stable than the icing of a wedding cake.

Nora noticed something even more distressing. A spark flew from one of the lights and landed on a book, which consequently ignited into a glowing burst of fire. Pretty soon the fire was spreading along the entire shelf, the books burning as rapidly as if they were doused in petrol. A whole stream of hot, raging, roaring amber. Then another spark arced towards a different shelf and that too set alight. At about the same time a large chunk of dusty ceiling landed by Nora’s feet.

‘Under the table!’ ordered Mrs Elm. ‘Now!’

Nora hunched down and followed Mrs Elm – who was now on all fours – under the table, where she sat on her knees and was forced, like Mrs Elm, to keep her head down.

‘Why can’t you stop this?’

‘It’s a chain reaction now. Those sparks aren’t random. The books are going to be destroyed. And then, just as inevitably, the whole place is going to collapse.’

‘Why? I don’t understand. I was there. I had found the life for me. The only life for me. The best one in here . . .’

‘But that’s the problem,’ said Mrs Elm, nervously looking out from beneath the wooden legs of the table as more shelves caught on fire and as debris fell all around them. ‘It still wasn’t enough. Look!’

‘At what?’

‘At your watch. Any moment now.’

So Nora looked, and at first saw nothing untoward – but then it was happening. The watch was suddenly acting like a watch. The display was starting to move.

00:00:00

00:00:01

00:00:02

‘What’s happening?’ Nora asked, realising that whatever it was probably wasn’t good.

‘Time. That’s what’s happening.’

‘How are we going to leave this place?’

00:00:09

00:00:10

‘We’re not,’ said Mrs Elm. ‘There’s no we. I can’t leave the library. When the library disappears, so do I. But there is a chance that you can get out, though you don’t have long. No more than a minute . . .’

Nora had just lost one Mrs Elm, she didn’t want to lose this one too. Mrs Elm could see her distress.

‘Listen. I am part of the library. But this whole library is part of you. Do you understand? You don’t exist because of the library; this library exists because of you. Remember what Hugo said? He told you that this is the simplest way your brain translates the strange and multifarious reality of the universe. So, this is just your brain translating something. Something significant and dangerous.’

‘I gathered that.’

‘But one thing is clear: you didn’t want that life.’

‘It was the perfect life.’

‘Did you feel that? All the time?’

‘Yes. I mean . . . I wanted to. I mean, I loved Molly. I might have loved Ash. But I suppose, maybe . . . it wasn’t my life. I hadn’t made it by myself. I had walked into this other version of me. I was carbon-copied into the perfect life. But it wasn’t me.’

00:00:15

‘I don’t want to die,’ said Nora, her voice suddenly raised but also fragile. She was shaking from her very core. ‘I don’t want to die.’

Mrs Elm looked at her with wide eyes. Eyes shining with the small flame of an idea. ‘You need to get out of here.’

‘I can’t! The library goes on for bloody ever. The moment I walked in it, the entrance disappeared.’

‘Then you have to find it again.’

‘How? There are no doors.’

‘Who needs a door when you have a book?’

‘The books are all on fire.’

‘There’s one that won’t be. That’s the one you need to find.’

‘The Book of Regrets?’

Mrs Elm almost laughed. ‘No. That is the last book you need. That will be ash by now. That will have been the first book to burn. You need to go that way!’ She pointed to her left, to chaos and fire and falling plaster. ‘It’s the eleventh aisle that way. Third shelf from the bottom.’

‘The whole place is going to fall down!’

00:00:21

00:00:22

00:00:23

‘Don’t you get it, Nora?’

‘Get what?’

‘It all makes sense. You came back here this time not because you wanted to die, but because you want to live. This library isn’t falling down because it wants to kill you. It’s falling down because it is giving you a chance to return. Something decisive has finally happened. You have decided you want to be alive. Now go on, live, while you still have the chance.’

‘But . . . what about you? What’s going to happen to you?’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I promise you. I won’t feel a thing.’ And then she said what the real Mrs Elm had said when she had hugged Nora back at the school library on the day her dad had died. ‘Things will get better, Nora. It’s going to be all right.’

Mrs Elm placed a hand above the desk and hastily rummaged for something. A second later she was handing Nora an orange plastic fountain pen. The kind Nora had owned at school. The one she had noticed ages ago.

‘You’ll need this.’

‘Why?’

‘This one isn’t already written. You have to start this.’

Nora took the pen.

‘Bye, Mrs Elm.’

A second later, a massive chunk of ceiling slammed onto the table. A thick cloud of plaster dust clouded them, choking them.

00:00:34

00:00:35

‘Go,’ coughed Mrs Elm. ‘Live.’

Don’t You Dare Give Up, Nora Seed!

Nora walked through the haze of dust and smoke in the direction Mrs Elm had pointed towards, as the ceiling continued to fall.

It was hard to breathe, and to see, but she had just about managed to keep count of the aisles. Sparks from the lights fell onto her head.

The dust stuck in her throat, nearly causing her to vomit. But even in the powdery fog she could see that most of the books were now ablaze. In fact, none of the shelves of books seemed intact, and the heat felt like a force. Some of the earliest shelves and books to set on fire were now nothing but ash.

Just as she reached the eleventh aisle she was hit hard by a chunk of falling debris that floored her.

Pressed under rock, she felt the pen slip out of her hand and slide away from her.

Her first attempt to free herself was unsuccessful.

This is it. I am going to die, whether I want to or not. I am going to die.

The library was a wasteland.

00:00:41

00:00:42

It was all over.

She was certain of it once more. She was going to die here, as all her possible lives were ravished all around her.

But then she saw it, amid a brief clearing in the clouds. There, on the eleventh aisle that way. Third shelf from the bottom.

A gap in the fire that was consuming every other book on the shelf.

I don’t want to die.

She had to try harder. She had to want the life she always thought she didn’t. Because just as this library was a part of her, so too were all the other lives. She might not have felt everything she had felt in those lives, but she had the capability. She might have missed those particular opportunities that led her to become an Olympic swimmer, or a traveller, or a vineyard owner, or a rock star, or a planet-saving glaciologist, or a Cambridge graduate, or a mother, or the million other things, but she was still in some way all those people. They were all her. She could have been all those amazing things, and that wasn’t depressing, as she had once thought. Not at all. It was inspiring. Because now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work. And that, actually, the life she had been living had its own logic to it. Her brother was alive. Izzy was alive. And she had helped a young boy stay out of trouble. What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind. She didn’t need a vineyard or a Californian sunset to be happy. She didn’t even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.

She heard Mrs Elm’s voice, from under the table somewhere far behind her, cutting through the noise.

‘Don’t give up! Don’t you dare give up, Nora Seed!’

She didn’t want to die. And she didn’t want to live any other life than the one that was hers. The one that could be a messy struggle, but it was her messy struggle. A beautiful messy struggle.

00:00:52

00:00:53