Fish get depression. They had done tests with zebrafish. They had a fish tank and they drew a horizontal line on the side of it, halfway down, in marker pen. Depressed fish stayed below the line. But give those same fish Prozac and they go above the line, to the top of their tanks, darting about like new.

Fish get depressed when they have a lack of stimulation. A lack of everything. When they are just there, floating in a tank that resembles nothing at all.

Maybe Australia had been her empty fish tank, once Izzy had gone. Maybe she just had no incentive to swim above the line. And maybe even Prozac – or fluoxetine – wasn’t enough to help her rise up. So she was just going to stay there in that flat, with Jojo, and never move until she was made to leave the country.

Maybe even suicide would have been too active. Maybe in some lives you just float around and expect nothing else and don’t even try to change. Maybe that was most lives.

‘Yes,’ said Nora, aloud now. ‘Maybe I got stuck. Maybe in every life I am stuck. I mean, maybe that’s just who I am. A starfish in every life is still a starfish. There isn’t a life where a starfish is a professor of aerospace engineering. And maybe there isn’t a life where I’m not stuck.’

‘Well, I think you are wrong.’

‘Okay, then. I would like to try the life where I am not stuck. What life would that be?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to tell me?’

Mrs Elm moved a queen to take a pawn, then turned the board around. ‘I’m afraid I am just the librarian.’

‘Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.’

‘Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear.’

‘I haven’t got the stamina. I don’t think I can do this.’

‘The only way to learn is to live.’

‘Yes. So you keep saying.’

Nora exhaled heavily. It was interesting to know that she could exhale in the library. That she felt entirely in her body. That it felt normal. Because this place was definitely not normal. And the real physical her wasn’t here. It couldn’t be. And yet it was, to all intents and purposes, because she was – in some sense – there. Standing on a floor, as if gravity still existed.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I would like a life where I am successful.’

Mrs Elm tutted disapprovingly. ‘For someone who has read a lot of books, you aren’t very specific with your choice of words.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Success. What does that mean to you? Money?’

‘No. Well, maybe. But that wouldn’t be the defining feature.’

‘Well, then, what is success?’

Nora had no idea what success was. She had felt like a failure for so long.

Mrs Elm smiled, patiently. ‘Would you like to consult again with The Book of Regrets? Would you like to think about those bad decisions that turned you away from whatever you feel success is?’

Nora shook her head quickly, like a dog shaking off water. She didn’t want to be confronted with that long interminable list of mistakes and wrong turns again. She was depressed enough. And besides, she knew her regrets. Regrets don’t leave. They weren’t mosquito bites. They itch for ever.

‘No, they don’t,’ said Mrs Elm, reading her mind. ‘You don’t regret how you were with your cat. And nor do you regret not going to Australia with Izzy.’

Nora nodded. Mrs Elm had a point.

She thought of swimming in the pool at Bronte Beach. How good that had felt, in its strange familiarity.

‘From an early age you were encouraged to swim,’ said Mrs Elm.

‘Yes.’

‘Your dad was always happy to take you to the pool.’

‘It was one of the few things that had made him happy,’ Nora mused.

She had associated swimming with her father’s approval and enjoyed the wordlessness of being in the water because it was the opposite of her parents screaming at each other.

‘Why did you quit?’ asked Mrs Elm.

‘As soon as I started winning swimming races, I became seen and I didn’t want to be seen. And not only seen but seen in a swimsuit at the exact age you are self-obsessing about your body. Someone said I had boy’s shoulders. It was a stupid thing but there were lots of stupid things and you feel them all at that age. As a teenager I’d have happily been invisible. People called me “The Fish”. They didn’t mean it as a compliment. I was shy. It was one of the reasons why I preferred the library to the playing field. It seems a small thing, but it really helped, having that space.’

‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things,’ Mrs Elm said. ‘You must always remember that.’

Nora thought back. Her teenage combination of shyness and visibility had been a problematic mix, but she was never bullied, as such, probably because everyone knew her brother. And Joe, while never exactly tough, was always considered cool and popular enough for his most immediate blood relation to be immune to schoolyard tyranny.

She won races in local and then national competitions, but as she reached fifteen it became too much. The daily swims, length after length after length.