Nora thought of Voltaire. ‘Animals are good company . . .’

‘Yeah. You still want a dog?’

‘I do. Or a cat.’

‘Cats are too disobedient,’ he said, sounding like the brother she remembered. ‘Dogs know their place.’

‘Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.’

He looked perplexed. ‘Where did that come from? Is that a quote?’

‘Yeah. Henry David Thoreau. You know, my fave philosopher.’

‘Since when were you into philosophy?’

Of course. In this life she’d never have done a Philosophy degree. While her root self had been reading the works of Thoreau and Lao Tzu and Sartre in a stinky student flat in Bristol, her current self had been standing on Olympic podiums in Beijing. Weirdly, she felt just as sad for the version of her who had never fallen in love with the simple beauty of Thoreau’s Walden, or the stoical Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, as she had felt sympathy for the version of her who never fulfilled her Olympic potential.

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . I just came across some of his stuff on the internet.’

‘Ah. Cool. Will check him out. You could drop some of that into your speech.’

Nora felt herself go pale. ‘Um, I’m thinking of maybe doing something a little different today. I might, um, improvise a little.’

Improvising was, after all, a skill she’d been practising.

‘I saw this great documentary about Greenland the other night. Made me remember when you were obsessed with the Arctic and you cut out all those pictures of polar bears and stuff.’

‘Yeah. Mrs Elm said the best way to be an arctic explorer was to be a glaciologist. So that’s what I wanted to be.’

‘Mrs Elm,’ he whispered. ‘That rings a bell.’

‘School librarian.’

‘That was it. You used to live in that library, didn’t you?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Just think, if you hadn’t stuck with swimming, you’d be in Greenland right now.’

‘Svalbard,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s a Norwegian archipelago. Way up in the Arctic Ocean.’

‘Okay, Norway then. You’d be there.’

‘Maybe. Or maybe I’d just still be in Bedford. Moping around. Unemployed. Struggling to pay the rent.’

‘Don’t be daft. You’d have always done something big.’

She smiled at her elder brother’s innocence. ‘In some lives me and you might not even get on.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘I hope so.’

Joe seemed a bit uncomfortable, and clearly wanted to change the topic.

‘Hey, guess who I saw the other day?’

Nora shrugged, hoping it was going to be someone she’d heard of.

‘Ravi. Do you remember Ravi?’

She thought of Ravi, telling her off in the newsagent’s only yesterday. ‘Oh yeah. Ravi.’

‘Well, I bumped into him.’

‘In Bedford?’

‘Ha! God, no. Haven’t been there for years. No. It was at Blackfriars station. Totally random. Like, I haven’t seen him in over a decade. At least. He wanted to go to the pub. So, I explained I was teetotal now, and then I got into having to explain I’d been an alcoholic. And all of that. That I hadn’t had a glass of wine or a puff on a joint in years.’ Nora nodded as if this wasn’t a bomb-shell. ‘Since I got into a mess after Mum died. I think he was like, “Who is this guy?” But he was fine. He was cool. He’s working as a cameraman now. Still doing some music on the side. Not rock stuff. DJ-ing apparently. Remember that band me and him had, years ago. The Labyrinths?’

It was becoming easier to fake vagueness. ‘Oh yeah. The Labyrinths. Course. That’s a blast from the past.’

‘Yeah. Got the sense he pines for those days. Even though we were crap and I couldn’t sing.’

‘What about you? Do you ever think about what could have been if The Labyrinths had made it big?’

He laughed, a little sadly. ‘I don’t know if anything could have been.’

‘Maybe you needed an extra person. I used to play those keyboards Mum and Dad got you.’

‘Did you? When did you have time for that?’

A life without music. A life without reading the books she had loved.

But also: a life where she got on with her brother. A life where she hadn’t had to let him down.

‘Anyway, Ravi wanted to say hi. And wanted a catch-up. He only works one tube stop away. So he’s going to try and come to the talk.’

‘What? Oh. That’s . . . I wish he wouldn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘I just never really liked him.’

Joe frowned. ‘Really? I can’t remember you saying that . . . He’s okay. A good guy. Bit of a waster, maybe, back in the day, but he seems to have got his act together a bit . . .’

Nora was unsettled. ‘Joe?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You know when Mum died?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where was I?’

‘What do you mean? Are you okay today, sis? Are the new tablets working?’