‘The science isn’t entirely settled on the matter.’

‘Okay. Bien. Name me one of the glaciers around here. Glaciers have names. Name one . . . Kongsbreen? Nathorstbreen? Ring any bells?’

‘I don’t want this conversation.’

‘Because you aren’t the same person you were yesterday, are you?’

‘None of us are,’ said Nora, briskly. ‘Our brains change. It’s called neuroplasticity. Please. Stop mansplaining glaciers to a glaciologist, Hugo.’

Hugo seemed to retreat a little and she felt a bit guilty. There was a minute of silence. Just the crunch of their feet in the snow. They were nearly back at the accommodation, the others not too far behind them.

But then, he said it.

‘I am like you, Nora. I visit lives that aren’t mine. I have been in this one for five days. But I have been in many others. I was given an opportunity – a rare opportunity – for this to happen. I have been sliding between lives for a long while.’

Ingrid grabbed Nora’s arm.

‘I still have some vodka,’ she announced as they reached the door. She held her key card in her glove and tapped it against the scanner. The door opened.

‘Listen,’ Hugo mumbled, conspiratorially, ‘if you want to know more, meet me in the communal kitchen in five minutes.’

And Nora felt her heart race, but this time she had no ladle or saucepan to bang. She didn’t particularly like this Hugo character, but was far too intrigued not to hear what he had to say. And she also wanted to know if he could be trusted.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there.’

Expectation

Nora had always had a problem accepting herself. From as far back as she could remember, she’d had the sense that she wasn’t enough. Her parents, who both had their own insecurities, had encouraged that idea.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn’t reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed.

She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale.

She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best.

And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.

Life and Death and the Quantum Wave Function

With Hugo, it wasn’t a library.

‘It’s a video store,’ he said, leaning against the cheap-looking cupboard where the coffee was kept. ‘It looks exactly like a video store I used to go to in the outskirts of Lyon – Video Lumière – where I grew up. The Lumière brothers are heroes in Lyon and there’s a lot of things named after them. They invented cinema there. Anyway, that is beside the point: the point is that every life I choose is an old VHS that I play right in the store, and the moment it starts – the moment the movie starts – is the moment I disappear.’

Nora suppressed a giggle.

‘What’s so funny?’ Hugo wondered, a little hurt.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. It just seemed mildly amusing. A video store.’

‘Oh? And a library, that is entirely sensible?’

‘More sensible, yes. I mean, at least you can still use books. Who plays videos these days?’

‘Interesting. I had no idea there was such a thing as between-life snobbery. You are an education.’

‘Sorry, Hugo. Okay, I will ask a sensible question. Is there anyone else there? A person who helps you choose each life?’

He nodded. ‘Oh yeah. It’s my Uncle Philippe. He died years ago. And he never even worked in a video store. It’s so illogical.’

Nora told him about Mrs Elm.

‘A school librarian?’ mocked Hugo. ‘That’s pretty funny too.’

Nora ignored him. ‘Do you reckon they’re ghosts? Guiding spirits? Guardian angels? What are they?’

It felt so ludicrous, in the heart of a scientific facility, to be talking like this.

‘They are,’ Hugo gestured, as if trying to pluck the right term from the air, ‘an interpretation.’

‘Interpretation?’

‘I have met others like us,’ Hugo said. ‘You see, I have been in the in-between state for a long time. I have encountered a few other sliders. That’s what I call them. Us. We are sliders. We have a root life in which we are lying somewhere, unconscious, suspended between life and death, and then we arrive in a place. And it is always something different. A library, a video store, an art gallery, a casino, a restaurant . . . What does that tell you?’

Nora shrugged. And thought. Listening to the hum of the central heating. ‘That it’s all bullshit? That none of this is real?’

‘No. Because the template is always the same. For instance: there is always someone else there – a guide. Only ever one person. They are always someone who has helped the person at a significant time in their life. The setting is always somewhere with emotional significance. And there is usually talk of root lives or branches.’

Nora thought about being consoled by Mrs Elm when her dad died. Staying with her, comforting her. It was probably the most kindness anyone had ever shown her.