‘Yes! He’s funny! And he gave me Panda!’

‘Panda?’

‘My best cuddly!’

‘Pandas are bears too.’

‘Nice bears.’

Molly yawned. She was getting sleepy.

‘Do Mummy and Uncle Joe like each other?’

‘Yes! You always talk on the phone!’

This was interesting. Nora had assumed that the only lives in which she still got on with her brother were the lives in which she had never been in The Labyrinths (unlike her decision to keep swimming, the coffee date with Ash post-dated her experience in The Labyrinths). But this was throwing that theory. Nora couldn’t help but wonder if this lovely Molly herself was the missing link. Maybe this little girl in front of her had healed the rift between her and her brother.

‘Do you have grandparents?’

‘Only Grandma Sal.’

Nora wanted to ask more about her own parents’ deaths, but this probably wasn’t the time.

‘Are you happy? I mean, when you aren’t thinking about bears?’

‘I think so.’

‘Are Mummy and Daddy happy?’

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly. ‘Sometimes. When you are not tired!’

‘And do we have lots of fun times?’

She rubbed her eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘And do we have any pets?’

‘Yes. Plato.’

‘And who is Plato?’

‘Our dog.’

‘And what type of dog is Plato?’

But she got no answer, because Molly was asleep. And Nora lay there, on the carpet, and closed her eyes.

When she woke up, a tongue was licking her face.

A Labrador with smiling eyes and a waggy tail seemed amused or excited to see her.

‘Plato?’ she asked, sleepily.

That’s me, Plato seemed to wag.

It was morning. Light flooded through the curtains now. Cuddly toys – including Panda, and the elephant Nora had identified earlier – littered the floor. She looked at the bed and saw it was empty. Molly wasn’t in the room. And there were feet – heavier feet than Molly’s – coming up the stairs.

She sat up and knew she must look terrible after sleeping on the carpet in a baggy Cure T-shirt (which she recognised) and tartan pyjama bottoms (which she didn’t). She felt her face and it was creased from where she had been lying, and her hair – which was longer in this life – felt dirty and bedraggled. She tried to make herself look as presentable as it was possible to look in the two seconds before the arrival of a man she simultaneously slept with every night and also hadn’t ever slept with. Schr?dinger’s husband, so to speak.

And then, suddenly, there he was.

The Perfect Life

Ash’s gangly handsome boyishness had only been modestly dented by fatherhood. If anything, he looked healthier than he had done on her doorstep and, like then, he was wearing running gear – though here the clothes seemed a bit fancier and more expensive, and he had some kind of fitness tracker attached to his arm.

He was smiling and holding two cups of coffee, one of which was for Nora. She wondered how many coffees they had shared together, since the first.

‘Oh, thank you.’

‘Oh no, Nor, did you sleep in here all night?’ he asked.

Nor.

‘Most of it. I meant to go back to bed but Molly was in a state. I had to calm her and then I was too tired to move.’

‘Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear her.’ He seemed genuinely sad. ‘It was probably my fault. I showed her some bears on YouTube yesterday before work.’

‘No worries.’

‘Anyway, I’ve walked Plato. I’m not in the hospital till midday today. It’s going to be a late one. Are you still wanting to go into the library today?’

‘Oh. You know what? I might give it a miss.’

‘Okay, well, I got Mol some brekkie and will drop her off at school.’

‘I can take Molly,’ said Nora. ‘If you’ve got a big day.’

‘Oh, it’s an okay one. A gall bladder and a pancreas so far. Easy street. Am going to get a run in.’

‘Right. Yes. ’Course. For the half-marathon on Sunday.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter,’ Nora said, ‘I’m just delirious from sleeping on the floor.’

‘No worries. Anyway, my sister phoned. They want her to illustrate the calendar for Kew Gardens. Lots of plants. She’s really pleased.’

He smiled. He seemed happy for this sister of his who Nora had never heard of. She wanted to thank him for being so good about her dead cat, but she obviously couldn’t so she just said, ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘Just, you know, everything.’

‘Oh. Right. Okay.’

‘So, thank you.’

He nodded. ‘That’s nice. Anyway, run time.’

He drained his coffee and then disappeared. Nora scanned the room, absorbing every new piece of information. Every cuddly toy and book and plug socket, as if they were all part of the jigsaw of her life.

An hour later, Molly was being dropped off at her infant school and Nora was doing the usual. Checking her emails and social media. Her social media activity wasn’t great in this life, which was always a promising sign, but she did have a hell of a lot of emails. From these emails she divined that she was not simply ‘stopping’ teaching at the moment but had officially stopped. She was on a sabbatical in order to write a book about Henry David Thoreau and his relevance for the modern-day environmentalist movement. Later in the year she planned to visit Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, funded by a research grant.