‘What’s the matter?’ Nora asked the receptionist.

‘I’m ever so sorry to tell you this, but Louise Elm is no longer here.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She . . . actually, she died three weeks ago.’

At first she thought it must be an admin error. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid I am very sure.’

‘Oh,’ said Nora. She didn’t really know what to say, or to feel. She looked down at her tote bag that had sat beside her in the car. A bag containing the chess set she had brought to play a game with her, and to keep her company. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t . . . You see, I haven’t seen her for years. Years and years. But I heard from someone who said that she was here . . .’

‘So sorry,’ the receptionist said.

‘No. No worries. I just wanted to thank her. For being so kind to me.’

‘She died very peacefully,’ he said, ‘literally in her sleep.’

And Nora smiled and retreated politely away. ‘That’s good. Thank you. Thank you for looking after her. I’ll just go now. Bye . . .’

An Incident With the Police

She stepped back out onto Shakespeare Road with her bag and her chess set and she really didn’t know what to do. There were tingles through her body. Not quite pins and needles. More that strange, fuzzy static feeling she had felt before when she was nearing the end of a particular existence.

Trying to ignore the feeling in her body, she headed in the vague direction of the car park. She passed her old garden flat at 33A Bancroft Avenue. A man she had never seen before was taking a box of recycling out. She thought of the lovely house in Cambridge she now had and couldn’t help but compare it to this shabby flat on a litter-strewn street. The tingles subsided a little. She passed Mr Banerjee’s house, or what had been Mr Banerjee’s house, and saw the only owned house on the street that hadn’t been divided into flats, though now it looked very different. The small front lawn was overgrown, and there was no sign of the clematis or busy lizzies in pots that Nora had watered for him last summer when he’d been recovering from his hip surgery.

On the pavement she noticed a couple of crumpled lager cans.

She saw a woman with a blonde bob and tanned skin walking towards her on the pavement with two small children in a double pushchair. She looked exhausted. It was the woman she had spoken to in the newsagent’s the day she had decided to die. The one who had seemed happy and relaxed. Kerry-Anne. She hadn’t noticed Nora because one child was wailing and she was trying to pacify the distressed, red-cheeked boy by waving a plastic dinosaur in front of him.

Me and Jake were like rabbits but we got there. Two little terrors. But worth it, y’know? I just feel complete. I could show you some pictures . . .

Then Kerry-Anne looked up and saw Nora.

‘I know you, don’t I? Is it Nora?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hi Nora.’

‘Hi Kerry-Anne.’

‘You remember my name? Oh wow. I was in awe of you in school. You seemed to have it all. Did you ever make the Olympics?’

‘Yes, actually. Kind of. One me did. But it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. But then, what is? Right?’

Kerry-Anne seemed momentarily confused. And then her son threw the dinosaur onto the pavement and it landed next to one of the crumpled cans. ‘Right.’

Nora picked up the dinosaur – a stegosaurus, on close inspection – and handed it to Kerry-Anne, who smiled her gratitude and headed into the house that should have belonged to Mr Banerjee, just as the boy descended into a full tantrum.

‘Bye,’ said Nora.

‘Yeah. Bye.’

And Nora wondered what the difference had been. What had forced Mr Banerjee to go to the care home he’d been determined not to go to? She was the only difference between the two Mr Banerjees but what was that difference? What had she done? Set up an online shop? Picked up his prescription a few times?

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

She stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom – equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.

Then someone appeared at her own window. A woman who wasn’t her, holding a cat that wasn’t Voltaire.

This was her hope, anyway, even as she began to feel faint and fuzzy again.

She headed into town. Walked down the high street.

Yes, she was different now. She was stronger. She had untapped things inside her. Things she might never have known about if she’d never sung in an arena or fought off a polar bear or felt so much love and fear and courage.

There was a commotion outside Boots. Two boys were being arrested by police officers as a nearby store detective spoke into a walkie-talkie.

She recognised one of the boys and went up to him.

‘Leo?’

A police officer motioned for her to back away.

‘Who are you?’ Leo asked.