The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(72)

Wilbur was genuinely upset. ‘I had no idea.’

‘It’s okay. It was actually good, in the end. On the edge of death, I … had an experience that made me see things differently.’ She took a breath. ‘I realised that somewhere out there I was all the things I wasn’t. And I realised that if you aim to be something you are not, you will fail. So I had to be who I was. The only way to learn is to live, it’s as simple as that.’

‘The only way to learn is to live,’ echoed Wilbur, almost in a whisper.

The Dreamer looked at the Ghost as if he had solved a riddle. ‘That was our problem,’ he told him, looking into the Wilbur-on-honeymoon face so like his own. ‘Your problem. Trying to be someone that wasn’t really you.’

The Ghost realised he should have felt sad at this. After all, he had lived a life without being able to appreciate it. He had lost love and friendship along the way, but the bigger tragedy would have been to never have known those things at all. Life was about moments as much as it was about decades. And there had been some exceptional ones. Yes, he felt sad that he had squandered so many things, but there was no point running away from that sadness. Running away from sadness had been his whole problem. That was how he had shrunk a life while pretending to expand it. That was how he became a failure pretending it was success. So, yes, the Ghost was sad now. But he had once kissed Maggie under a Venetian moon. And just knowing that was a match for eternity.

He watched his eighty-one-year-old self looking out of his window.

The gardener, Josh, had arrived and was unpacking some equipment. Wilbur felt a twinge of pain in his chest, and winced a little.

‘Are you okay?’ Nora asked. Her face was pure concern. The purest he had seen in decades.

‘Yes,’ he smiled, trying to ease her worry. ‘And listen, Nora, I’m very proud of you. That you already know that life is not a race to be won.’ He stared out at Josh, pulling up weeds from a flowerbed. ‘I let Maggie down. I neglected her.’

Nora held his hand across the table. ‘But don’t be hard on yourself. You don’t know anything would have been better.’

‘That’s true. And you’re right. There is no perfect life. You though are in the centre of yourself. I feel I lived at the far reaches. I should have been closer. I was the luckiest man alive. I just couldn’t see it …’

Nora smiled kindly. ‘Well, maybe somewhere out there Maggie lived a million happy lives. With you. Without you. And you too. Those other lives are all real too. They’re all happening at once. And who knows what is after all this? Who knows what chances we get?’

Wilbur smiled a small but honest smile. ‘Thank you, Nora.’

A car pulled up outside. A minute later, the doorbell rang.

Nora laughed as she stared over at the piano. ‘Sorry about that. We haven’t had much of a lesson today.’

‘I beg to differ,’ said Wilbur. ‘I really think we have.’

For a short moment, the Wilbur who had died stood beside the Wilbur who was dreaming. The Ghost looked over at his younger self. ‘Please, be a little braver than I was. Dare to live life as it happens. Dare to love fully.’

The Dreamer nodded. He looked at his own wedding photo above the ridiculously futuristic piano. ‘I will. I promise.’

And they waited for the Midnight Train, but it didn’t come.

There was a little more for them to see.





Infinite Space


They watched Wilbur standing on the driveway. Well, the Ghost was watching Wilbur on the driveway as he waved goodbye to Nora. His dreaming consort, on the other hand, was looking saucer-eyed over at Josh on the tractor-mower in the distance.

‘Bloody hell, this place is massive.’

‘It is. The whole garden is five acres. That includes the lawn, the drive, the woodland, the tennis court …’

‘Tennis court? But you had no one to play tennis with.’

‘I know. Exactly.’

‘And you live here? What about London?’

‘I’d had enough of London.’

‘“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”’

‘Don’t Samuel Johnson me, Dreamer,’ he said, as cross as an old dead man tends to be with his younger self. ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of London. London wasn’t the answer for us either. It’s never about the place. It’s about the reason that drives you to the place. My reason for London was work and ambition. Both of which had become a drug to soothe the pain … Then, after Maggie left me, London itself had become a place of pain, so I ran away again.’

The unseen watchers now turned their attention to Nora as she opened the door to her brother’s Vauxhall Corsa, parked on the gravel driveway at the rear of the large manor house. They saw Joe Seed and his partner Ewan in the car, looking in wonder at the vast garden.

The old living Wilbur had, of course, walked out of the house to see her off. And gave a little wave to Joe in the driver’s seat. ‘Have a good time tonight in Cambridge.’

Nora smiled in the sunshine. ‘I will. And thanks for the conversation. Remember what I said, don’t try and rush it when you play. Take your time … Slow and steady. You’ll get there in the end.’

‘Yes,’ said Wilbur. ‘I suppose I will.’