She had expected to discover what lay beyond the forbidden door. She had not considered that the more difficult question might be which of her lives had brought her there.
Émilie did not sleep particularly well after the evening of the empty place.
She had remained at the dining table until the candles were extinguished, although she could not remember extinguishing them. She had sat opposite the unoccupied chair, her hand resting upon the polished wood, and experienced an affection of such peculiar intensity that she had eventually begun to weep.
There had been no apparent object of her affection.
This troubled her.
She was accustomed to distinguishing an emotion from the circumstances that occasioned it. Fear did not establish danger. Conviction did not establish truth. The experience of being understood did not establish the existence of someone doing the understanding.
She had explained these distinctions to herself repeatedly.
Nevertheless, the sensation had been real.
More disturbing still, it had possessed a quality she recognised.
She had known it as a child, when she woke from a nightmare and heard her mother moving in the adjoining room. She had known it during the early years of her relationship with Julien, when she could lie beside him without speaking and feel no obligation to account for her presence. She had known it, briefly and unexpectedly, when Madeleine Delorme had adjusted the linen at her shoulder before the first renunciation.
Each experience had contained the reassurance of another person's existence.
At the empty place there had been no other person.
Yet the reassurance remained.
By morning she had begun to suspect that the experience was less an encounter with something external than a disturbance in the ordinary organisation of attachment.
She did not regard this as an explanation.
It was merely a more precise description of her ignorance.
At breakfast she found Madame Delorme seated beside the window.
There were two cups upon the table.
Madeleine looked up.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Not very well.”
“I'm sorry.”
Émilie sat opposite her.
For several moments she examined the older woman's face. The expression was familiar: attentive, composed, without any of the theatrical solicitude with which people sometimes responded to another person's distress.
Émilie had become aware that she liked this face.
She liked the small lines beside the eyes, the fine structure of the cheekbones, and the slight asymmetry of the mouth when Madeleine smiled. She liked the deliberate way in which the older woman moved her hands. She had begun to recognise her footsteps.
These were ordinary forms of attraction.
They reassured her.
“I think I should speak to Renaud,” she said.
“About the experiences at dinner?”
“Among other things.”
“That seems sensible.”
“You don't object?”
Madeleine looked mildly surprised.
“Why should I?”
“Because he may conclude that I'm suffering from some neurological or psychiatric disorder.”
“He may.”
“And that my experiences have nothing to do with the House.”
“That would be useful to know.”
Émilie regarded her.
“You're unusually willing to have your mysteries explained away.”
“I don't consider them mine.”
“Whose are they?”
“I don't know.”
It was an answer Émilie had learned to expect.
This time she found it comforting.
Madeleine poured coffee.
“Would you prefer to speak to him privately?”
“Yes.”
“I'll ask whether he's available.”
Émilie reached across the table and placed her hand upon Madeleine's.
The gesture surprised them both, although neither withdrew.
“I also wanted to see you.”
Madeleine looked at their hands.
“That is a different matter.”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to discuss it?”
“Not just now.”
“Very well.”
Émilie felt the familiar disappointment.
She wanted to be questioned. She wanted Madeleine to insist upon hearing what she had not quite found the courage to say.
Instead the older woman accepted her decision.
It occurred to Émilie that this was precisely what she ought to want.
She did not find the recognition helpful.
Renaud received her in a small consulting room adjoining the library.
He had been a neurologist before coming to the House, although he explained that his work had included considerable involvement with psychiatric disorders, particularly those affecting memory and autobiographical identity.
The room contained a desk, an examination couch and a cabinet of instruments. There was a modern blood-pressure monitor, a reflex hammer, a set of tuning forks and a laptop computer.
Émilie found their presence reassuring.
She was less reassured by the absence of a calendar.
Renaud invited her to sit.
“Madame Delorme tells me you've been experiencing some unusual recollections.”
“Yes.”
“Would you describe them?”
Émilie gave him a careful account of the empty place, the sense of attachment, and the increasingly persistent impression that she possessed memories of relationships she had never formed.
She described a woman whose face she could recall with extraordinary precision, though she could not establish whether she had ever met her.
She described a little girl whose name came readily to mind.
“Anaïs,” she said.
“Do you know anyone by that name?”
“No.”
“Have you known anyone?”
“Not that I remember.”
“How old is she?”
“Seven.”
Renaud waited.
Émilie closed her eyes.
“She has dark hair. She dislikes having it brushed. She insists upon sleeping with a small wooden horse that belonged to her father.”
“Do you know her father?”
Émilie opened her eyes.
“Julien.”
“Your former partner?”
“Yes.”
Renaud made a note.
“Did you have children together?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Entirely.”
He considered this.
“Tell me what you mean when you say you remember the child.”
Émilie thought carefully.
“I remember carrying her when she was ill. I remember the weight of her against my shoulder. I remember the smell of the medicine she refused to take. I remember being annoyed because Julien had promised to collect her from school and forgotten.”
“Are these memories accompanied by images?”
“Some.”
“Emotions?”
“Yes.”
“Do they seem different from ordinary recollections?”
“No.”
“Then how do you distinguish them?”
“By their incompatibility with the life I know I've lived.”
Renaud put down his pen.
“And how do you know which life you've lived?”
Émilie looked at him sharply.
“I'd prefer that you didn't turn this into a philosophical exercise.”
“Of course. I apologise.”
He proceeded with the examination.
Her orientation was intact. She knew her name, the date according to her telephone, and the location she had travelled from. Her working memory was excellent. Her language, coordination and sensory responses were normal. She performed the standard cognitive tasks without difficulty.
There was no evidence of an acute neurological deficit.
Renaud explained that this did not exclude every possible disorder.
A normal examination could not establish that unusual recollections were reliable. Nor could it prove that they were not symptoms of some disturbance of memory, sleep or perception.
Émilie agreed.
“Would you recommend imaging?”
“Under ordinary circumstances, possibly. Particularly if the symptoms persisted.”
“And here?”
“Here, too.”
“Do you have the facilities?”
“No.”
“Then I should return to Paris.”
“That would be one reasonable course.”
“Do you think I should?”
Renaud considered.
“I think you should decide whether the uncertainty is tolerable.”
“That's not medical advice.”
“No. It's an acknowledgement of the limits of the advice I can give.”
Émilie rose.
He accompanied her to the door.
“May I ask one question?” he said.
“Of course.”
“When you remember the child, do you love her?”
Émilie stopped.
The answer was immediate.
“Yes.”
“And does the knowledge that you have no daughter diminish that affection?”
She considered.
“No.”
Renaud nodded.
“That is the part I find most interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because I can examine your memory. I can investigate the processes by which you recognise people and reconstruct events. But the affection is not made less real merely because its apparent history cannot be established.”
Émilie looked at him.
“You're confusing the reality of a feeling with the reality of its object.”
“Not at all.”
“Then what are you suggesting?”
“Only that you may have to live with feelings whose origins remain uncertain.”
She thought of the empty place.
“Yes,” she said.
“I think I already am.”
Madeleine was in the small drawing room overlooking the southern garden.
She had a book open upon her lap, although she was not reading.
Émilie stood in the doorway.
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
The older woman closed the book.
“How was your examination?”
“Unremarkable.”
“That's encouraging.”
“Within limits.”
“Naturally.”
Émilie approached the window.
The day was cold and unusually clear. The trees beyond the garden stood against a sky almost entirely without colour.
For a while neither woman spoke.
Then Émilie said, “I remember having a daughter.”
Madeleine remained still.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“What's her name?”
“Anaïs.”
“How old is she?”
“Seven.”
Madeleine considered.
“Would you like to tell me about her?”
Émilie shook her head.
“Not yet.”
“Very well.”
She turned.
“Doesn't it trouble you?”
“What?”
“That I may be inventing people.”
“Yes.”
The answer surprised her.
Madeleine continued.
“It troubles me that you may be suffering. It troubles me that I cannot tell you why. And it troubles me that I have no reliable means of distinguishing an experience that corresponds to an unfamiliar reality from one that does not.”
Émilie studied her.
“Then you aren't as composed as you appear.”
“No.”
“You're very good at concealing it.”
“I hope not.”
“Why?”
“Because I should dislike you to mistake my composure for a guarantee.”
Émilie crossed the room.
Madeleine rose.
They stood facing one another, close enough that Émilie could see the small irregularities in the older woman's irises.
“I've been thinking about you,” Émilie said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I suspected.”
“That's not the same thing.”
“No.”
Émilie smiled.
“You might occasionally permit yourself a less precise answer.”
“I should be afraid of disappointing you.”
“You already do.”
Madeleine's expression altered.
“How?”
“By never asking me for anything.”
There was a long silence.
“Would you prefer that I did?”
“Sometimes.”
“What would you like me to ask?”
Émilie looked down.
“Whether I want you to kiss me.”
Madeleine did not move.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
Émilie raised her eyes.
“About that, at least.”
Madeleine touched her cheek.
The gesture was almost tentative.
Then she kissed her.
It was brief at first, and Émilie was conscious less of the contact itself than of the extraordinary relief of having wanted something and found it willingly given.
She put her arms around Madeleine.
The second kiss was longer.
There was no urgency in it.
She became aware of the older woman's hand resting between her shoulder blades, of the faint scent of soap upon her skin, and of the warmth of another body against her own.
These were ordinary sensations.
She had known them before.
Yet their familiarity seemed precious precisely because so much else had ceased to be dependable.
When they separated, Madeleine remained close.
Émilie rested her forehead briefly against hers.
“I don't know whether you'll be the same woman tomorrow.”
“Neither do I.”
“That ought to trouble me.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
Madeleine waited.
“But not enough.”
The older woman's hand moved gently over her hair.
“Then perhaps we should concern ourselves with what we can promise.”
“And what is that?”
“That I am here now.”
Émilie closed her eyes.
It was not a metaphysical guarantee.
It was barely a promise.
Nevertheless, she found it sufficient.
For the moment.
The Western Corridor began beyond a narrow passage adjoining the library.
Émilie had passed its entrance several times without entering. The residents did not appear to avoid it, although she had never observed anyone walking its entire length.
There was no locked door.
No barrier.
The restriction concerning mirrors had been explained with considerable seriousness, but no one had forbidden her to explore.
She asked Madeleine whether she might go there.
“Certainly.”
“Is there anything I should know?”
“Only what I've already told you.”
“No mirrors.”
“Not carried into the corridor.”
“Why that particular restriction?”
Madeleine considered.
“Because the consequences have sometimes proved difficult.”
“Difficult for whom?”
“For the people who experienced them.”
Émilie looked at her.
“That's unusually vague.”
“Yes.”
“Can you be more precise?”
“I'm afraid not without telling you things I can't reliably establish.”
Émilie accepted this with some reluctance.
She gathered a notebook, a pencil and a mechanical watch.
She considered taking her telephone, then decided against it. The device had already proved unreliable as an independent record of time within the House.
The watch was a conventional mechanical instrument, recently checked against another timepiece.
It could not establish the absolute passage of time, but it might provide a useful comparison.
Madeleine accompanied her to the corridor's entrance.
“Would you like me to come with you?”
Émilie considered.
“No.”
“Very well.”
“Would you prefer to?”
“I should like to know that you're comfortable.”
“That's not quite an answer.”
“No.”
Émilie looked at the older woman.
“Do you want me to go?”
Madeleine hesitated.
“I don't think my preference should determine that.”
“But you have one?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“That you should remain able to choose.”
Émilie felt the familiar mixture of affection and irritation.
“You make it extraordinarily difficult to please you.”
Madeleine smiled.
“I haven't asked you to.”
Émilie kissed her once more.
Then she turned towards the corridor.
Above its entrance was a small brass plaque.
The letters were engraved in a plain, unornamented typeface.
THE ROOMS ARE NOT ARRANGED IN ORDER.
Émilie examined the inscription.
“An architectural warning?”
“Perhaps.”
“Does it refer to the numbering?”
“Among other things.”
She looked back.
Madeleine had not moved.
Émilie entered.
The corridor was neither particularly long nor remarkable in its construction.
Its walls were pale, its floor covered in dark carpeting. A succession of doors stood on either side, each fitted with a brass handle and a small number.
The numbering was inconsistent.
She passed twelve, forty-one, six and nineteen.
Then a door bearing the number twelve.
She stopped.
The second twelve was not a duplicate in appearance. Its proportions were different, and the brass plate showed signs of considerable wear.
She recorded the observation.
There was no reason to assume that the numbers identified rooms uniquely. They might be historical, decorative or simply arbitrary.
She continued.
At the third door on the left she heard music.
A piano.
The passage was familiar.
She recognised it as something her mother had played during her childhood, though she could not immediately identify the composer.
She listened.
The playing was competent, but not flawless.
There was a hesitation in the left hand, followed by a slight correction.
She remembered the hesitation.
She remembered sitting beneath the piano as a child, examining the dark wooden legs and the complicated machinery visible when her mother lifted the lid.
She remembered being told to move because she was obstructing the pedals.
The recollection was so immediate that she almost smiled.
Then she realised that her mother had never owned that particular piano.
The instrument of her childhood had been an upright, purchased second-hand before Émilie was born.
This memory concerned a grand piano.
She examined the door.
There was no name.
She knocked.
No answer.
The music continued.
She opened the door.
The room beyond was not a music room.
It was an apartment.
Émilie recognised the arrangement immediately.
A sitting room opened onto a narrow hallway. There were shelves along the far wall, a low table beside the window, and a pair of armchairs upholstered in pale green fabric.
She knew the room.
She had lived there with Julien.
Yet the furniture was different.
The walls bore photographs she had never owned.
Architectural drawings lay upon a table, alongside a child's exercise book and a small collection of coloured pencils.
Émilie entered.
The door remained open behind her.
She looked towards the window.
The view was of Paris.
Not the gardens of the House, but a familiar street in the sixth arrondissement.
A delivery van passed below.
She heard the sound of traffic.
She crossed to the table.
There was a photograph in a silver frame.
It showed herself and Julien standing outside a church.
They were younger.
Julien wore a dark suit.
Émilie wore a cream dress, simple and elegant, with a narrow ribbon at the waist.
She was holding flowers.
She recognised the occasion.
Her wedding.
The memory arrived without effort.
She remembered the morning, the irritation caused by a delayed taxi, and the extraordinary absurdity of standing beside Julien while an elderly priest delivered remarks concerning the sanctity of marriage.
She had disliked the religious ceremony.
Julien's mother had insisted.
Émilie remembered agreeing because the compromise seemed harmless.
She remembered the small reception afterwards.
She remembered the wine.
She remembered Julien taking her hand beneath the table.
She remembered being happy.
She stood motionless.
None of these events had occurred.
She and Julien had never married.
Their relationship had lasted seven years and ended without particular distress.
She had no wedding photographs.
No children.
No memory of the ceremony until this moment.
Yet the recollection possessed all the ordinary characteristics of personal memory.
She could remember details not represented in the photograph.
The texture of the flowers.
The temperature of the church.
An argument concerning the seating arrangements.
A remark made by Julien's father.
She examined the exercise book.
On its cover a child's name had been written in blue ink.
Anaïs Mercier.
Émilie felt a sudden constriction in her throat.
She opened the book.
The handwriting was childish and uneven.
There were exercises in arithmetic, several drawings, and a short account of a family holiday.
The child had described swimming in the sea, eating ice cream and being frightened by a large dog.
Émilie remembered the holiday.
She remembered the dog.
She remembered taking Anaïs into her arms.
The affection came with such force that she sat down.
For several minutes she could do nothing but look at the child's handwriting.
She had not expected grief.
There was no reason for grief.
The child had never existed in the life she remembered.
Yet she found herself longing to see her.
Not to establish the truth of the memory.
Simply to see her.
She turned another page.
There was a drawing of a house.
Three figures stood outside.
A man, a woman and a little girl.
Above the woman the child had written:
Maman.
Émilie closed the book.
She remained seated until the immediate intensity of the feeling diminished.
Then she took out her notebook.
She recorded what she had found.
She described the room, the photograph and the exercise book.
She noted that the memories appeared spontaneously and contained details not directly supplied by the objects.
She also noted that this did not establish their authenticity.
Ordinary autobiographical memory was reconstructive. Suggestion, expectation and prior knowledge could produce convincing recollections.
The difficulty was the sudden completeness of the experience.
She remembered twenty-three years of marriage.
She remembered disputes, reconciliations, holidays and the gradual alteration of affection into something quieter and more durable.
She remembered being pregnant.
She remembered the birth of Anaïs.
She remembered the exhaustion of the first months, the peculiar pleasure of watching Julien asleep with the child against his chest, and the small domestic irritations that accompanied the ordinary work of raising her.
The memories did not arrive sequentially.
They were simply available.
She could consult them as she might consult any other part of her life.
She knew their emotional texture.
She knew their consequences.
She could not reconcile them with her actual history.
She wrote:
The presence of a complete autobiographical structure does not establish its unique origin.
She looked at the sentence.
Then she added:
But the absence of a unique origin does not diminish the experience of loss.
She closed the notebook.
The apartment was silent.
She returned to the corridor.
The next room contained a piano.
It stood in a conservatoire practice studio with high windows and pale walls. Music lay upon the stand, annotated in handwriting she recognised as her own.
Émilie approached.
The score was Debussy.
She knew the piece, although she had not played seriously since childhood.
She sat.
Her hands rested upon the keys.
Then she began to play.
The passage was difficult.
She played it without hesitation.
Her fingers moved with a competence she had never possessed.
She knew the weight of the keys, the precise timing of each phrase, and the subtle variation of pressure required to produce the tone she wanted.
The knowledge was not merely intellectual.
It was physical.
She remembered thousands of hours of practice.
She remembered a teacher whose criticisms had been severe but useful.
She remembered concerts, auditions and the peculiar exhaustion that followed performances in which every movement had required sustained attention.
In this life she had become a pianist.
Her mother had been pleased.
Her father had regarded the decision as impractical.
She had never studied mathematics beyond the ordinary requirements of her education.
Émilie stopped playing.
She looked at her hands.
They were her hands.
The fingers were the same length. There was the familiar small scar near the base of her right thumb.
Yet they possessed a skill she had never acquired.
She played the passage again.
It remained flawless.
She stood.
For the first time she felt a genuine fear of losing her original memories.
She reviewed the proof of her theorem.
She recalled the structure of her doctoral thesis.
She mentally reconstructed a difficult argument from her work on observer equivalence.
Everything remained available.
The mathematical life had not been displaced.
It coexisted with the musical one.
She left the room.
The third door opened upon a hospital.
There was no transition.
One moment Émilie stood in the corridor of the House; the next she was looking into a small ward furnished with narrow beds and pale curtains.
The light was harsh.
She smelled disinfectant.
A child lay in the nearest bed.
Émilie approached.
The girl was perhaps eleven years old.
She had dark hair and a narrow face.
She was very thin.
Émilie recognised herself.
The recognition was immediate and untroubled.
She remembered the illness.
She remembered the fever, the fatigue and the increasing difficulty of remaining awake.
She remembered her mother's face.
She remembered a doctor explaining something she had not understood.
Then she remembered dying.
The recollection contained no revelation.
There was no light, no tunnel, no sense of leaving her body.
There was simply a progressive narrowing of sensation.
The hospital room had become distant.
Her mother's voice had lost its meaning.
The pressure of the sheets against her skin had diminished.
Then there was nothing.
Not darkness.
Not unconsciousness experienced as an interval.
Simply the absence of any subsequent experience belonging to that history.
Émilie looked at the child.
The girl's eyes were closed.
A nurse approached the bed and examined the instruments beside it.
She did not appear to notice Émilie.
The nurse adjusted a sheet, then left.
Émilie stood beside the bed for some time.
She felt no particular grief for the child.
The memory of death was complete, but it carried none of the emotional force of the memories concerning Anaïs.
Perhaps because there had been no one left to mourn the interruption from within that life.
Perhaps because she was standing there now.
She recognised that neither explanation was satisfactory.
She touched the bedframe.
It was solid.
The metal was cold.
She wanted to examine the medical notes, but there were none within reach.
She looked again at the child.
The face was unmistakably hers.
Then she noticed something that made her withdraw her hand.
The child was breathing.
Slowly.
Shallowly.
But unmistakably.
Émilie watched.
The chest rose.
Fell.
Rose again.
She had remembered dying.
The child had not yet died.
For several moments she experienced an extraordinary desire to intervene.
She might summon the nurse.
She might attempt to wake the girl.
She might tell the doctor what she remembered.
Then she recognised the difficulty.
She had no reliable evidence that the memory described the future of this child.
Nor did she know whether her intervention would alter the sequence she recalled, or merely become part of another.
The problem was not that she feared changing history.
It was that she could not establish what counted as the relevant history.
She stood beside the bed.
The child continued breathing.
Finally Émilie turned away.
At the threshold she looked back.
The girl had opened her eyes.
She was watching.
For an instant their gazes met.
The child's expression was calm.
Then she smiled.
Émilie closed the door.
The corridor appeared unchanged.
She checked her watch.
Twenty-seven minutes had elapsed since she entered.
This was difficult to reconcile with the experiences she remembered.
The apartment alone had supplied decades of autobiographical detail. The conservatoire had given her a complete professional history. The hospital had contained the final hours of a childhood.
Yet the watch indicated less than half an hour.
She examined the mechanism.
It was running.
She compared the position of the hands with her written record.
There was no obvious discrepancy.
She continued.
The next door stood slightly ajar.
From within came a woman's voice.
“Émilie?”
She stopped.
The voice was familiar.
It belonged to her mother.
She stood motionless for several seconds.
Then she opened the door.
Claire Varenne was seated beside a window in a modest sitting room.
She was older than Émilie remembered, though not unnaturally so. Her hair was white, and the fine structure of her face had become more pronounced. She wore a blue cardigan and held a book upon her lap.
A cup of tea stood beside her.
The room was unfamiliar.
There was an upright piano against the far wall.
Claire looked up.
“Émilie.”
She smiled.
“There you are.”
Émilie remained in the doorway.
Her mother placed the book aside.
“Are you going to stand there all afternoon?”
Émilie entered.
She crossed the room without speaking.
Claire rose, slowly, with the slight difficulty of an older woman whose knees had become unreliable.
Émilie embraced her.
Her mother was warm.
She smelled faintly of lavender and the familiar soap she had used throughout Émilie's childhood.
The embrace lasted longer than either appeared to expect.
Claire eventually withdrew.
“My dear, whatever is the matter?”
Émilie looked at her.
She had prepared herself for many things since entering the House.
Not this.
“I thought you were dead.”
Claire regarded her.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“What an unpleasant thought.”
She took Émilie's hand.
“Come and sit down. You look exhausted.”
Émilie obeyed.
Claire poured tea.
There was nothing extraordinary about the gesture.
She adjusted the teapot, examined the cups, and asked whether Émilie still took milk.
Émilie answered automatically.
“No.”
“Of course. You stopped years ago.”
Her mother handed her the cup.
Émilie held it with both hands.
The porcelain was warm.
She remembered sitting in this room on previous visits.
She remembered Claire complaining about the neighbours, discussing music and offering opinions about Julien's architectural projects.
She remembered the gradual deterioration of her mother's hearing.
She remembered buying her a new piano stool.
She remembered the afternoon they had argued about whether Émilie ought to have another child.
All these memories existed alongside the recollection of Claire's death.
Émilie could summon either history without difficulty.
In one, her mother had died when Émilie was seventeen.
In the other, Claire had survived, aged naturally, and remained part of her daughter's life.
Neither recollection displaced the other.
“Are you unwell?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
Émilie considered.
“Do you remember being ill?”
“Of course.”
“When I was seventeen.”
Claire frowned.
“I've been ill several times.”
“The hospital.”
“Oh, that.”
She smiled.
“I remember very little of it.”
“Do you remember not recognising me?”
Claire was silent.
Then she nodded.
“Yes.”
Émilie felt a sudden tightening in her chest.
“I thought you'd forgotten.”
“I had.”
“For several minutes you didn't know who I was.”
“No.”
“And then you remembered.”
“Yes.”
Émilie looked down at her tea.
“In the life I remember, you died shortly afterwards.”
Claire considered this without visible alarm.
“That must have been very difficult.”
“It was.”
“I'm sorry.”
Émilie looked up.
“You're not disturbed?”
“By what?”
“By my telling you that I remember your death.”
Claire smiled sadly.
“My dear, I can't prevent you remembering things.”
“But surely you want to know whether they're true.”
“Would knowing change what you felt?”
“It might.”
“Then perhaps it's worth investigating.”
The answer was so characteristic that Émilie almost laughed.
Claire had always possessed a practical tolerance for philosophical questions, provided they did not interfere with ordinary life.
She had once told Émilie that metaphysics was tolerable in moderation, but that no one had ever improved a soufflé by discussing the ontological status of eggs.
Émilie remembered the remark.
She remembered it from both lives.
For the first time she understood how profoundly disturbing that was.
The same recollection belonged to two incompatible histories.
She looked at her mother.
“Which one is real?”
Claire placed her cup upon the table.
“My dear, why should I know that?”
“Because you're here.”
“Yes.”
“And I remember you dying.”
“Apparently.”
“Both cannot be true.”
“Perhaps not in the way you mean.”
Émilie stared.
Claire smiled.
“You've always been very clever, darling. But sometimes you seem to think that being clever entitles you to an answer.”
There was no reproach in her voice.
Émilie felt tears beginning to form.
“I missed you.”
Claire reached across and took her hand.
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
Her mother's expression softened.
“Perhaps I don't.”
They sat together.
Émilie had imagined, on the rare occasions when she permitted herself to imagine such things, what she might say if she could speak to her mother again.
She had expected questions.
She had expected explanations.
She had expected to tell her about the years that had passed, the work she had completed, and the life she had made.
Instead she found herself wanting to remain exactly where she was.
There was no need to account for the intervening years.
There was no need to establish whether this woman was the same Claire Varenne who had died.
There was only the familiar hand resting upon hers.
After some time Claire spoke.
“You should eat something.”
Émilie laughed.
It was an ordinary, involuntary laugh.
Her mother smiled.
“There. That's better.”
Émilie wiped her eyes.
“I don't think I can stay.”
Claire nodded.
“No.”
“Will I see you again?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Of course.”
The answer was immediate.
Émilie felt its force.
Here, at least, was desire without ambiguity.
Her mother wanted her to return.
She stood.
Claire rose with her.
They embraced once more.
At the door Émilie turned.
Her mother was watching her.
“Émilie?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever you decide, do try to be kind.”
“To whom?”
Claire considered.
“To whoever is there.”
Émilie looked at her.
Then she opened the door and returned to the corridor.
She stood with her back against the wall.
For several minutes she could not move.
Her mother's presence had been overwhelming.
Not because it had supplied evidence of survival after death. It had supplied nothing of the kind.
The woman in the room might have been a construction, a projection, a memory embodied in some unfamiliar fashion, or a genuine person belonging to a history incompatible with the one Émilie had previously regarded as hers.
The possibilities were numerous.
None could be established.
Yet Émilie had embraced her.
She had felt the warmth of her body.
She had heard her voice.
She had been loved.
She considered the last statement.
It was not merely a report of her own emotion.
Her mother had appeared to love her.
Whether the woman possessed a continuous consciousness, whether she belonged to the history Émilie remembered, whether she existed independently of the room: none of these questions could be answered.
But the behaviour had been unmistakable.
Émilie found herself resisting the temptation to diminish the experience because its metaphysical status was uncertain.
She had always insisted that uncertainty must be acknowledged.
She had never insisted that uncertainty rendered an experience worthless.
She opened her notebook.
The pages were filled.
She did not remember filling them.
The handwriting was hers, though it varied slightly between sections.
There were descriptions of the apartment, the conservatoire, the hospital and her mother's sitting room.
Some passages were written in the clipped, precise style of her academic notes.
Others were more expansive.
One contained a recollection of Anaïs's first day at school.
Another described a concert she had performed in Vienna.
A third recorded the child's death in the hospital.
Émilie read the entries carefully.
They were arranged in an order different from the sequence she remembered.
The account of her mother's sitting room preceded the account of the apartment.
The hospital appeared twice.
The conservatoire was described as though it had been visited after she had returned to her own room.
She checked her watch.
Forty minutes had elapsed.
She turned several pages.
Near the end was a brief paragraph concerning an unidentified manuscript.
It described an archival system in which conscious identity was treated as an informational structure capable of preservation and transfer between temporal locations.
Émilie recognised the argument.
It resembled certain speculative proposals she had encountered in the literature concerning computational theories of consciousness.
The passage claimed that complete informational preservation guaranteed the survival of the original conscious subject.
She found the inference unjustified.
The preservation of a description did not necessarily entail the persistence of the thing described.
She took out her pencil and wrote beneath the paragraph:
Informational equivalence is not numerical identity.
She underlined the sentence.
Then she closed the notebook.
The corridor was silent.
She could see the entrance in the distance.
It appeared closer than she remembered.
She began walking.
Near the final door stood a small table.
Upon it lay a hand mirror.
Émilie stopped.
The mirror was old, its silver backing darkened around the edges. The handle was carved ivory or something resembling it.
She remembered Madeleine's warning.
No mirrors were to be carried into the Western Corridor.
She had brought none.
This mirror was already there.
She considered the distinction.
It was precisely the sort of literal interpretation she would ordinarily distrust.
A rule might be formulated narrowly for reasons that were not apparent from its wording.
She had no reason to assume that the absence of an explicit prohibition made the object safe.
Nevertheless, she approached.
The mirror reflected the corridor behind her.
The image was clear.
She could see the doors, the carpet and the pale walls.
Then she noticed a woman standing in the reflection.
Émilie turned.
The corridor was empty.
She looked back.
The woman remained.
She was considerably older than Émilie, perhaps seventy, with silver-grey hair and a face marked by age.
She wore a dark dress.
There was a wedding ring upon her left hand.
Émilie recognised herself.
Not because the resemblance was exact.
Age had altered the face considerably.
But recognition occurred with the same immediacy she had experienced before the photograph in the apartment.
The older woman regarded her with an expression of profound tenderness.
Émilie leaned closer.
The reflection did not change.
The woman raised one hand.
For a moment Émilie thought she intended to touch the glass.
Instead the older woman placed a finger against her lips.
It was not a command.
Nor did it appear to be a warning.
The gesture possessed the intimate familiarity of something shared between people who no longer required words.
Émilie felt a memory beginning to form.
She resisted it.
Not because she feared what it might contain.
Because she recognised that the memory might belong to no history she could establish.
The older woman smiled.
Émilie became aware of an extraordinary desire to ask her something.
She wanted to know whether she had been happy.
Not whether she had survived, or whether her work had been completed, or whether the House possessed an explanation.
Only whether she had been happy.
She opened her mouth.
Before she could speak, the older woman lowered her hand.
Her expression changed.
It became one of gentle amusement.
Then she looked past Émilie towards something beyond the reflected corridor.
The mirror darkened.
When the image returned, it contained only the empty passage.
Émilie stood for some time.
She did not touch the mirror.
Eventually she returned to the entrance.
Above the doorway the brass inscription remained.
THE ROOMS ARE NOT ARRANGED IN ORDER.
She looked at it.
For the first time she understood that the warning was not concerned merely with the sequence in which the rooms appeared.
It concerned the assumption that there must be one sequence in which they could be arranged.
She crossed the threshold.
Madeleine was waiting in the small drawing room.
She rose when Émilie entered.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Madeleine approached.
“Are you all right?”
Émilie considered.
“I don't know.”
“Would you like to sit?”
“No.”
“Something to drink?”
“No.”
Madeleine remained still.
Émilie looked at her.
“I saw my mother.”
The older woman's expression softened.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to tell me?”
Émilie shook her head.
Then, quite unexpectedly, she began to cry.
There was no dramatic collapse.
She simply found that tears were running down her face, and that she could not prevent them.
Madeleine stepped closer.
“May I?”
Émilie nodded.
The older woman embraced her.
Émilie rested her face against Madeleine's shoulder.
She was conscious of the fabric beneath her cheek, the warmth of the body holding her, and the slow movement of breathing.
For several minutes she did not speak.
Then she said, “I remember her dying.”
Madeleine held her.
“And I remember her surviving.”
There was no answer.
“I remember twenty-three years with Julien.”
Madeleine's hand moved gently over her back.
“I remember a daughter.”
Émilie drew a breath.
“I remember being a pianist. I remember dying when I was eleven.”
She withdrew slightly.
“All of it.”
Madeleine looked at her.
“I believe that you remember.”
“Do you believe it happened?”
“I don't know.”
Émilie almost laughed.
It was the familiar answer.
The only honest one.
She touched Madeleine's face.
“I don't know which life belongs to me.”
“Must one of them?”
“I've always supposed so.”
“Yes.”
Émilie considered the older woman's expression.
There was concern in it.
Affection.
Desire, perhaps.
She could not establish whether the woman before her was numerically identical with the one who had kissed her that morning.
She could not establish whether the affection she remembered belonged to a continuous relationship or to a succession of experiences possessing only the appearance of continuity.
But Madeleine was there.
She was warm.
She was attentive.
She had chosen to embrace her.
Émilie kissed her.
The gesture was neither desperate nor particularly urgent.
It was a simple acknowledgement of the person before her.
When they separated, Madeleine smiled.
“Would you like me to stay tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
Émilie took her hand.
They went upstairs together.
The room was unchanged.
The two notebooks lay upon the desk.
Émilie placed the third beside them.
For a moment she examined the three volumes.
She could no longer remember which one she had originally brought from Paris.
The uncertainty seemed less urgent than it once would have.
Madeleine watched from beside the window.
“Do you want to compare them?”
“Eventually.”
“Not tonight?”
“No.”
Émilie sat upon the bed.
She removed her shoes, then looked up.
“Will you still be here when I wake?”
Madeleine considered.
“I expect so.”
Émilie smiled through the remnants of her tears.
“That's not much of a promise.”
“No.”
“It's enough.”
Madeleine approached.
She sat beside her.
For a while they spoke of ordinary things.
The weather.
The food.
A book Madeleine had been reading.
Émilie found the conversation almost unbearably comforting.
It was not that the ordinary world had been restored.
It was that ordinary things continued to matter despite the failure of the structures through which she had previously understood them.
Later, when the lamps had been extinguished, Émilie lay beside Madeleine and listened to her breathing.
She remembered the apartment with Julien.
She remembered the daughter she had raised.
She remembered the conservatoire and the long hours of practice.
She remembered the hospital and the child who had not survived.
She remembered her mother.
Not the woman who had died.
Not the woman she had met in the Western Corridor.
But the woman at the piano who had once told her to finish her breakfast.
For a moment she could no longer distinguish which memory belonged to which life.
She considered attempting to reconstruct the sequence.
She had the notebooks.
She possessed the mathematical tools.
She could, in principle, begin comparing the histories and identifying their points of divergence.
Instead she turned towards Madeleine.
The older woman was awake.
Émilie placed a hand upon her arm.
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Madeleine kissed her forehead.
There was nothing extraordinary about the gesture.
Émilie closed her eyes.
She had always supposed that a life was something one possessed.
Now she remembered several.
She could find no reason to suppose that any of them belonged to her.
Nevertheless, she loved them.
And beside her, in the darkness, a woman whose continued identity she could not establish drew her gently closer.
Émilie allowed herself to be held.
For the first time, she did not attempt to determine whether the tenderness belonged to the person she had been, the person she had become, or someone whose life had never occurred.
The distinction remained unresolved.
She slept.
In the morning, one of the three notebooks would be gone.
She would remember destroying it.
She would also remember giving it to Madeleine.
Both recollections would be perfectly clear.
Neither would be correct.
But for the present, there was only the warmth of another person and the quiet movement of her breathing.
Émilie had relinquished the expectation that her life must possess a single history.
She had not yet understood the consequence.
There might be no unique person whose history it was.
End of Movement VI: The Western Corridor