Page 133 - The Midnight Library

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seemed to miss its target.

He had grown up with only a mother, as his dad had died of a heart attack
when he was two, cruelly hiding somewhere behind his first memories.
Nora’s paternal grandmother had been born in rural Ireland but emigrated
to England to become a school cleaner, struggling to bring in enough money

for food, let alone anything approaching fun.
Geoff had been bullied early on in life but had grown big and broad
enough to easily put those bullies in their place. He worked hard and proved
good at football and the shot put and, in particular, rugby. He played for the

Bedford Blues youth team, becoming their best player, and had a shot at the
big time before a collateral ligament injur y stopped him in his tracks. He
then became a PE teacher and simmered with quiet resentment at the
universe. He forever dreamed of travel, but never did much of it beyond a

subscription to National Geographic and the occasional holiday to
somewhere in the Cyclades – Nora remembered him in Naxos, snapping a
picture of the Temple of Apollo at sunset .
Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly

perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of
disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of
wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be
the world, witnessing itself. Maybe it wasn’t the lack of achievements that

had made her and her brother’s parents unhappy, maybe it was the
expectation to achieve in the first place. She had no idea about any of it,
really. But on that boat she realised something. She had loved her parents
more than she ever knew, and right then, she forgave them completely.