Page 87 - The Midnight Library

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Mrs Elm smiled, patiently. ‘Would you like to consult again with e Book

of Regrets? Would you like to think about those bad decisions that turned
you away from whatever you feel success is?’
Nora shook her head quickly, like a dog shaking off water. She didn’t want
to be confronted with that long interminable list of mistakes and wrong

turns again. She was depressed enough. And besides, she knew her regrets.
Regrets don’t leave. ey weren’t mosquito bites. ey itch for ever.
‘No, they don’t,’ said Mrs Elm, reading her mind. ‘You don’t regret how
you were with your cat. And nor do you regret not going to Australia with

Izzy.’
Nora nodded. Mrs Elm had a point.
She thought of swimming in the pool at Bronte Beach. How good that had
felt, in its strange familiarity.

‘From an early age you were encouraged to swim,’ said Mrs Elm.
‘Yes.’
‘Your dad was always happy to take you to the pool.’
‘It was one of the few things that had made him happy,’ Nora mused.

She had associated swimming with her father’s approval and enjoyed the
wordlessness of being in the water because it was the opposite of her parents
screaming at each other.
‘Why did you quit?’ asked Mrs Elm.

‘As soon as I started winning swimming races, I became seen and I didn’t
want to be seen. And not only seen but seen in a swimsuit at the exact age
you are self-obsessing about your body. Someone said I had boy’s shoulders.
It was a stupid thing but there were lots of stupid things and you feel them

all at that age. As a teenager I’d have happily been invisible. People called me
“ e Fish”. ey didn’t mean it as a compliment. I was shy. It was one of the
reasons why I preferred the librar y to the playing field. It seems a small
thing, but it really helped, having that space.’

‘Never underestimate the big importance of small things,’ Mrs Elm said.
‘You must always remember that.’
Nora thought back. Her teenage combination of shyness and visibility had
been a problematic mix, but she was never bullied, as such, probably because

ever yone knew her brother. And Joe, while never exactly tough, was always
considered cool and popular enough for his most immediate blood relation
to be immune to schoolyard tyranny.