Page 97 - The Midnight Library

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I have a therapist.

‘Sorr y, Dad.’
‘ at’s all right.’
‘I just want to know that you’re happy.’
‘’Course I am. I’ve got an Olympic champion for a daughter and have

finally found the love of my life. And you’re getting back on your feet again.
Mentally, I mean. Aer Portugal.’
Nora wanted to know what had happened in Portugal but she had another
question to ask first.

‘What about Mum? Wasn’t she the love of your life? ’
‘Once upon a time she was. But things change, Nora. Come on, you’re a
grown-up.’
‘I . . .’

Nora put her dad on speaker. Clicked back to her own Wikipedia page.
Sure enough, her parents had divorced aer her father had an affair with
Nadia Vanko, mother of a Ukrainian male swimmer, Yegor Vanko. And in
this timeline her mother had died way back in 2011.

And all this because Nora had never sat in that car park in Bedford and
told her dad that she didn’t want to be a compet itive swimmer.
She felt that feeling again. Like she was fading away. at she had worked
out that this life wasn’t for her and was disappearing back to the librar y. But

she stayed where she was. She said goodbye to her dad, ended the phone call
and continued to read up on herself.
She was single, though had been in a relationship with the American
Olympic medal-winning diver Scott Richards for three years, and briefly

lived with him in California, where they resided in La Jolla, San Diego. She
now lived in West London.
Having read the entire page she put the phone down and decided to go
find out if there was a pool. She wanted to do what she would be doing in

this life, and what she would be doing was swimming. And maybe the water
would help her think of what she could say.
It was an exceptional swim, even if it gave her little creative inspiration,
and it calmed her aer the experience of having a conversation with her

dead father. She had the pool to herself and glided through length aer
length of breaststroke without having to think about it. It felt so
empowering, to be that fit and strong and to have such master y of the water,