MIDNIGHT - HarperCollins NZ
MIDNIGHT - HarperCollins NZ
MIDNIGHT - HarperCollins NZ
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<strong>MIDNIGHT</strong><br />
Eileen Harrow’s breakdown happened gradually,<br />
without her daughter even noticing. At night, when<br />
Libby lay half awake in her bed, she could hear her<br />
mother sobbing, calling out, asking why he had wanted<br />
to leave her; asking if it was her fault. Had she let him<br />
down somehow? Had she not loved him enough, or<br />
not shown it enough? And was he really never coming<br />
home? It was that which she found hardest to accept.<br />
Libby’s grandmother would come up on the coach<br />
from Manchester and stay for a time, but then she began<br />
to buckle under the strain, and her visits grew less<br />
frequent. Still grieving after the loss of her own husband,<br />
Arthur, she eventually stopped coming altogether, and<br />
died in 1992, aged seventy-three.<br />
Libby’s grandparents on her father’s side didn’t want<br />
to know them. They claimed it was Eileen’s fault that<br />
he had strayed and they could not forgive her. They<br />
thought she should have done more to keep him happy<br />
at home. The letter they wrote was very harsh. Soon<br />
after the event, they returned to their native Ireland.<br />
When Eileen became too confused to be left on her<br />
own, Libby quit her job as a teaching assistant and<br />
began working part-time at the local supermarket,<br />
Aston’s. Thanks to their very good neighbour, the<br />
widower Thomas Farraday, Eileen was looked after, and<br />
even occasionally taken out for drives and for walks in<br />
the park.<br />
Unfortunately, Thomas then suffered a health scare,<br />
and Libby was obliged to give up work altogether, in<br />
order to take care of her mother. That was five years<br />
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