MIDNIGHT - HarperCollins NZ

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