Every life she had tried so far since entering the library had really been someone else‘s dream. The married life in the pub had been Dan‘s dream. The trip to Australia had been Izzy‘s dream,
and her regret about not going had been a guilt for her best friend more than a sorrow for herself. The dream of her becoming a swimming champion belonged to her father. And okay, so it was true that she had been interested in the Arctic and being a glaciologist when she was younger, but that had been steered quite significantly by her chats with Mrs Elm herself, back in the school library. And the Labyrinths, well, that had always been her brother‘s dream. - P194
‘Look at that chessboard we put back in place,‘ said Mrs Elm,
softly, "Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now,
before a game starts. It‘s a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.‘
She took a seat at the chess table, opposite Mrs Elm. She stared down at the board and moved a pawn two spaces forward.
Mrs Elm mirrored the move on her side of the board.
‘It‘s an easy game to play, she told Nora. ‘But a hard one to master. Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibility.‘
Nora moved one of her knights. They progressed like this for a little while.
Mrs Elm provided a commentary. ‘At the beginning of a game,
there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board.
There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eightyeight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life,
possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream,
every regret, every moment of living.‘
- P195
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