Nora is given permission by Mrs Elm to open the heavy Book of Regrets. Sitting on the library’s stone floor, she discovers it is organized by the years of her life, yet the regrets do not obey chronology.

As Nora reads, she sees a spectrum of regrets from everyday lapses to profound losses and missed paths. Many recur—leaving The Labyrinths and letting down her brother, not pursuing science or geology, not working with animals, disappointing her father, and a life lived more in teaching than playing music.

Some entries appear faint, and one—about not yet having children—flickers between invisible and bold. Mrs Elm explains that certain regrets are fluid, sometimes present and sometimes absent.

From age thirty-four onward, the entries grow loud with Dan-related regrets: being cruel to him, breaking up, and not living together in a country pub. Confronted by these bold pages, Nora thinks of the man she nearly married and the life that might have been.