Although I had set out to write a book about a childhood – it was Bod’s childhood, and it was in a graveyard, but still, it was a childhood like any other – I was now writing about being a parent, and the fundamental most comical tragedy of parenthood: that if you do your job properly, if you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won’t need you any more. If you did it properly, they go away. And they have lives and they have families and they have futures.
