The boy’s words matched an old mysterious instruction that, in the darkest moments and over the past quarter of a century since I lost my father, would come for me, sounding with the hard force of a warning bell, urgently ringing, Work and survive, work and survive. I heard it at university. I heard it when I worked as a stonemason after graduating. I heard it when I became a draughtsman and then an architectural designer. I heard it when, having devoted myself to writing, I worked in construction, painted houses and did odd jobs in a small market town in Bedfordshire. I heard it in the doubt
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