“Is this it?” she asked us, bellowing into the dark night. “Is this really all life is?” “Is what all life is?” Margaret asked soothingly, putting her arm round her. “Fucking . . . Tottenham Court Road and ordering shit off Amazon,” she replied. For years, those words were stuck on the underside of my brain like a Post-it I couldn’t shake off. They hung there like a whispered conversation you overheard between your parents that you didn’t understand but you knew to be very important. I always wondered why those two specific things—Tottenham Court Road and Amazon—could cause so much sorrow.
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