I stayed in Birmingham awhile, to help my father regroup. I took some shifts at the Charlie’s in Hagley Road, and reminisced about the times I’d spent there as a boy. I think I even wrote a couple more installments about my old friend Thomas, just to see what it felt like. Then one day Dad and I were in the kitchen—he was flouring up the cod, and I was lining the baskets—and he said it was time for me to get back to London, to stop worrying about him and get on with my life. I told him on the spot that I didn’t plan to go back to school, that it only felt right to do what Mum would have
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