Chapter 18
By the time the bus took Tom back to Uncle Adrian’s house, his head was full of gruesome death stories. He’d listened to two men. One had a young child and used to come to the park a lot. Tom suspected that he might find this man’s soul in the playground. The other man came from a town to the north. His story involved boats and fishing. Maybe his soul had gone into a fish, but Tom had no idea how he would find such a fish. And how could he find Daddy amongst all those firemen? Listening to all those stories would take ages.
What did close but further than you think mean anyway?
The drive back to Uncle Andrew’s house took longer than Tom wanted, because the roads were full of frog-faces—who did they belong to?—and Tom was out of money.
He sat in the bus’ front seat, leaning h
