I too started to move – I had no choice, otherwise I’d freeze to death. Timidly, at first. I watched Edgar out of the corner of my eye. The strobe made him look like a Roman statue. He turned towards me, smiled and leaned over to speak. He said, ‘We’re not going to stay like this, watching life pass us by.’ Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe he didn’t say that. Maybe I imagined it. Edgar took my hand and led me into the centre of the crowd.

We danced like kids, for hours and hours, until we were exhausted. Teenagers barely older than my son danced with me . . . I laughed and tried to bounce around like them. Creased up with laughter, Edgar filmed it all.

We were far too old for all these experiences, but letting our hair down like that felt so good. It was wonderful to forget about being reasonable for a short while. I realized that, once out of my twenties, I’d decided to start behaving like a responsible adult. I sneered at those thirty-somethings hanging out at rock concerts, those gamers devoting entire nights to their online heroes, those others whose free time was devoted to generating ‘likes’ on social networks. They were all adrenaline junkies, behaving as if they were still fifteen, still thrill-seeking, busting their guts in their futile pursuit of fun. Maybe, ultimately, they were right.

That night, my son helped me revive a few too-quickly-turned pages of my youth. That night, I understood that life – true life, which stays in your memory – is nothing other than a succession of moments of freedom. And that no adult ambition can make a person happier than the teenage ability to seize the moment.

We took a taxi back, picked up our luggage and went straight to the airport, still numb from the cold and dazed from the loud music.

Both of us exhausted, but happy.

Excerpt from the Book of Wonders

Push boundaries ☺

– Take part in The Color Run and get to the end. The Budapest race sounds cool . . . especially because it turns into the party marathon I saw on MTV.

– So, the party marathon: have a drink in a dozen ruin bars and then stay out all night at the wild techno party at the Széchenyi Baths. (All without throwing up, please.)

19

5 to 3 Days

Team Spirit

Over the past few days, we’d been a real team. At the hospital, the motley collection of individuals, aged from twelve to sixty, who were keeping watch on my son around the clock had been dubbed ‘team Louis’. I always found it hard to admit publicly, but sharing the burden with team Louis did me the world of good.