Louis didn’t do well and was thinking of letting his parents talk him out of being a fireman.
He rang his mother, the number was no longer in service. This was weird and scary, so he went to the house and knocked the door, assuming his parents would be happy to see him.
But they weren’t there.
His parents had rented the house to a family and gone abroad.
Louis could not get much information out of the family who lived in his house.
He left, trying to figure out where his parents had gone. He tried to recall their friends, people they would talk to, but had never taken much of an interest in anything his parents did or knew.