The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (e book reader online txt) 📕

‘What the hell, Leonard? What are you gawping at? Look, I haven’t got time for this. Request denied, OK? Now piss off and go and finish cleaning the bogs.’

He flicked the holiday-leave form back in Leonard’s direction and it slid off the table and wafted down on to the floor. I swear, from that moment, life took its cue and everything else went into slow motion as well.

Leonard looked down at the leave form lying on the floor and Dennis looked at Leonard looking at the form. Then Leonard looked up at Dennis looking at him and Dennis turned his head and looked over at me. It was clear the jig was up so I gave up hiding and looked at Leonard. Then Leonard bent down to pick up the form, at which point Dennis appeared to lose interest and started rustling through some papers on his desk.

Then really, really slowly, even slower than the already slow motion, Leonard straightened himself up and at the same time raised his right hand. The one without the holiday-leave form in it. I swear my heart stopped and I didn’t need to breathe any more as I watched him uncurl his gnarly old hand at a snail’s pace and elegantly present Dennis with an actual, beautifully executed, in-the-flesh finger. Then he dropped the leave form on the desk, turned heel on his pristine white Nike trainers, gave me a wink on the way through and headed straight out the back of the building.

When I dared to look back at Dennis he was still sitting at his desk, open-mouthed. Even his hair looked shocked. It took a few more seconds before he came to and started scrambling out of his chair, papers, coffee cups and hair shooting every which way as he lunged for the door.

‘You’re finished, Leonard, you old buzzard! Do you hear me? You’d better not think you’re coming back here. You just earned yourself a permanent holiday. Nobody gives Dennis Pearl the finger and gets away with it!’

But I could already hear the click and whirr of the Austin’s starter motor turning over. By the time Dennis made it out to the car park my hero was long gone. The crowd in my heart went wild.

18

I definitely felt bad about Leonard losing his job because of us, but I cheered up when he told me that after he’d left Pearl’s he’d driven straight over to the Age UK office and reported Dennis for workplace bullying. His case worker had assured him his pension wouldn’t be affected, and that whenever he felt he’d sufficiently recovered from the trauma they’d find him another, more appropriate working environment.

‘I’ve always found that, if you allow it, the universe provides you with exactly what you need at precisely the right time, don’t you agree, Sadie?’

I had about as much faith in the unseen power of the universe as I did in the supposed hand of God, but I was certainly more than a little jealous of Leonard’s escape from Dennis and the car yard. And by the time (under strict accountant’s orders and to Dennis’s unmitigated disgust) I’d bank-transferred Leonard’s final wages, including, ironically, a couple of weeks’ accrued holiday pay, I stopped feeling bad and started wondering if I, and possibly the universe, had actually done him quite the favour.

The other thing was that with no job to slow him down Leonard was able to work full time on getting things happening on Norman’s plan. Which was a bit of a novelty because, if I’m honest, getting things happening is not something I’m used to. Usually any big ideas I have only last just slightly longer than the realization that I may have to get off the sofa and contribute in order for them to progress. So, you know, not long.

Consequently, I was a little taken aback when Leonard arrived on our doorstep again on the Sunday morning of the week he’d left Pearl’s. He’d woken me from a very deep sleep and a dream in which I was being chased along the Penzance seafront by a giant inflatable pointing finger attached to a shock of bouffant hair with a floating thought bubble above it that said Bad Mother in huge black letters. I’d managed to tackle the finger and was bashing away, trying to deflate it, but every time I hit it there was a noise like a doorbell being jabbed hard and insistently, and even in the dream all I could think was, Jax is back.

Only of course it wasn’t Jax at the door, it was Leonard, and the part of me that was still a little bit asleep felt a stab of disappointment. My heart hurt, I mean actually physically hurt, whenever I thought about Jax, so I kept myself very busy trying hard not to let him into my head. But when he did get in it was like a sharp current that just kept on stabbing at my temples over and over. Just like Jax himself, really.

Leonard was way too polite to mention that a better mother would probably have been up before ten o’clock, even if it was a Sunday. But I did see him shoot a startled glance at my hair, which I knew from experience could give Dennis’s a run for its money after a restless night.

‘Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry if I woke you, Sadie. I . . . I did text when I left home to say I was on my way, as we arranged earlier in the week, or at least . . . oh dear, well, I . . . I thought I did . . .’

He started fiddling with the very new-looking iPhone he had in his hand as if to check, but while I genuinely had no memory of said text, it would be totally unsurprising to me if I’d completely forgotten. So I just made a half-hearted attempt to pat down my hair, shooed away his