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

Linley was the least memorable of all Norman’s paternal possibilities. And I think by now you know that’s saying something. But I don’t just mean the circumstances of our involvement, I mean the actual notion of him as a person. I’d had a vague recollection of lots of greasy blond hair and skintight jeans, which might or might not have been removed after a full bottle of vodka had been consumed by two people who might or might not have been him and me. But like I said, beyond that and his crime of nicking my toastie maker, it’s all pretty fuzzy.

The only reason I had even been able to recollect his last name is through the stroke of luck that he’d dubbed himself ‘The Viscount’, after Viscount Linley, Princess Margaret’s son. So when I’d begun to trawl the depths of my memory, greased by the wheels of a couple of Hobnobs, the vision of a long-haired guy in a loincloth and a crown had popped into my head for seemingly no reason at all. But then the name Adam Linley followed in fairly quick succession, along with the flashbacks to the aforementioned bad behaviour. When Leonard’s line-up had presented me with a picture that looked so suspiciously similar to my cloudy recollection that either Adam had discovered the fountain of youth or he was using a very, very old photo on his Facebook profile, even I couldn’t have made a mistake. Voilà.

With Tony and his sperm out of the picture, Adam Linley’s odds were shortening with every mile we got closer to Bournemouth. The more I thought about it, though, the more I started to think that Leonard and I should probably have been a little more thorough with our task. Maybe added a couple of columns for some details about the potential fathers’ lives as they stood now. Because what about the possibility of wives, families, criminal activities or fame and fortune? To name just a few potential problems.

Not that I’d thought they’d all be sitting around waiting for my call or anything, I guess it just hadn’t entered my mind any earlier that these guys also had thirteen years of life under their belt since I’d last seen them. To me, they were just names on Leonard’s spreadsheet, representing a task I really didn’t want to face but was trying my almost best to, because after all it was the least I could do. And, funnily enough, also the most.

With the deep wisdom of hindsight, I decided to approach Adam Linley a little differently than my previous two attempts, with a text rather than a call – even though I generally wasn’t that big on texting as a rule, possibly because I didn’t have too many people to message. My main text conversations were with Dennis, who usually only texted me when he wanted me to pick him up a coffee on my way back from lunch, and Jax.

I’d tried very hard to ignore the trail of messages that were still attached to Jax’s name in my phone. Norman had a mobile that I’d bought him when he’d started catching the bus to school on his own, but more often than not he left it at home, so Jax used to text me to let me know they were OK. All good, Sadie, at mine or at shop, or getting fishnchips, or me n Normie at beach, usually accompanied by a photo of them both doing exactly what it said in the message.

In summer the photos featured Jax bare-chested and bronzed like a mini-Tarzan, and Norman hatted, shirted and covered from head to toe so he didn’t get sunburn to add to his skin’s other woes. In winter it’d be beanies pulled low, jackets zipped high and, once, a chip jauntily stuck up each of Norman’s nostrils and one coming out of Jax’s ear.

Proof of life, Jax used to call it, so after he died it had been two weeks before I could look at any of those messages. I’d waited until I was sure Norman was asleep so he wouldn’t come across me crying over a mobile phone on the sofa. Snotty and hiccuping, cushion corner pushed into my mouth to dull the wracking sobs as I scrolled through endless pictures of Jax, large as life. Large as death.

The messages went back two years, since Jax had managed to convince both his mother and I that two ten-year-old boys absolutely needed mobile phones. They were funny and sassy and some of them might even have been a little too cheeky coming from a kid that age to his best mate’s mum. But that was the thing about Jax. No matter how cheeky or rude he was, we forgave him anything, me and Norman. Because he was like that little bit of you that you were always too afraid to let out. The part you push back down your throat and put a hand over your mouth so it doesn’t escape by accident. Ah, but sometimes you wished it would.

You can bet Jaxy never put a hand over his own mouth. Not for anything or anyone. He was all the fun and free and naughty parts of life. He was life. That kid wasn’t afraid of anything and oh, how we loved him for it. Because me and Norman were afraid of almost everything.

According to the spreadsheet timetable, I was to contact Adam Linley just before we left Swansea to give him a heads-up on the possible existence of a bombshell in the form of a boy coming his way. I’d managed to conveniently put it off, what with all the excitement of the Duke Supper Club news, but it looked like there were no further distractions to be had. So, with Leonard humming along to a radio jingle for Wetherspoons and Norman mouthing his lines or a cry for help, I clicked on my contacts and headed into the A’s.

Just as I tapped on Adam’s name