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

the car hit a pothole and my fingers bounced on the keypad. Once the car stopped shuddering, I started to compose a sensitive but compelling text to another man I hadn’t seen for thirteen years. That’s what I was aiming for anyhow.

Hi Adam. Sadie Foreman here. I’m not sure if you remember me, as it’s been a long time and we didn’t really know each other that well, but I met you in Edinburgh in 2006 at university. Was there a protocol for the length of this kind of text? Just what depth of background does one offer? Does one say, Oh and also we shagged, but just the once and if I can barely remember it I guess I can’t really expect you to. I decided it might be best if I went for a more subtle approach.

I discovered that you live in Bournemouth and I’m passing through with my son on our way to the Edinburgh Fringe so I wondered if you’d have time for a quick catch-up. I know it might seem strange, but my son would like to meet you. There is a bit of a possibility that you could be his biological father. OK, not so subtle then. Please don’t worry, he would simply like to meet you, that’s all – no strings attached. I understand the sensitivity of the issue and possibly the need for discretion, which I assure you I can guarantee. We don’t want anything from you, but Norman has recently lost his best friend in tragic circumstances and I feel that the opportunity to meet you might settle some questions and give him some comfort. I appreciate this will come as a bit of a shock out of the blue like this after so long, but we are in Bournemouth for just one night so I hope you will consider meeting us. We’ll be at O’Neills on Old Christchurch Rd at 7 p.m. tonight. I hope to see you there. Bollocks I do and PS: how about you bring my toastie maker? Many thanks and kind regards, Sadie Foreman.

About thirty seconds after I pressed the send button a beep came back on my phone. At exactly the same time I felt a sharp, reverberating jolt and my head shot up in time to take in the view as the little car headed on to the verge with two wheels bumping noisily along on the grass.

‘Jesus! Leonard! Shit! What . . . ?’

I just had time to register a glimpse of a very strange look on Leonard’s face before he swung the steering wheel violently and heaved us back on to the road, overcorrecting to the wrong side as an Ocado delivery van came hurtling around the corner.

Before the scream in my throat was able to even form properly Leonard let out a startled ‘Hell’s bells, man!’ as he swung the wheel back the other way and, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Norman’s feet whipping up off the floor and curling beneath him in a semi-foetal position. Within a split second the van had gone and we were back on the right side of the road, albeit at a greatly reduced speed and with a very, very shaken-looking driver at the wheel. Leonard’s face was ashen.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, dear me. I’m . . . is . . . is everyone OK? I’m so sorry, I don’t know . . . I didn’t . . . I . . .’

To be honest, I felt as bad as he looked, but suddenly Norman was leaning forward from the back seat patting our arms reassuringly in tandem and looking from one to the other.

‘It’s OK, Leonard. Honest. It’s OK. We’re OK. We’re all OK. Aren’t we, Mum?’ Are we?

‘Yes, yes of course we are. Perfectly fine, Leonard, it’s . . . don’t worry about it.’ But what the hell just happened?

‘I . . . I just don’t know what happened. One minute I was on the road and the next I . . . I must have lost concentration for just an instant. I . . . it’s absolutely unforgiveable. I’m so sorry.’

Norman wriggled even further forward into the front.

‘It’s not unforgivable, Leonard. Honest! I reckon we would have been a goner if it wasn’t for your great driving. We forgive you. Don’t we, Mum?’ Ah, it’s so nice to be nice.

‘Of course we do, Leonard. But I do think that maybe it’d be a good idea to pull over at the next stop just to . . . regroup. All of us. What do you think?’

While Leonard had regained some of his composure, thanks to Norman, he looked very relieved when, just a few minutes later, we were able to pull off the motorway at a large roadside services. Norman wandered off to find a loo and Leonard went inside to buy us some much needed tea.

I looked down at the phone in my lap, which was still blinking with the new message that had come through just before our near-death experience. But it had been too quick, surely? Unless Adam Linley really had been waiting around for a text from me for thirteen years and was going to be as happy as Tony had been to see me. Or perhaps it was from his wife, telling me to leave him alone and how dare I. Or maybe he was in the Dan McLachlan camp and the reply was just ‘not interested’. Maybe not even prefaced with a sorry.

Part of me wanted to throw the phone back in my bag, put my head on my lap and just drift off into a coma to try and sleep all this off. After all, my life was proof positive that you could keep that up almost indefinitely if you had nothing else to concentrate on. But I thought that Leonard probably deserved to know how his research was panning out, so I pressed on the message.

Only it wasn’t from Adam Linley at all. It was from Al. Of the Big and Barnstaple variety, who’d put his number in my phone and