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

I kissed Norman’s sleeping forehead and left Leonard fussing about with his packages, arranging them on the desk and, I couldn’t help noticing, having quite the little chat to himself as he did it.

‘Now, mmm, which one did the chappie say was . . . ? Ah, OK, I think this one first and then . . . no, no . . . this one. That’s it . . . I think.’ I left him to it.

When I walked into O’Neill’s, my plan had been to find a quiet seat in a corner facing the door, on the off-chance that if Adam Linley came through it I’d be able to see him before he saw me. On the even more off-chance that I’d actually recognize him. But that idea went straight out the window, because the place was absolutely jam-packed. Bournemouth was clearly a comedy hotspot and I felt a guilty wave of relief that Norman wasn’t going to have to get up in front of that lot.

I managed to fight my way to the bar and crammed myself into a couple of inches of space. I could only see a sliver of the door, but it looked like the best I could hope for. I figured that if I did see Adam Linley come in, I could make a judgement from a distance on whether he’d turned out to be a half-decent person and whether it was at all possible he was Norman’s father. If not, I could just slink away into the crowd and tell the others he hadn’t shown up.

Since this whole plan started, there had been an irrational part of me that felt like I’d know Norman’s father when I saw him. Like some kind of genetic marker would be hovering over the right guy and I’d be able to say without a doubt that our search was over. No paternity test required. Norman, may I present your father, Prince William of Wales! I realized the glass of wine I’d been slowly sipping was already starting to go to my head.

‘Oi. Are you Sadie?’

There was a split second I thought about denying it, but I realized I probably hadn’t changed enough in the past thirteen years to get away with it. My hair was the same, I still fitted into the same size clothes and, for all I could remember, Adam Linley had just recognized me by the same blue M&S T-shirt I’d let him take off me one night. But now clearly he’d seen me before I saw him. Bugger.

I turned in the direction of the voice, but the hefty old guy I’d spotted sitting on a mobility scooter in a corner of the pub when I’d come in had somehow managed to manoeuvre himself through the crowd and had parked himself right next to me. His bulk was all that stood, or sat, between me and Adam Linley’s voice, and it was pretty tempting to make a run for it while I still could.

‘Geez almighty, mate, get off me!’

The man rammed in next to me at the bar turned and gave the handlebars of the mobility scooter a bit of a shove as it bunny-hopped into him. I moved my head left as I tried not to brush the sweaty arm of the driver, who was leaning out of the scooter in my direction. I stretched my neck around him so I could see Adam, but he half stood up and shifted his body into the same angle as mine. I realized with horror that he was moving in.

‘Hey! Piss off, you!’

My voice came out much louder than I’d intended and a handful of people at the bar turned around. And then a terrifying thing happened. A miracle of space cleared around us and I realized that the fat old guy in the scooter was not actually that old at all. He was definitely fat, though. I didn’t get that wrong. Then Adam Linley’s voice started coming out of his mouth, and before I knew it he’d planted a sweaty kiss on my cheek. Which was a damn sight better than the place it had originally seemed headed for.

‘I get that a lot,’ said Adam. He sounded quite proud, so I wasn’t quite sure if his statement was in reference to being told to piss off or the sudden extra room he commanded around him. Interchangeable, probably.

‘You know, I didn’t know who the hell you were when you texted, so I wanted to stay on the down low, but I remembered as soon as I saw you. I’d never forget a foxy-looking doll like you. Ha ha. Holy shit, it was a long time ago, but you still look in pretty good shape, don’t you? For a woman with a kid.’

I looked around and wondered how much of a head start I’d need to crowd-surf my way out of the pub before a mobility scooter could reach top speed.

One thing that hadn’t occurred to me if we did really find Norman’s father was that he might be in a worse state than us. I was just a mother trying my best and dragging Norman along through life with me, but the whole assumption of this plan (for me, at least) had been that a father might be able to offer him something else. Something more. You know, like . . . a guy.

But as I sat in the corner of the pub with my chair mashed up against Adam Linley’s mobility scooter, gripping my wine glass and listening to his interminable ramble that included, among many other self-pitying side notes, how he’d been kicked out of university because of an incident with a stolen exam paper, how he could have been an elite athlete if he hadn’t ‘popped a fucking gasket’ from a hernia that turned gangrenous, and how useless everyone that worked in the DWP was, I realized it was entirely possible I’d assumed wrong.

It turned out the day before the night we’d got together thirteen years ago was actually the last