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

looking for Leonard, pushing open downstairs-loo doors and calling up through attic hatches, I couldn’t help thinking that, despite Norman’s obvious agitation, it was a bit early to start worrying seriously.

‘You know, Norman, it’s not like . . . well, I mean, we don’t even know if Leonard has gone missing, as such. Maybe he just got up early and went for a walk to, you know, check out the neighbourhood or something. He’ll probably be back in a minute.’

But the thing was, if I’d learned anything about Leonard over the past week, it was that he loved a good sleep-in now he didn’t have to be up at the crack of dawn for his cleaning job. He was usually the last to wake up, although, come to think of it, he was always the first waiting by the car ready to go. It was probably all that army training. But anyhow, for him to be up before 7 a.m. now seemed fairly uncharacteristic, as far as I could tell.

After a thorough search of the house revealed nothing and it became very clear I wasn’t going to get a cup of tea, we reconvened in the Caramel Suite. For want of a better plan, I thought it would be a good idea to check my phone, just in case Leonard had called or left a message as to his whereabouts while we’d been on our search.

I’d plugged my mobile in the previous night, which I had to do at every opportunity, since it only held its charge for a day, and quite a lot less on the rare occasions I made or received any calls. When I picked it up, it was a couple of seconds before I realized something wasn’t quite right.

‘Hey, Norman, look at this.’

The phone I had in my hand was definitely not my out-of-date, banged-up Samsung. It was bigger, thinner and much sleeker. A very un-banged-up iPhone. Leonard’s iPhone.

Then I remembered the last time I’d seen him with it was just before we’d gone to bed the night before. He’d taken it out of his jacket pocket and looked at it as if he might be going to make a call, thought twice and then placed it down on the table next to mine. I looked at the mobile phone I was holding and it wasn’t hard to imagine that, in the dim light of a pre-dawn getaway, to an old man with dicky eyes one phone might look very much like another.

‘I think this means that wherever Leonard is, we can safely assume that he has my phone. What do you think?’

‘I reckon you’re right, Mum. Here, pass it over.’

Delighted to have some kind of a clue, Norman swung into action and dialled my number off by heart from Leonard’s phone. It rang out, which didn’t surprise me one bit, although I decided it probably wasn’t the time or place to admit I had a habit of leaving my phone on silent mode. Just in case anyone wanted to speak to me. Deflated, Norman passed the iPhone back and we sat on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes, just looking at it.

There was a screech of brakes and a sudden shout outside, and Norman leapt up and ran to the window. His head swivelled from side to side as he scanned the street for signs that the kerfuffle had anything to do with Leonard. After a few seconds he turned back and shook his head dejectedly.

‘Nothing, Mum. What are we going to do? Where is he?’

He brushed his fringe out of his eyes and a small piece of skin detached itself from his forehead and wafted down to land on the screen of Leonard’s iPhone. Norman sat back down heavily on the bed without noticing and the skin bounced off and landed on the duvet, right near my hand. I felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out and put it in my pocket.

He picked up Leonard’s phone again and started turning it around in his hands.

‘Hey, Mum. Do you think . . . ? I mean, it’s kind of an emergency, so do you reckon . . . could we maybe look in Leonard’s phone and see if we can phone Iris or something?’

And because I was clueless as to what to do next myself, I agreed that, in these circumstances, it might be OK to nosey through an old man’s private property without his permission. Within a few seconds, Norman passed the phone back to me with the trail of Leonard’s call-history revealed.

There was a landline number at the top with double digits in brackets beside it indicating the number of recent incoming calls. In fact, it appeared to be the one and only number Leonard had been called from in the last two weeks or so. It had a south-west prefix, so I assumed it had to be his home number, with Iris waiting on the other end.

‘Mum, do you think we should call her? Iris? Maybe Leonard mentioned something to her and she’ll be able to tell us where he’s gone. Just to . . . you know, put our minds at rest.’

Norman’s voice was slightly shaky and I could tell he was getting worried about his new old mate. I thought it was doubtful that Iris, several hundred miles away in Penzance, would know where her husband might be at this time of the morning in Edinburgh, but we didn’t have anything else. And I had to admit, when I realized how much time had passed, I was definitely starting to worry a little.

I hit return call against the number and put it on speaker, gesturing for Norman to lean in. I figured I’d just wing it with some small talk rather than straight out declare to Iris that her husband had disappeared without even taking his coat, but as I was gathering some thoughts about the weather the number barely even got to ring before a voice answered.

‘Good morning. Wheeler Centre Exeter, Emily-Jade