The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (sci fi books to read .TXT) 📗

time Adam had ever run around a football field. At any decent speed, anyhow. He’d woken up in my room before dawn with some unreliable memories and the hangover from hell, so after getting himself home (no mention of my toastie maker, I noticed) he’d climbed into his own bed and slept for fourteen hours straight. Naturally, that was the day the selectors from West Ham had come calling, and he’d missed his chance of becoming one of the most famous players in history. Apparently. Although while he was talking I did get a sudden flashback to him pulling a clipping of himself on the front page of the Edinburgh Evening News out of his pocket at some stage of our liaison, so I guess it could have been true.

He slowed down and looked a bit thoughtful when he got to that part, and I wondered if he was just now figuring out he might be able to blame me for it. Anyhow, according to Adam, that week turned into the beginning of the end. His coach had been so angry with him that they’d ended up in a huge fight, so he didn’t show up to training for the rest of the month either. Then he’d been kicked off the team and then, you know, the hernia and the incident with the stolen exam paper, yada yada yada. With university a bust, he came home to Bournemouth and took a job at a local bakery chain, where his mum had worked her entire adult life. Aha.

Persistent complications with his hernia meant even joining the local football team was off the cards, so he’d thrown himself wholeheartedly into his new career. It seems Adam’s collaboration with The Crusty Slice turned out to be the most successful thing he’d ever done, working his way up to area manager in twelve months and close on doubling his body weight in eighteen. But his rapid increase in size brought a whole lot of new health issues, and ‘fucking Crusty’s’ (‘I gave them two fucking years of my fucking life’) had started to object to the amount of time off he needed to go to blood-pressure and obesity clinics. In the end they laid him off with a lousy redundancy package and an excuse that they were downsizing.

‘As opposed to what I did myself, clearly. Ha ha ha.’

I resisted the urge to agree with Adam because, despite having almost lost the will to live while listening to his self-directed and -produced This Is Your Life episode, just for a microsecond his flash of self-deprecation reminded me of Norman. A nanosecond, maybe. Because occasionally, if he noticed some mouthy kid sizing up the condition of his skin and getting ready to pounce, before they had a chance to come up with a cutting jibe or sneering question, Norman would jump in first.

If he was quick enough to get there, it might be something like, ‘I know, I know, I better stay away from the dips at parties. A . . . am . . . amiright?’ Or on a good day, ‘Come and have a closer look if you like, the doctor said it might not be quite so contagious any more.’

KO’ing their poxy piggin’ punchline is what Jax called it. Some nights I’d hear Norman practising potential comebacks, and it damn near broke me, if I’m honest. Because if I ever heard of anyone making fun of him I just wanted to go in all guns blazing, but Jax would always say, ‘Nah, Normie’s got it covered, Sadie. He can look after himself. He just pounds ’em in the poxy piggin’ punchline and they’ve had it!’

The pride I saw on Norman’s face as he basked in Jax’s praise was the only thing that saved me sometimes.

Even the start of the open mic and the raucous yelling of the crowd, egging on and heckling the various acts, couldn’t distract Adam from his story, but funnily enough, so far he hadn’t even mentioned Norman or the possibility that he might be his father. One thing for certain was that there was definitely no tell-tale genetic cloud hovering around him, although to be fair it could have been overpowered by the lingering odour of sweat, lager and something that might have smelled a little bit like wee.

I was trying my best to remind myself that it was nice to be nice, but Adam Linley made it a pretty tough ask. Not for the first time I wished that Jax was still here, because he would have known exactly what to say to Adam to shut down his self-pitying rant. You can bet it wouldn’t have been appropriate or even polite, but it would definitely have been right on the money. I blinked slowly and took a deep swig of warm Chardonnay as a smiling, dirty-faced boy filled the space behind my eyes. I managed to get myself into a zone where I could nod and uh huh in synch with the rise and fall of Adam’s voice without paying too much attention to what he was saying. But in my head I was trying to work out just how soon I could make my excuses and get back to the Premier Inn, which suddenly seemed like the most desirable place on earth. And right then I’d have handed over a hundred toastie makers if I could have got rid of Adam as easily as I had the last time I’d seen him, because if this drainer was Norman’s father, then we were most definitely better off without him.

34

Norman was sleeping when I got back to the hotel room and, as I pushed open the door, Leonard sat up straighter in the armchair and put his finger to his lips to warn me. I tiptoed over to the bed and I could see, even in the low light and half covered by the sheet, that the onslaught on his body had noticeably subsided. Some of the