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

beside the event Free at the Edinburgh Fringe – Little Big Man at the Duke were a couple of other numbers. Confirmed coming 243. Maybe coming 467.

I looked over at Norman, and it didn’t take telepathy to see he was wondering exactly the same as me. Just what the implications of Little Big Man getting a little too big for his boots were going to be, and whether the Duke Supper Club was going to be good for some extra chairs.

In a way, it was good Adam had hit us with the worst thing early on to distract Norman. Because apart from bragging about his past sporting achievements and his stellar success with women all over again, there were a couple of remarks about Norman’s psoriasis, just as I’d feared. The one he laboured the longest was that familiar old chestnut about whether we’d tried calamine lotion as a treatment.

‘Always worked a bloody treat for the chafing when I was playing football. You should give it a go. I know what I’m talking about, even if it might not look like it these days.’

He gestured almost apologetically into mid-air and then glanced down to his former football-playing legs, now planted firmly on the rubber footplates of the mobility scooter. My stomach gave that same funny little lurch of recognition.

Pointing out that thigh chafe wasn’t really in the ballpark of a debilitating dermatological condition that affected every part of your life was probably useless, so I didn’t even try. But Norman was, as ever, incredibly polite and patient when listening to advice. He promised that he’d give the calamine a go one more time. Just in case. And thanks very much, Adam.

When it came to conversation, Adam wasn’t big into audience participation. There was a nano-pause when, after he’d drained his caramel latte, he looked quizzically into the glass as if he might have noticed it was skinny milk and only one and a half sugars. But it was a false alarm and it turned out he was just looking for more. Other than that, he barely drew breath as he droned on about his skills on the Web, how his site had over forty thousand views a month, how much money he made from affiliate marketing and his online life-coaching business called Positive Man-Ifestation. At which point I had to bite my tongue. Hard.

As it turned out, Adam didn’t leave any room or opportunity for us to even address the question of whether he might or might not be Norman’s father. True to his word, he really didn’t seem to care either way. There was only one slightly scary moment when, mid-sentence, he stopped and poked Norman in the arm to make sure he had his attention.

‘Oi, about this little comedy thing you’ve got going, Normie. I mean, it doesn’t look like it, but it’d be funny if we were related, wouldn’t it? Because look at you and look at me. Little and Large! You know ’em? I’m the large, by the way, ha ha ha. Talk about chalk and cheese!’

Chalk and cheese were infinitely more alike than that buffoon and my son, but I thought it best not to get caught up in the details, and Norman had looked quite chuffed at Adam’s attempt at a joke.

‘Anyhow, Normie, if you’re half as good as your Facebook page says you are, I might just have to keep an eye on you. I mean, you’re going to need a manager and some more social media platforms if you get famous, aren’t you? With my connections, you could be huge!’

I managed to pass off my genuine shiver as a cough because, secretly, I’d kind of been hoping never to have to cross Adam Linley’s path again, let alone inflict him on Norman on a long-term basis. And anyhow, I told myself, there was no career to manage. It was all smoke and mirrors and fake Facebook pages and disastrous talent nights and out-of-whack routines and unsuitable sperm donors and dead best friends.

I sat there listening to Adam witter on and thought that, so far, absolutely nothing had gone as planned and things were still moving faster than I could run away from them. Norman still didn’t have a proper show prepared, and all I’d succeeded in doing was finding one father who didn’t want to know, one who did but wasn’t, and a third that was Adam Linley.

All of a sudden, I missed Dennis and the car yard and my boring life where I always knew what was coming next and who was going to get the things off the high shelves. My old life, where I never even had to think about the past, let alone confront the ghosts of it head on in a Costa coffee shop. The life that was totally and very satisfactorily taken up by two beautiful, brilliant boys who were the best friends I’d ever had. Because if Adam was an indication of what was going on in the rest of the world, I wasn’t sure I wanted in.

The thing was, though, even while I was busy working myself up about all that stuff, I couldn’t help but notice what was happening with Norman. There was a whiff of something different about him, and this time it wasn’t anything that had come out of a bottle or a tube. He was chatting away easily to Adam, politely answering his questions and even offering the occasional shy smile. Despite the odd bits of skin dropping off him like fleshy little clover leaves every now and again, there was a kind of glow about him. He was even sitting up straighter than usual, like he was perfectly capable of holding his own against Adam and it was just another day in the office. Not another day on the road to the biggest and scariest event of his life. What the hell had been in that Chinese tea? I got a sharp twang of pain from whatever was down