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

grid, street by street. The task Norman had set me felt overwhelming and, if I’m honest, I didn’t hold out much hope, but I told myself the car was pretty distinctive, so that was in my favour. Come to think of it, so was Leonard. So one never knew.

With random performers and crowds of spectators for Fringe events on virtually every corner, the city was heaving, and it took me a good hour to walk the length of just two streets on the map. My neck began to ache from double-taking on every blue car that caught my eye, and I became quite the expert on old men, learning more with every one I spotted. How they walk, the hunch of their shoulders, the way their heads seem to sink into their necks, and the angle at which they seem to tip forward, as if in constant fascination with their shoes.

I wondered how far forward my dad would have tipped by now, at sixty-seven. How he’d have walked and bent and curved into an old body, and if he’d have found his peace with the blunting of age. And as I rounded a corner and set off down the next street, I wondered for the millionth time why the world’s best daughter hadn’t been enough to make him want to stay around long enough for me to find out.

By the time I stopped to eat lunch on a bench out the front of the train station, I was tired, hot and all that thinking hadn’t been without its consequences. My scar had noticeably warmed up, and underneath my clothes it was starting to feel like it was stretched to its absolute limits. I surreptitiously opened a button and pushed down the waistband of my jeans to see if it looked as bad as it felt. It was a bit of a shock to be reassured that it was still just the neatly zipped-together silvery track I had all but ignored for the past thirty years. On the outside, at least. I could only guess at what was going on inside me because, whatever it was back there, it was definitely getting angrier.

There was a constant stream of people scurrying past and I continued to scan the crowd as I forced myself to swallow bites of my Pret Posh Cheddar. Every now and again, as I’d scuffed around the streets, I’d kept calling my own number from Leonard’s phone in the hope that he might eventually answer. As I absently hit the redial button again and put the phone to my ear I nearly choked on the last mouthful of my lunch.

‘Hello? Hello? Leonard, is that you?’ I could definitely hear a voice and it sounded like his, but it was muffled and tinny and felt like it was coming from very far away.

‘Leonard, hello? Can you speak up? It’s me, Sadie. Where are you? Are you OK?’

His voice kept cutting in and out, but from the snatches I got he sounded very flustered and upset. Confused, even.

‘I . . . oh . . . so terribly sorry. I just wanted . . . well, because, I promised Iris . . . and I thought . . . I just . . . oh, I really don’t know . . . but I just thought I would try to . . . so silly of me. And then the phone wouldn’t . . . I’m so sorry, Sadie, I . . . rather a mess of things I’m afraid.’

I suddenly remembered that I’d put a pin lock on my phone after I’d come back from the toilet one day at work to find Dennis scrolling through it. ‘Just checking you haven’t been texting your boyfriends on my time, Sadie, ha ha.’

I realized that if I really had left my phone on silent, not only would poor old Leonard not have known we were trying to call unless he had it in his hand, he also wouldn’t have been able to call us back, even if he’d wanted to.

‘Leonard, don’t worry about all that. But are you all right? And where are you?’ There were a couple of seconds’ silence and I thought we’d been cut off. ‘Leonard? Are you . . . ?’

‘Well, now . . . not far, really. About an hour out of the city, I think, and . . . I actually found some on the side of the road . . . then, oh dear, the Austin wouldn’t start and . . . I tried a little something but . . .’

Leonard’s patchy voice trailed off entirely at that point, but I could still hear his raggedy old-man breathing. And all I could think was, this is all my fault. If it wasn’t for me opening my big mouth about Norman’s plan, right now Leonard would be ensconced safely at the Wheeler Centre, most likely enjoying an online class in Mandarin and drinking hibiscus tea. But instead, he was stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, probably with no clue as to how to get back. To a place he wasn’t even supposed to be. Come on, Sadie, in for a penny in for a pound!

‘It’s OK, Leonard. Don’t worry. I . . . I can come and get you. No problem. Don’t worry about a thing. But, Leonard, you need to tell me: WHERE ARE YOU?’

There were another few seconds of radio silence, like Leonard was definitely trying very hard to remember where he was. I held my breath. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and all I really wanted was for someone to tell me not to worry about a thing. That they’d come and get me.

‘Oh, sorry . . . of course. Well, it’s near . . . Quothquan, it’s called. Quothquan. I can spell it for you, shall I? Q. U. O . . .’

But even as Leonard was painstakingly spelling out the letters I’d opened up my map, turned it over and begun tracing my finger around the area immediately surrounding Edinburgh.

‘Got it!’

Leonard had just hit the final N in his spellathon, and nobody was more shocked than me that I’d actually found it.

‘OK,