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

the bus trundling through the majestic Scottish countryside that made me think, well, all right then. And when she plonked the warm little animal on my lap then slipped into the empty seat next to me, I really couldn’t find a reason not to tell a girl and her dog something that had been chewing me up from the inside out for this entire trip. And way before that. I hoped they were ready.

To be honest, I didn’t need a therapist (or even a girl and a dog) to tell me I hadn’t ever dealt with my father’s death. Although several of them have done – thanks for coming and that’s seventy-five pounds you’ll never see again. But that I’d allowed my son to build a dream, a life, a plan around the premise that he came from comedy royalty was a whole other issue.

‘The thing is . . . all of this is my fault. The whole reason Norman even wanted to be a comedian so much is because I . . . I’ve always . . .’ I stopped for a hiccup and blinked hard to stave off another flood. ‘I just couldn’t bear to tell him the truth about his grandfather . . . my father. He’s got no idea that the person he’s been trying so hard to live up to his entire life was just a mediocre comedian and big old bloody fraud who chose to top himself rather than go on with the show.’ Damn hiccups.

I took a deep breath, and the pain in my stomach felt like it might be about to shoot out through my eyeballs, along with the other stuff.

‘But I . . . I couldn’t . . . I didn’t want to take him away from Norman, too, so . . . I mean, I’ve only ever shown him . . . told him, the good stuff. The things I . . .’

‘The things you want to remember about your dad. You gave him the story you wish you’d had, right?’

Jesus. Ten solid minutes of spilling my guts and it only took Goth girl two seconds to wipe the floor with me. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat, because I didn’t have to hand over seventy-five pounds to know there was only one place to go from here. What I really wanted to do was crawl back under my Penzance-shaped rock and go back to the way my life used to be. I wanted my teapot, I wanted my Tesco sofa and I wanted my direct access to endless re-runs of Come Dine with Me. But it was pretty clear that wasn’t an option, so in the end I told a complete stranger my biggest truth, which, coincidentally (although probably not), turned out to include the answer to the very question Leonard had asked me back in Swansea.

Because the truth was that when I looked at Norman I saw the same hopeful, desperate look in his eyes that filled the still frames of my childhood. The snapshots of my father. And what I was so terrified of, thank you very much, Leonard, was that Norman was about to get up on a stage in just over twenty-four hours and embark on a journey that would eventually drive him full tilt into the same wall that broke my dad.

I’d been resolutely staring out the window of the bus for the entire conversation, and in the silence that followed my final revelation I wondered if perhaps Goth girl had peaked early and I’d managed to put another person to sleep with the story of my father’s death. The dog had long ago nodded off on my lap and the only noise was the sound of the engine and the soft, springy pings coming from the bus seats. But when I turned to check, she was wide awake and looking back at me, forehead creased in concentration. Her waxy, deadpan face somehow made me feel like her reply was going to be a doozie. A nugget of truth and wisdom and an assurance that maybe everything was going to be OK after all. It’s all right, Sadie love, let’s go home.

I shifted slightly on the seat to rearrange the pain in my stomach and waited.

‘Your stop, lady.’

My stop was Cross Street, Biggar, in front of a group of stone-fronted shops and a Post Office which declared on a handwritten sign that it also sold shortbread. It also just happened to be the Goth girl’s stop, and she told me I’d need to get the local taxi to take me the rest of the ten-minute drive to Quothquan, unless I fancied a five-mile walk. I didn’t. My new friend took me into the Post Office and shortbread shop to introduce me to the postmistress, who said she’d be more than happy to ring for said taxi, the driver of which just happened to be her husband.

After a brief exchange on the phone she confirmed Dicky would be with me just as soon as Bargain Hunt finished in five minutes. I wandered outside to wait patiently, because, despite the thought of Leonard twiddling his thumbs on the side of the road trying to remember his own name, who was I to come between someone and their telly?

To be honest, I was also all of a sudden very much in need of a moment to catch my breath, because that bus trip seemed to have loosened more than a couple of tear-duct valves. Deep down in the pit of my guts, the nagging pain that had previously been concentrated around my scar was rapidly morphing into something else altogether as a web of cramps encompassed my entire stomach. I could feel a warm layer of sweat gathering on my back and a very strange sensation, as though searing-hot liquid was seeping in and filling up the spaces between my organs. Next job. Definitely. Absolutely. I wondered if the postmistress might by chance serve a side of medical attention with her stamps and shortbread.

I lowered myself carefully down on to the