The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman, Julietta Henderson [best novels to read for students .TXT] 📗

and Jax. And then underneath our names he’d put bee’s knees and dog’s bollocks in brackets, and drawn a picture of a bee with knobbly knees and a dog with really big you-know-whats. As soon as I saw those pictures it straight away made me think about Jax and how much me and him cracked up when he drew them. And I miss him. That’s when I realized that doing a project on the human body wasn’t going to be the easiest thing ever at all. It was pretty much going to be the exact opposite of that.

So when Mum said I was going to get to go to Edinburgh, even though it was pretty hard to stop listening to my brain telling me to be scared and even though it was going to be three years and maybe even more too early, I thought, well, if I can get through going back to school on my own, maybe I could do that too. And that somewhere in the 80 per cent of all the dust in our house there’s maybe still a little bit of Jax.

13Sadie

The day after my sleepless night, the bus was running twenty minutes later than usual, not down to a much-hoped-for collision with a cow but some diversionary roadworks. As we pulled up across the road from Pearl’s, I could see Leonard standing at the side door of the office, looking anxiously in the direction of the bus. When he saw me get off, his face broke into a huge grin and he clapped his hands together and just held them there as I crossed the road. Like he was happy to see me or something. I had a sudden flash of guilt about those two weeks I’d been away without explanation. But if he was holding a grudge, he didn’t show it.

‘The best of jolly good mornings to you, my dear! Unseasonably chilly today, isn’t it? Come on in. The kettle’s on.’ Pop a brew on, Sadie love.

In the lunchroom, the silver teapot and two cups were already set out and, as we were clearly behind schedule, Leonard busied himself pouring. I sat down at the table and rested my chin on my hands, allowing my eyelids to close for a few lovely, lovely seconds. Or minutes. The aroma of warm flowers brought me round and I opened my eyes to see Leonard sitting opposite me, hands folded around his cup, wearing a slightly concerned look.

‘Sadie my dear, is everything . . . are you all right?’ There you go.

So because it was clear he could see something was up, and because I’d been awake all night thinking about that bloody plan on Norman’s bedroom wall, and because I felt guilty I’d never really given him anything about my life when I knew so much about his, he got it all.

Leonard sipped his tea while I told him how everything went wrong when my father had gone and died when I was nineteen and left me the sole survivor of our already meagre Foreman family of two. And that I’d woken up white-hot angry about that every single day for a year. So angry that I couldn’t concentrate on my university course, or my procession of part-time jobs, or even on the tedious task of sucking air in and out of my lungs, which I’d not very seriously considered putting a stop to once or twice. So angry that drinking my body weight in alcohol and having it off with anyone who got in my way seemed like the best idea I’d ever had. Or OAP-appropriate words to that effect, anyhow.

‘It was like . . . like maybe if I . . . oh, Leonard, I don’t know. It just felt like it was the only way I could find to dilute all that anger into something almost tolerable, you know?’ I was actually quite surprised by the eloquence of my explanation.

Leonard inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement, but if I’d been looking for judgement, and maybe I had, I clearly wasn’t going to get it.

‘Top up, my dear?’

With a full cup, I told Leonard how, all those months later when I came out the other side of my madness and brought my prize home from the hospital, I looked down at Norman’s perfect baby face and swore I’d never fail him like my father had failed me.

‘And the truth is, Leonard, I’ve probably done nothing but fail him spectacularly ever since.’

My attempt at an ironic laugh came dangerously close to being something else. Because I knew it was true. Keep calm and drink tea.

I told Leonard how when Norman was six he’d come home from school excited about his day for just about the first time ever. Tripping over his words to tell me about the naughty new boy from London, instead of trying to hide another bruised shin under his pulled-up socks, or clumsily sticky taping up a rip in his shirt and hoping I wouldn’t notice.

Then because Leonard was still listening I told him about Jax and Norman’s Five Year Plan, and how I’d really and truly believed in it because Jax was laugh-out-loud, close-one-eye, try-not-to-look-at-the-car-crash funny and Norman has gravitas. And how seeing those two boys together somehow made me better than I’d ever been.

And then, because right at that moment it didn’t feel like I could stop talking even if I wanted to, I told him how Josie Fenton had called me at six o’clock on a warm summer’s morning after she’d found her son cold and blue in his blue pyjamas. Wedged so hard against his bedroom door that she’d had to shove with her whole body weight to get it open, which meant that even though we’d never know for sure, maybe Jax had nearly made it. And how I sat on the floor outside my own son’s bedroom door for an entire hour before I crept in to wake him with a kiss and blow his