The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman Julietta Henderson (short books for teens .TXT) 📖

next choice on the list was Adam. The way he helped us in Bournemouth sort of already proved he was the type of guy you could rely on when the you-know-what hits the fan, and also there was still a chance he could actually be my dad. Which was pretty weird, although if he was it might explain why I love crisps and cheesy toast so much.

When I called Adam’s number it rang and rang about a million times, and I was just about to hang up but then an answer thing came on. Only it wasn’t his voice, it was one of those robot ones that tells you to leave a short message and it’ll get translated into a text. I waited for the beep and then I talked as slowly and clearly as I could.

‘Mum’s gone. Need help. From Norman.’ I was really hoping it didn’t translate to one prawn, green kelp, wrong doorman, otherwise there’d be no hope of Adam helping at all.

My contingency plan wasn’t looking great because I’d tried everyone except Big Al, but then I remembered what it felt like when he hugged me on the street outside Toad Hall when I started crying like a baby and how much better it made me feel. And I thought, well, a guy that can do that could probably do anything. So I called.

Howdy. You’ve called Al, and guess what? I don’t want to talk to you. If I wanted to, I’d have answered, wouldn’t I? Just kidding, leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. If I want to, that is. Ha ha.

I don’t really know if it was because of hearing Big Al’s voice or because nobody in the whole world seemed to be answering their phone, or maybe it was because it was 7.43 p.m. and I was feeling pretty scared about being all on my own in the Soft Fudge, but I suddenly got a huge whoosh in my tummy. And even though I tried to stop the crying coming, I couldn’t.

Instead of hanging up and trying again later, which maybe would have been a better idea, I left a message on Big Al’s phone. And what came out was a pretty big mess, what with all the crying. Like, ‘I don’t know where anyone is and I can’t call Mum and there are some dodgy-looking guys outside and I think they saw me looking and I don’t know what to do and I’m all alone and I can’t even be funny without Jax. It’s Norman.’ Which wasn’t great. And now I’d cried twice in front of Big Al.

After I hung up from Big Al I sat on the bed sniffing for about ten minutes and even though I didn’t feel much better, at least I’d run out of tears. I went to close Leonard’s laptop and the spreadsheet with all those names and numbers was still sitting there staring at me.

And isn’t it funny how quickly things can change and one never knows? Because when I saw that spreadsheet I realized that, what with Leonard going missing and Mum disappearing and all the crying and being scared, I’d totally forgotten there was one more dad left on the list.

44

First rule of comedy: Jump in the deep end and just start swimming.

I figured that if I could get over Dan McLachlan not wanting to know me, which I did, and if I could get over Adam wanting to know me, which I also did, and I could get over Tony not being my dad, even though I really, really wished he could have been, I would definitely be able to get over whatever the last guy on the list had to throw at me. Plus I’d never heard of anyone called James who was an axe murderer, so that made me feel a little better. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but Jax always said that if he was ever going to do a crime he’d change his name to Allan, because of something called involuntary bias and who ever heard of a criminal called Allan. Mind you, I’ve never heard of a criminal called Jax either and anyway, I was pretty sure Jax was joking about the becoming a criminal thing. But one never knows.

I decided to write down what I wanted to say to James Knox before I called him, because there was no way I wanted to mess up like I had with Big Al, especially if it turned out I had to leave another message. It was just a few lines on the back of a menu for a Thai restaurant that I found in a drawer and there wasn’t anything about him maybe being my dad. Just did he remember his friend Sadie Foreman from a long time ago and she’s my mum, and she had his number to look him up when we got to Edinburgh but now there was a little bit of an emergency if he didn’t mind helping out. Thank you very much and sorry to bother you. Norman speaking.

But it wasn’t another answer machine and James Knox answered on the first ring. He didn’t actually say any words at first, but I did hear a lot of mmmpphh and phfffmmmth and some other weird, echoey noises. After a few seconds of that he did say hello, though. Actually, he said, hello, hello, hello, who’s this? So then I said hello back and he said hello again and I was so nervous I totally forgot how to talk.

But the funny thing was that James Knox seemed quite glad I’d called. Not that I could really understand too much of what he said at first, because he was shouty whispering really, really fast in a Scottish accent, but then he stopped for a second to take a breath so I decided to start making my speech from the back