“Aha! That’s just it, Sadie!” Leonard looked like I’d hit the jackpot and he’d supplied me with the winning numbers. He squeezed my arm tightly and did a fist pump in the air with his other hand.

“That’s the very difference. Don’t you see?” He paused dramatically and, in his excitement, his whisper came out louder than if he’d spoken normally.

“This time it’s not coming. It’s going.”

It took a second or two for me to get my head around what he was saying, but now that I knew what I was looking for I realized Leonard was right. Instead of tripping over themselves on a chaotic rampage across Norman’s poor body as they had been before, the scales were now lifting. Away from his body.

His skin looked like crazy paving, networked with hairline cracks and deeper crevices, and on top of that, countless flaps of peeling skin of varying thicknesses and size. Norman moved slightly and a flake the size of a twenty-pence piece wafted off his shoulder and onto the sheet. Just like that. Underneath was a triangle of smooth, pink baby skin. It’s a boy, Miss Foreman. Norman rolled toward the side of the bed, stretching one arm out and opening an eye. When he saw me standing over him he opened the other and was staring bright-eyed at me within seconds. Just like the day he was born. Hello, you.

“Mum, Mum. Where’s Leonard?” As soon as the words were out, Leonard was beside me, nudging himself into Norman’s line of vision.

“Hello there, old chap. Good to see you. Feeling better?” Norman smiled and nodded, taking the tender, wrinkly hand he was offered with both of his own, holding it like a sandwich.

“Yes, I am. I really and truly am. And Leonard, did you tell her? Mum, guess what the Chinese herbalist guy gave Leonard to help me? And it made a difference straightaway, didn’t it, Leonard? In, like, two minutes! Guess what it was, Mum!”

“Well, I...”

“Tell her then, old boy. Don’t keep her in suspenders!”

Norman looked from Leonard to me then to the jumble of towels on the floor and back to Leonard again, like they all had the most exciting secret in the world. My son’s delight was immeasurable. “It was just like Iris always says, Mum! Cold tea! Cold Chinese tea!”

That smile.

35

Norman

FIRST RULE OF COMEDY:
Try it, they might like it.

PETER WOKE WITH a shock, not knowing where he was until the noise of the giant thrusters of the rocket ship brought him back to reality. He looked out the small porthole window and saw the Earth spiraling below him.

For a few seconds when I woke up I didn’t know where I was, because everything looked fuzzy and even when I blinked hard all I could see was snow in front of my eyes. I wondered for a moment if I’d left planet Earth, like Peter from the story Jax made up for my tenth birthday, which was called Leaving Is Believing. But then I saw the Premier Inn pen on the table beside the bed and I remembered that I wasn’t in outer space, only Bournemouth.