“Likes, love! Shares. You name it. That bloody thing was only at eleven confirmed people last night. Like I said, now shit’s gone viral!”

I squinted at the screen again and focused on the cartoon thumbs-up icon with the number 1,901 beside it, then glanced over at my battle-scarred son, who was looking particularly vulnerable and small next to that great hulking human who better bloody not be his father.

Ah, but it’s nice to be nice, Sadie.

I felt a sudden pang of guilt at being so nasty and it crossed my mind that perhaps it might be a little over the top to hold a grudge primarily based on a toasted sandwich maker that, if I’m honest, I’d only ever used twice anyhow. I turned my attention back to the iPad and it took me several more seconds to realize that, large as it was, 1,901 likes wasn’t the most disturbing number on the page. Because beside the event Free at the Edinburgh Fringe—Little Big Man at the Duke were a couple of other numbers. Confirmed attending 243. Maybe attending, 467.

I looked over at Norman, and it didn’t take telepathy to see he was wondering exactly the same as me. Just what the implications of Little Big Man getting a little too big for his boots were going to be, and whether the Duke Supper Club was going to be good for some extra chairs.

In a way, it was good Adam had hit us with the worst thing early on to distract Norman. Because apart from bragging about his past sporting achievements and his stellar success with women all over again, there were a couple of remarks about Norman’s psoriasis, just as I’d feared. The one he labored the longest was that familiar old chestnut about whether we’d tried calamine lotion as a treatment.

“Always worked a bloody treat for the chafing when I was playing rugby. You should give it a go. I know what I’m talking about, even if it might not look like it these days.”

He gestured almost apologetically into midair and then glanced down to his former rugby-playing legs, now planted firmly on the rubber footplates of the mobility scooter. My stomach gave that same funny little lurch of recognition.

Pointing out that thigh chafe wasn’t really in the ballpark of a debilitating dermatological condition that affected every part of your life was probably useless, so I didn’t even try. But Norman was, as ever, incredibly polite and patient. He promised that he’d give the calamine a go one more time. Just in case. And thanks very much, Adam.

When it came to conversation, Adam wasn’t big into audience participation. There was a very short pause when, after he’d drained his caramel latte he looked quizzically into the glass as if he might have noticed it was skinny milk and only one and a half sugars. But it was a false alarm and it turned out he was just looking for more. Other than that, he barely drew breath as he droned on about his skills on the web, how his site had over forty thousand views a month, how much money he made from affiliate marketing and his online life-coaching business called Positive Man-Ifestation. At which point I had to bite my tongue. Hard.