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 be funny without Jax. It’s Norman.” Which wasn’t great. And then 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 ax 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 Colin, because of something called involuntary bias and who ever heard of a criminal called Colin. 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.