We rounded a corner and a long straight section of road stretched out in front of us. Leonard glanced in the rearview mirror, sat up a little straighter in his seat and put his foot down. A sudden gust of wind slipped through the half-open window and my hair whipped around my face. I closed my eyes and imagined Leonard driving along this road in the direction of the sun, surrounded by all that beauty as dawn and his heart broke. He cleared his throat and gave a small cough.

“I know I’m just a silly old man, Sadie, but I just thought maybe it...well, one just never knows, does one?”

I realized, and not for the first time in my life, that I knew exactly nothing. But the flash of purple peeking from the crumpled, aromatic Tesco bag on the back seat of the Austin made me wonder if, quite possibly, that old guy might have known everything.

51

IT WAS NEARLY 4:30 p.m. by the time Leonard and I swept into Edinburgh in the Austin. And yes, I said swept. All medication aside, I wasn’t kidding when I said Leonard drove well under pressure. I was almost sad when we got to the outskirts of the city, although not so much when I realized Norman’s show was scheduled to start just over an hour later. I had a moment of mild panic when I realized how close we’d be cutting it to get back to the Soft Fudge to pick up Norman and then to the Duke. But of course Leonard had it all in hand.

“If I may make a suggestion, Sadie, I think we should go straight to the venue. I didn’t say before, but Norman is getting a lift to...that is, there are arrangements in place...to get him to the show, and we really don’t have time to go back to the accommodation. I think it’s best.”

It made me wonder just how big this show at the Duke had got, if they were sending a car for Norman, but Leonard reassured me there was nothing to worry about. And he was right about the timing. So even though I’d be attending the most important event of my son’s life in two-day-old clothes, with hospital-bed head and dog’s breath, I was alive, I was showing up and, for the first time in Norman’s life, it felt like I was ready for the job.

Without taking his eyes off the road, Leonard reached into his top pocket and took out his phone with our route to Ground Zero, aka the Duke Supper Club at O’Shaughnessy’s Real Ale House, already programmed in to Google Maps, and held it out to me.

“Would you mind holding this, my dear? And perhaps...navigating a little?”

As I took the phone from Leonard’s old-gentleman hands, in the blink of an eye it was a different car, a different venue, a different kind and gentle man. And it was the strangest thing, but for the first time in more than thirteen years I could picture my father’s smile. And it didn’t hurt a bit.