I took a step backward, almost losing my footing, and as I tried to right myself I lost sight of Norman. Then I felt the pressure of a gentle, steadying arm on my shoulder and a soft, deep voice in the back of my head. I’ve got you, Sadie, love.

I ducked my head and peered through the shoulders and backs of heads of the people who were no longer strangers to Norman and me, and I could see him again. He was laughing. His head angled back, looking up at Big Al like he was the best thing since Jax. His hand resting on the back of Adam’s mobility scooter like it was the only place in the world that hand wanted to be. Leaning ever so slightly into the nook of Leonard’s creaky shoulder like he’d been there his entire life. And past Norman, past Kathy’s and Tony’s smiling faces, on the outskirts of the crowd, I caught my second sight of James. Leaning against the wall of the pub, smoking. Watching Norman, too. Over a boy our eyes met and James raised one eyebrow and smiled a long, slow and steady smile that didn’t quit.

Right then and not an instant before was the moment I realized I’d always been wrong. It wasn’t the final awful curtain call of a desperately unhappy man dangling from the kitchen rafters, it wasn’t the insidious skin disease that waged its relentless war year after year, and it certainly wasn’t forty-three series of Come Dine with Me that had chiseled out the shape of my and Norman’s world. It was a potty-mouthed, magnificently bad boy who’d had to cram an entire life into just twelve years. It was the hopeful heart of a lousy comedian but a very good man who made it all the way to the top, at least to his appreciative audience of the world’s best daughter. And it was two kids’ crazy, impossible and totally brilliant plan that took us all the way to the end by making us go right back to the beginning.

I looked at Norman, listening intently to something Tony was saying, and I knew with absolute clarity that he’d become all he was not just in spite of me but because of me, too. Whatever happened up there on that stage in the next half hour didn’t even matter, because he was going to make it. And we were going to make it.

I felt a twinge as the me-parts that never quite fit eased into a strangely comfortable place and the warmth of a body moved into the space beside me. Leonard took my hand in his wrinkly old paw and stepped forward, pulling me gently into the circle of our friends. And I let him.

52

Norman

FIRST RULE OF COMEDY:
Always give it everything you’ve got.

I KNOW IT isn’t possible to make time go backward, but if I could, the one thing in the world I’d do is reverse the hands of that big old clock that runs the universe to the night before Jax died, and I’d jam something in good and hard. Then I’d go over to his house just after he went to bed and I’d get his backpack from near the front door where his mum always yelled at him for dropping it. Then I’d look inside and get out the brand-new inhaler in it and put it right next to him where he could see it. Maybe on his pillow. Maybe even in his hand. And then I’d tell him that he’s the coolest kid that ever walked this and I’ll bet any other planet.