Listening to Leonard trying to keep up while Mum and Liam and Noel sang about the wheels of their life slowly falling off was my favorite part of leaving Penzance. It was so funny that I joined in singing too, and for nearly the whole second half of the song I forgot that soon I was going to have to get up all by myself and try to make people laugh and I forgot that we were on our way to maybe find my dad. I even forgot that Jax was gone. Mum just kept on singing every single word perfectly and me and Leonard tried to sing a few bits in between, but then suddenly out of nowhere Jax’s face popped into my head, coughing and wheezing and turning a funny shade of blue. Then I had to stop singing.

Mum and Leonard stopped too, and I don’t know what they were thinking about, but while I was looking out the window at all the cows and trees and paddocks whizzing past I was thinking, well, how weird was that, that I’d actually forgotten to be sad for a few minutes. But then I started to feel really bad because I didn’t want that to mean I was forgetting about Jax, so I closed my eyes and thought about being happy and being sad and how sometimes there’s a million miles between them and other times there’s none at all. And then Mum was shaking me awake and we were in Bude, which was a whole seventy-five miles away. Or maybe a million.

Leonard said he had to run a short errand so Mum said she’d go and get us all some sandwiches, but I decided I should start going through my jokes to get ready for the first open mic, which was at a pub not quite in Barnstaple but not too far away. Because even though I had a shoebox full up with all the loads of jokes me and Jax had written down on Post-it notes and other bits of paper, I still didn’t have half a clue of how to put them all together to make a show that was anything like funny.

Me and Jax called the shoebox the Comedy Pot because ideas go in and we’d stir them around and throw in a few more things, like cool outfits and timing and strategic pauses, and then a serving of funny comes out. At least it did when Jax was around.

I’d been using the Comedy Pot as a footrest ever since we left Penzance, not just because I wanted a footrest but also so it wouldn’t get lost in the boot with all our other stuff. But when I opened it up and spread out all the Post-it notes and paper and crumpled-up brown sandwich bags on the back seat of Leonard’s car it just looked like someone had tipped over the bins. And then I started worrying because what if all our jokes were actually rubbish? Then the scabs on my arms and legs and forehead all started itching at the same time and just when I was thinking that I better start concentrating on not scratching, Jax popped up.