We spent the whole next afternoon in my room trying to remember those jokes we’d found so funny out there in Mrs. Ackerman’s cow paddock. Jax called it the Lost Lager Sessions and even though he said it was going to come down to science and persistence, because they had to be in our brains somewhere, we never did remember them. But I’ll tell you something. One day I will, because I’m not ever going to stop trying.

When Lou said, okay, it really was closing time now, Leonard said that we’d better be getting back to Toad Hall before Bill locks us out. Big Al and Mum gave each other their mobile numbers, even though Mum didn’t seem too keen at first. But I said, please, please, please, and she did, because I really liked Big Al and I think maybe she did too. I felt a little bit guilty that I’d won the open mic by a tit’s whisker when really he should have, but he shook my hand and said he was going to be watching my career with interest and that the Edinburgh Fringe better watch out.

Even though I knew we hadn’t even found somewhere that would give me a place for a show at the Fringe yet, what Big Al said about watching my career with interest made me feel like maybe we actually would. Also, because look at what Leonard had already made happen. We were loads of miles from Penzance, I was staying in my first B&B ever and I’d met my first fellow performer and heard my first John Keats poem as a bonus. And I’d done my first real-life show without Jax.

If you thought of it like that it would look like everything was working out perfectly, wouldn’t it? Except that in the car on the way back to Toad Hall, even though I had some leftover bits of pork scratchings in my teeth and ten pounds in my pocket that said different, I knew I still wasn’t really any good. I know how I sound and I just don’t know how to make myself sound any better. Because that was Jax’s job.

I don’t think people should be allowed to promise you something if they’re not really going to be able to give it to you. But it turned out not only wasn’t Gloria in the kitchen making our crispy bacon and the rest of our full English when we got up the next morning, well, she wasn’t there at all. When Bill finally came downstairs, looking like he’d just spent the night parachuting out of a rocket at warp speed with no goggles, he said it was going to be at least twenty minutes before breakfast was ready. He went into the kitchen and started banging some pans around for a bit and then he came back out and said he had to go to the shops for bacon.

I think maybe Mum was waiting until we’d had our full English before she told me about Dan McLachlan ringing back, but then she must have realized it was probably going to take ages so she just blurted it out in the middle of Leonard telling us how long it takes to cook the perfect fried egg. Which is three and a half minutes, by the way.