But he did say what did Mum think she was playing at anyhow and yes he remembered her all right. He remembered her quite well, thanks very much. She’d been the reason he’d lost his license for three months and lost his girlfriend for over a year. But they got back together and now they had three sons and he wasn’t interested in this kind of craziness coming into his life. And that if Mum tried to contact him again he’d take measures, whatever that meant.

It really made me wonder how many ways he thought he had to say that he wasn’t interested. I felt like ringing him back and saying, hey, buddy, we got you at I’m not interested. Which were actually his first words after the hello and the stupid long um.

Before I heard that message my psoriasis had stopped itching for the first time since before Jax left. I know that because I lay there for ages and didn’t itch once when I woke up at Toad Hall and thought about how great the night before had been in the pub with Big Al and Lou and John Keats and how I’d won my first open mic by a tit’s whisker. And even though I knew I wasn’t really that funny, it hadn’t mattered because I’d tried.

But by the end of listening to the message, which was fifty-four seconds long, according to Mum’s phone, it felt like my skin was trying to turn itself inside out. Like it woke up angry, all of a sudden. Not that I was surprised. That last doctor Mum took me to, who wasn’t really a doctor and wore a dress and burned lots of incense, totally got it all wrong. I definitely wasn’t in control of my own skin, and I reckon we both knew it.

After the message everyone looked like they were waiting for me to say something, so I did. What I said wasn’t really true but it felt like it might have been one of those times when it would be okay to tell a bit of a lie. Anyhow, after I said that it was okay, honest, Mum hugged me and said, oh, Norman, and Leonard just rubbed my arm and said bugger a few times. So maybe they knew it wasn’t true.

Nothing was really any different from a few minutes before I heard that message, when I’d just been Norman who didn’t have a dad. I just still didn’t have a dad, that’s all, is what I told myself. But even when Bill finally brought out the full English and the fried eggs were three-and-a-half-minutes-perfect and the bacon was lovely and crispy, how me and Jax like it, all I could think about was Dan McSnotface and how maybe I’d just lost the only chance I’d ever get of having three little brothers.

Leonard said the one good thing about Dan not wanting to see us was that at least we didn’t have to hang around Barnstaple another night. I’d already noticed that Leonard’s great at finding good stuff about whatever happens, even if it seems really bad at the time. So I thought maybe it would help if I tried to do that too, and so the good thing I found was that I liked the way Leonard said us. Like we were all in it together. Which felt nice, because I’d only ever been in it with Mum and Jax before, so having Leonard made it feel like maybe there were three in our us again.