David Baddiel – The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked (страница 2)

“No. Because she broke my mother’s leg, the pig has been destroyed.” There was a short pause. “Although we will eat her later.” There was another short pause. “The pig. Not my mother.”

“OK …” said Jenny. “Fine. Of course. I understand. Go. We’ll … find someone else.”

But when she clicked off and looked up, Alfie could tell she was worried. And he was worried too because they’d never had any other babysitters, apart from his grandparents, and both sets lived too far away to reach his house in time.

Who were they going to get to look after him?

The situation got worse when Alfie’s dad arrived home and discovered that Stasia had to fly back to Lithuania to deal with her emergency pig-induced crisis. Going to his boss’s dinner party was non-negotiable, he said. Alfie wasn’t sure what non-negotiable meant, but it seemed to suggest that his parents were going to go out whatever happened. He started to think they might just leave him home alone or, worse, take him with them and then he’d have to talk to grown-ups about management consultancy, which is what his dad did, and Alfie had even less idea what that actually meant than non-negotiable.

“There must be someone else we can call,” said Jenny. “What about the next-door neighbours?”

“They’re away on holiday,” replied Alfie’s dad.

Alfie, not really liking it when his dad and stepmum got frantic, went over to the other side of the living room where there was a chest of drawers. Inside the top drawer there were lots of bits of paper, including some of the bits of paper that his dad had first drawn up his routines on. Alfie liked to look at these sometimes to see how his routines had changed as he had got older.

“OK,” said Jenny. “What about the other side? Mr Nichols …”

“Are you serious? He stands all day at the lights on the High Street, directing traffic with a spoon.”

Jenny nodded. “You’re right. Bad idea.” She sat down, took out her phone and started tapping. “We could call an agency …”

“No, Jenny.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t want someone we’ve never met. How could we trust them to be on top of everything?”

“On top of every … what thing?”

Stephen looked at her like she was mad. “The routines, Jenny. Alfie’s routines.”

Alfie’s stepmum stopped tapping. She put the phone down and sighed.

“Then I’m out of ideas,” she said.

Alfie’s dad put his head in his hands. “What are we going to do?” he said, sounding muffled.

“What about this?” suggested Alfie.

He held out a small card that he had found under some of the bits of paper in the chest of drawers. It had gone slightly yellow with age, but you could still make out a picture of flowers on it. In the middle of the flowers were printed the words:

and a phone number. On the back of the card someone had written, in biro:

His dad looked at the card. He turned it over. He seemed, for some reason, shocked by it.

“Um … well, I guess … we could try her.” He showed the card to Jenny.

“Do you know her …?” said Jenny, surprised.

“No, I don’t think we ever used her, but …” He turned the card over so that Jenny could see the writing on the back.

Jenny squinted at it. “Is that …?”

“Yes.”

Jenny thought for a while. “Well then, I guess it must be OK. Although, looking at the state of that card, I think Mrs Stokes might be quite old now.”

Jenny was right. When Alfie first saw Mrs Stokes, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so ancient. She made his oldest grandparent, Grandpa Bernie, look like a member of a boy band. She had a Zimmer frame, two hearing aids and – although Alfie didn’t know how tall she might have been before – seemed to have shrunk with age to the size of a munchkin. And it took her so long to walk up the drive that, by the time she was actually inside the house, Alfie wondered if it was too late for his parents to go out.

How on earth, he thought, is she going to look after me? And, more importantly, make sure I get through all my routines?

The first problem, in fact, was making Mrs Stokes understand what a routine was.

“Shoe-bean?” she said loudly to Stephen. “Your son has a bean in his shoe? Baked or haricot?”

“No,” said Stephen, sighing. He bent down to her ear, which Alfie could see was very small and poking out of her extremely white hair. She was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea that Jenny had made, and into which Mrs Stokes had put a seemingly endless amount of sugar.

“ROO-TINE. I said I’d like Alfie, if possible, to stick to his usual routine …”

“Oh dear, dear, dear,” said Mrs Stokes, looking with concern at Alfie. “I’m so sorry.”

“Pardon me?” said Stephen.

“That’s all right, love,” said Mrs Stokes. “I’m a bit deaf myself.” She pulled Stephen’s face down by his ear and shouted into it: “I’M SO SORRY!!”

“Ow!” said Stephen, pulling away and rubbing his ear. “What about?”

“Your son having to have a poo-team,” said Mrs Stokes. “I’ve never heard of that before in such a young person. So, where are they? How many people normally help him go to the toilet?”

Alfie’s dad frowned and whispered to Jenny: “I really don’t know if we should go out and leave Alfie with her.”

“Why are you bothering to whisper?” said Jenny.

Stephen looked at Mrs Stokes, who was happily smiling at him. “Good point,” he said in a normal voice. “Maybe I should just call it off after all.”

“Well, OK, phone your boss and—”

But, as she was saying this, Stephen’s phone rang.

“It’s him,” he said, looking stressed. “He’ll be asking why we’re not there already. Pre-dinner drinks started at six …” And he dashed off into the hallway, apologising to his boss in hushed tones. Jenny exchanged a glance with Alfie.

“Mrs Stokes,” said Jenny, crouching down. Alfie noticed that the old lady was dressed a little bit like the Queen – all in green, with a necklace of pearls – but as if the Queen bought her clothes at Oxfam. “Alfie doesn’t have a poo-team. He has routines.”

“Oh, I see. Where did you get them from, Topman?”

Now it was Jenny’s turn to frown. “Sorry, not quite with you, Mrs Stokes.”

“His new jeans. I prefer Primark myself.” She took a sip from her cup. “Lovely spot of tea. Can I have another?”

Alfie watched all this with increasing horror. He looked at his stepmum, but she was writing something down on her phone. She held it out to Mrs Stokes. It said:

MRS STOKES, WOULD YOU MIND PLEASE SWITCHING YOUR HEARING AIDS ON?

The babysitter seemed to consider this for a while. Eventually, she said: “Well, OK. I don’t know why you think that’s important seeing as we’ve been having such a lovely chat. But you’re the boss. Hold on a minute.”

She reached into her ears with both hands and made a series of tiny adjustments to the bits of plastic inside. Her fingers were stiff and Alfie became concerned that she might get them stuck in there. The whole process probably took about three minutes, but appeared to Alfie to last at least an hour.

Suddenly, there was the most terrible high-pitched squealing.

“WHAT’S THAT NOISE?!” shouted Alfie.

“I DON’T KNOW!” replied Jenny loudly. “IT SOUNDS LIKE MY OLD JESUS AND MARY CHAIN RECORDS!”

“IT SEEMS TO BE COMING FROM … HER!!” said Alfie, pointing to Mrs Stokes.

“Sorry, dearies,” said the old lady. “If I switch them both on together, they do tend to feedback a bit. Hold on a mo.”

At this point, Stephen came back into the room. “WHAT’S THAT AWFUL NOISE?!” he shouted.

“IT’S MRS STOKES’S HEARING AIDS!” yelled Alfie.

“WHAT?”

“MRS STOKES’S HEARING AIDS! THE THINGS SHE PUTS IN HER EARS TO HELP HER HEAR!!”