Читать книгу The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked - David Baddiel - Страница 8

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?