He stopped running and took her hand.
“IT’S NO GOOD, ALFIE!”
“NO, COME ON, YOU’LL BE FINE!”
But, even as he said it, his nose twitched and he realised it was too late: they had been enveloped by the terrible cloud.
“Actually, I don’t think it smells that bad …” said Alfie.
“Of course you don’t!” said Mrs Stokes. “No one thinks their own ones do! But I … urrgggghhh!!!”
She coughed, spluttered and fell to the ground.
“MRS STOKES!” shouted Alfie. “HOLD YOUR BREATH!”
“I can’t, dear,” she whispered weakly. “I hardly have any breath at the best of times …”
Her eyes began closing. The green cloud became thicker and smellier. Even Alfie now felt he didn’t want to breathe it in. That’s the last time I eat candyfloss rocket and chips, he thought. And as for fizzy chocolate …
“Mrs Stokes! Mrs Stokes! Is this the time things get out of control and I nearly die, but learn my lesson?!”
“Nah,” said Mrs Stokes.
“Oh good.”
“I think it’s the time things get of control and I nearly die,” she said.
“No, Mrs Stokes! No!”
“It’s OK, Alfie,” she said. “Well, it’s not OK, it’s absolutely disgusting. But I mean it’s OK to leave me. I’m an old woman.”
“But you’re a magic old woman!”
“You said that before. And as I said at the time – it was only about two minutes ago so I don’t know why I’m having to repeat myself so soon – I’m not that magic. And now, I’m afraid, the overwhelming stinkiness of your fart has taken away all that’s left … of my magic … Save yourself, Alfie. Save yourself!”
With that, her eyes closed. The green cloud thickened even more around them. Alfie felt the rising panic – the feeling that had first appeared when Mrs Stokes had been saying just do what you like over and over again – returning. He wished he hadn’t gone off-piste with one of Freddie Barnes’s stupid routines. Of course that was going to create trouble. He should just have stuck, like his dad had told him, to his own routines.
That thought, though, gave him an idea.
The post-school routines were designed to make sure he was in bed at an appropriate time every night, so that he got a good eleven hours’ sleep. That was why he had never done Escape From Farty Harbour before, even though it sounded like fun. It was part of his bedtime routine to be asleep by 8.35pm on weekdays and 9.35pm on weekends. It was, in some ways, the most essential part of all his routines.
And if there was one thing Alfie was good at, it was following his routines. Even tonight with Mrs Stokes, although they’d been very different from normal, he’d still done each routine, one after the other, in the same pattern as usual. Until this last one.
So he said: “Hold on Mrs Stokes! Hold on!” And raised both his arms, and stared at his watches, and thought hard, as hard as he’d ever thought, about being back in bed, and fast asleep, by 9.35pm (because today was Saturday – obviously – Strictly was on). He made the numbers 9, 3 and 5 (with one dot after the 9) bigger than big, painting them inside his brain like a graffiti artist, until there was nothing, not one thing, in Alfie Moore’s mind at all except:
9.35pm
… and an image of himself asleep, as normal, with the watches on his wrists showing that time.
“That’s really strange, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Really strange.”
“Why would she send a text like that?”
Alfie stirred, opening his eyes just a little. Through the mist of sleep, he could see his parents standing by his bed, whispering. Although not whispering quite quietly enough, as it had woken him up. Or at least, half woken him up.
“Oh sorry, Alfie!” said Jenny. “We just came in to check on you.”
“I’m fine,” said Alfie. “What time is it?”
“It’s 10.25 …” said Stephen.
Alfie sat up in bed. “You’re back early.”
Stephen and Jenny glanced at each other.
“Yes … well,” said Jenny. “We kind of decided … not to stay too long at the dinner party.”
“Oh. What did you do instead?”
Stephen and Jenny’s glance became a smile.
“We … went for a walk. In the park,” Stephen said.
“A walk,” said Jenny, looking lovingly at her husband. “And a run. And a tree-climb. And a dance.”
“The park? But it’s shut …”
“Yes. We climbed over the fence,” said Jenny, her smile widening.
“Jenny! Don’t tell him tha—”
“Anyway, time to go back to sleep. We shouldn’t have woken you up. Not after you did so well getting to bed at 9.35 like we asked.”
“Yes, well … I stuck to all my routines. I did, Dad.”
“Did you? Oh …” said Stephen. “Well. That’s great, Alfie. But me and Jenny were talking on the way back tonight and we thought maybe we should … loosen up a bit with the routines. I mean, it’s good to have some, but maybe … maybe it’s fine not to worry about sticking to them all the time.”
Alfie thought about this. But not for very long, as he was really sleepy.
“OK,” he said, settling back down under the covers. “By the way, I had the most amazing dream tonight.”
“Did you?” said Jenny, surprised.
“Really?” said Stephen.
“Yes. It was fantastic. Mrs Stokes was in it!”
“Oh!”
“Yes. I like her. She’s a great babysitter …”
Jenny and his dad exchanged glances again, clearly surprised.
“Oh good!” said Jenny.
“Can I have her again soon?”
“Well … yes. I guess. Depends how long Stasia’s mum takes to recover from the pig accident …”
“Have you kept her phone number …?”
“Yes,” said his dad and took out the yellowing card with the flowers on it. He held it up and stared at it again. Alfie, even through his sleepiness, could make out the words on the back.
“Dad …” said Alfie, “where did we get the number from? Who wrote that on the back of the card?”
His dad and Jenny looked at each other. Jenny seemed a little bit uncertain, but then nodded.
“Your mum, Alfie,” his dad said. “It must have been. It’s her handwriting. Mrs Stokes must have been her babysitter when she was young. It’s odd, though. I don’t remember her ever suggesting we use her when …”
“When she was alive,” said Alfie.
“Yes,” said his dad.
“I suppose she must have written it and put it in that drawer for us to find.” Alfie paused. He could feel sleep coming. “In case of emergencies.”
His dad looked at the card. Then he looked at Alfie. His eyes were a little moist. “I suppose she must.”
Alfie yawned and shut his eyes. “Where’s Mrs Stokes by the way …?” A scary memory from his dream came back to him of Mrs Stokes collapsing. From fart poisoning.
“Oh,” replied Jenny, “she’s just leaving. It’s a bit difficult for her to come up the stairs, I think.”
Oh good, thought Alfie. She’s OK. But of course she is. It was just a dream.
“Hang on …” said Stephen. He went out on to the landing and called down. “MRS STOKES! MRS STOKES! I’LL BE THERE IN A MOMENT TO SEE YOU OUT!”
“NO NEED FOR TROUT!” called up Mrs Stokes, her voice crackly again. “I’ve already eaten!”
Alfie smiled and turned over. Through the cotton of his pillow, he heard the ting of a text coming into Jenny’s phone.
“Not another one from Freddie Barnes’s mum!” she said.
“For heaven’s sake,” came his dad’s voice from the landing. “I mean, it’s not Alfie’s fault that people call her son ‘Bum-Bum’. Is it?”
“Well, she says it is. She says … hold on … Alfie told everyone to say it on the news. On the news?!!!”
“Must be a misprint. Autocorrect. Or she’s just completely gone mad.”
That was when Alfie really started to go to sleep. But the smile stayed on his face.
“MRS STOKES!” shouted Alfie’s dad again. “Oh, the old dear hasn’t heard me. MRS STOKES!”
“YES, DEAR!” Her voice sailed up from downstairs.
“WE’LL JUST COME DOWN AND SEE YOU OUT!”
There was a short pause. Then, not-crackly but loud and clear and coming up the stairs like a rocket, or a rush of air from a dolphin’s blowhole, the words:
And, with that, Alfie Moore fell fast asleep.
Turn the page to read an extract from David Baddiel’s first hilarious book: THE PARENT AGENCY
We join the story as Barry’s just had a HUGE argument with his parents …
Barry lay in his bed, fuming. He’d gone straight to his room, without cleaning his teeth or anything, and slammed the door. But it had just come back at him as his door didn’t really shut properly unless you closed it carefully, jiggling the handle up as you did it. So he’d had to do that after his slam, which felt completely at odds with a show of rage.
He lay there in his onesie – a zebra one, with ears and a tail, which was too big for him because it had been passed down from Lukas – and stared at his room. His head hurt. He wasn’t sure why that was, but he’d read in another part of the Sunday Express once that stress brought on headaches, and he knew that he was very stressed at the moment.
It wasn’t that easy to sleep in his room at the best of times as the Bennetts lived on a main road called the A41, and Barry’s room faced it. The Sisterly Entity had, of course, been given the quieter room at the back facing the garden, which was BIGGER as well: some rubbish about them needing to have the bigger room because there were two of them. Barry did not recognise this.
As each vehicle went past, it would light up a different section of Barry’s room, depending on which way it was going.
A car driving down the road would light up his wardrobe, or DEJN NORDESBRUKK as it had been called in IKEA.
A car driving up the road would illuminate the ceiling and the browny-yellow patch of damp immediately above Barry’s bed, which he sometimes pretended was a map of Russia that he had to study for a secret mission.
A car turning into the road from the other side would throw a sweep of white light across the far wall, which had a James Bond poster on it – Daniel Craig in a tuxedo – and another poster, of FC Barcelona, which was a couple of years out of date but still had Lionel Messi sitting in the front row. Barry had always liked the way that both of his heroes stared out of the posters with intense eyes: Lionel like he was ready to go and beat eleven players singlehandedly and score with a back-heel chip, and James Bond like he was ready to kill someone.
Every so often, his bed would shake as a lorry went by.
But today he wasn’t trying to get to sleep anyway. He was too angry. And he knew that, if he went to sleep, by tomorrow the argument would all be forgotten about, and he didn’t want that. He had meant it. In his anger, he had come to a deep and important realisation: his parents just weren’t very good parents. It made him sad to have this thought – his tummy fell as the words appeared in his mind, like it sometimes did when he was scared – but another part of him felt brave: like he was facing up to something.
“I wish I had better parents …” he whispered. He could feel, as he said it, a tiny tear squeeze out of his left eye. It blurred his vision, making the damp patch look less like a map of Russia and more like a smear of poo. This got in the way of his train of thought a little. It was very distracting, the idea of someone somehow getting their bottom on the ceiling to plop upside down, and so, to get back into the moment, he repeated, slightly more loudly: “I wish I had better parents.”
Then, from underneath his pillow, he grabbed the list he’d secretly written down of all the things that made his mum and dad a bit rubbish at their basic job of being his mum and dad. He held it up above his face and said, a third time, the loudest so far: “I wish I had better parents!”
And then suddenly the entire room started to shake.
The walls were shaking like crazy; it was as if Barry’s bedroom had a really bad fever. The windows rattled and his little Aston Martin DB6 model car fell off the shelf behind his bed. Barry had never been in an earthquake, but he had seen them on the telly, and thought this must be what they were like. He clutched his duvet (MYSA ROSØNGLIM, white) in fear, frightened that maybe this was happening because of what he’d just said out loud.
He was about to say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” (he didn’t quite know who this was addressed to – his parents, even though they weren’t in the room, or, he supposed, God) when he realised … Oh, of course: it’s a lorry.
He sat up.
It must be a very big lorry, he thought as the room continued to shake. It must have really powerful headlights as well, he thought next as the far wall, the one with the posters on it, began to glow. What was odd about this glow, though, was that – unlike what usually happened when a lorry or a big car turned on to the road, which was that its headlights would light up the whole wall as the vehicle moved past – only the area around his posters seemed to be glowing.
And the glow wasn’t moving. Nor was it fading. If anything, it was getting brighter. Maybe the lorry had stopped outside the house? Barry did notice that the shaking seemed to have died down. But you weren’t allowed to stop on the A41.
As he continued to look at the posters, a very strange thing happened. Lionel Messi’s and James Bond’s stares seemed to turn towards him. Like they were looking at him.
And then an even stranger thing happened.
Lionel Messi said: “Barry! Hey!”
Lionel didn’t move from his sitting position, in between Iniesta and David Villa (see: told you it was out of date), with his hands on his knees. But his mouth did move. Definitely.
Barry, shocked and frightened, said nothing. But, through the shock and fear, he was also very, very curious. So he didn’t look away.
“Eh! El Barrito!” said Lionel. “Ven aquí! Rápido!”
“He means come over here. Quickly,” said another voice. A voice Barry recognised.
Barry moved his eyes sideways. James Bond was in exactly the same position he always was, but he had, quite clearly, raised his left eyebrow.
“He does?” said Barry hoarsely.
“Yes. I speak Spanish,” replied James Bond. “And French, and German, and Italian, and Mandarin, and a smattering of Portuguese. Should be better, but y’know: very little action in Portugal.”
“… Right,” said Barry, who by now was wondering if he should just start screaming.
James Bond raised his other eyebrow. Something that Jake couldn’t do. “So?”
“So … what?”
“So come over here! Like he says! Otherwise I might just have to shoot you …”
Barry gulped. He thought it best to go along with it. So he got out of bed and walked towards the glowing wall.
As he approached the wall with the posters on it, Barry kept a close eye on Bond and, more importantly, on the Walther PPK with silencer, now pinned to his chest. Barry could feel the too-big feet of his onesie dragging across the carpet (BJORNO MASTERLIGN): it was the only familiar feeling about this whole thing.
He walked towards the 007 poster, but James Bond flicked his cold, suspicious eyes to the right, so Barry moved over to where Lionel was smiling at him.
“Eh! Barrito! Me recuerdas al niño en el avión en ese anuncio que hice!”
“Pardon me?”
“He says you remind him of the little boy on the aeroplane in that advert he did,” said James Bond. “You remember, the one with the basketball guy and the ice cream and stuff. God, Lionel, why did you do that? It’s not like you don’t earn a million pounds a minute as it is.”
“Estás celoso!”
“I am not jealous. I do my work for the
love of my country. And the ladies, of course.”
“Er … hello?” said Barry. “I think you wanted … to talk … to me …?”
“Si!” said Lionel.
“Oh, speak English for crying out loud, Messi. You’ve played against John Terry. You must have at least learnt some swear words.”
“Culo.”
“That’s not a swear.”
Barry looked at Lionel, who tutted, but then looked back at him and said, in a strong accent, “Barry. Would you mind pleeze to stand in between me and the guy dressed like a waiter?”
“I am not dressed like a waiter! What waiter has a gun?!”
Barry shuffled across. “Here?”
“Yes, nearly. Just a beet to the left,” said Lionel.
Barry shuffled a bit more. Now he was precisely in between the two posters. “Yes, good. Espléndido! Now shut your eyes and say the thing again.”
“What thing?” said Barry. He dug his hands into his pockets (the onesie had quite deep ones), which was something he always did when asked a question he wasn’t sure how to answer. In the corner of his mind he noticed that, crumpled up in his left-hand pocket, was the list of things that he blamed his parents for.
“Oh, you know the thing. What is it? Is hard for me in English. Remind me, 003 and a half.”
“Seven! You know it’s seven!”
“Yes, but on that poster you are a leetle half-size version of yourself! So 003 and a half! Ha ha ha! You see, Barrito, what I did there! Ees clever, no?”
James Bond raised his eyes to heaven. “Can we please get this over with? In two hours I have to be strapped to the underside of a stealth bomber.”
“What thing?” said Barry again.
“Pardon?”
“What thing am I meant to say?”
“Oh. The thing about your mum and dad. Your wish.”
“Oh right,” said Barry. He shut his eyes.
The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked Page 4