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There is nothing designed to scare a person more than being told not to be scared.
“Let Mummy have a little look at your teeth…”
Alfie kept his mouth firmly shut.
“Open wide, there’s a good boy…”
Suddenly Alfie felt as if he couldn’t help doing exactly what the dentist told him. He opened his mouth, and she peered inside.
“Oh…” moaned the woman in pleasure. “Your teeth are absolutely abhorrent…”
The whole of the lower school laughed at him.
Except two children – Gabz, who looked on with sadness at the cruelty, and Texting Boy, who was still texting and had missed everything.
“Oh dear, oh dear. What is your name, child…?” enquired the dentist.
“Alfie, M-M-Miss…” the boy spluttered.
“Call me Mummy…”
There was no way he was ever going to call anyone that, least of all her.
“Alfie what…?” continued Miss Root.
“Alfie Griffith.”
“Well, young Alfie Griffith, you simply must make an appointment to come and see me at my surgery very soon…”
Alfie shuddered at the thought. He had vowed never to go anywhere near another dentist as long as he lived.
“Do you like presents, child…?”
Like all kids, the boy loved presents.
“Y-y-yes…” he replied.
“Well, Mummy’s got a little present for you. For being such a good boy today, here – have a free tube of my own special brand of toothpaste…”
From the trolley, Miss Root picked up a thick white tube with the word ‘MUMMY’S’ emblazoned in big red letters on the side.
The slogan ‘Mummy loves your teeth’ was inscribed in smaller black letters under that.
“And one of my special toothbrushes. Do you prefer hard or soft bristles, Alfie Griffith…?”
The boy had had the same toothbrush all his life. He had no idea whether it once had been hard or soft. Right now there was only one lonely bristle left. It was virtually bristleless* (#ulink_d653b964-922a-53a4-b0c5-c8099de08470).
* (#ulink_47d76aab-b408-5224-a9ef-fbcc302b7aa5)Made-up wordALERT
“I don’t mind…”
“I’ll give you a nice soft one, then…” announced Miss Root.
A gleaming white ‘MUMMY’S’ toothbrush was produced from the trolley. The bristles on the end were sharp and wiry. Alfie ran his finger along them and winced. It was like stroking a porcupine.
Holding the brush and tube in his hands, Alfie looked like a tearful child you might see at the zoo who has been made to face their fear of spiders by being given a huge, hairy, highly poisonous tarantula to hold.
“Alfie, we shall meet again…”
No, we won’t! thought Alfie.
“Oh yes we will…” she whispered. It was as if the dentist could hear his thoughts…
5 (#ulink_63c32c4e-1522-5895-9449-b002fde6ac4e)
Special Sweeties (#ulink_63c32c4e-1522-5895-9449-b002fde6ac4e)
“Now be a good boy and pop back to your seat…!” ordered Miss Root. Alfie did what he was told. Not wanting to catch anyone’s eyes for fear of further humiliation, he put his head down as he trudged back to his seat.
“Now, children…” continued the lady, “who else would like a present? I have some free sweeties…?”
Hundreds of hands shot up, and soon the hall was humming with the chattering of excited children.
“But don’t sweets rot your teeth?” shouted out Gabz.
Miss Root glared at her, then smiled. “Oh, aren’t you a feisty one? What’s your name, child…?”
The girl hesitated, but eventually said, “Gabz…”
“Well, of course, young Gabriella is right. Normally sweeties do rot your teeth. But not these ones. No! Mummy’s sweeties are special. All my sweeties are completely sugar-free, so you can eat as many as you like…” From under the trolley she pulled out a tray, and whisked a white sheet off the top of it. Underneath was a huge pile of brightly coloured goodies. There were chocolates and chocolates and more chocolates. Toffees and fudge. Sucky sweets and chewy sweets. Fruity ones and minty ones. Melt in your mouth sweets. Crunchy sweets. Fizzy sweets. Explosive sweets.
“Come on, children. Don’t be scared. Come and help yourselves to Mummy’s special sweeties…”
In an instant, hundreds of children surged forward and started eagerly grabbing huge handfuls of sweets. As many as they grabbed, and the greedy little boys and girls were stuffing their faces and pockets, there seemed to be more. And more. And more.
“Take as many as you like!” Miss Root called over the din. “I can always magic up some more…!”
Alfie noticed Gabz was sitting stock-still in her seat.
“Are you not gonna get any?” asked Alfie.
Gabz shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Haven’t you ever heard the tale about the brother and sister who go into the woods and find the house made of sweets…?”
Alfie was surprised that the little girl’s imagination had run away with her like this. “Hansel and Gretel? Yes, of course, everyone has, but that’s just a stupid fairy story.”
Gabz turned her head and fixed him with a stare.
“It’s not stupid. And just because it’s a fairy story doesn’t mean it never happened…” she said, before turning her gaze back to the dentist who was smiling broadly with those impossibly white teeth of hers, as the kids filled all their pockets with sweets. Strangely, however many the children took, there were more and more and more filling the tray.
Along the rows, just one boy stayed glued to his chair. It was Texting Boy. He was still texting.
*
On his way home from school that afternoon, Alfie wanted to dispose of the presents Miss Root had given him as quickly as possible. He didn’t trust that lady one bit. There was something deeply disturbing about her. That splash of red on her shoe, the creep around the hall in the minute’s silence for the dead dentist, and those sugar-free sweets that never ran out were just too good to be true. So when Alfie crossed the bridge over the canal as he always did on his way to and from school, he stopped. He pulled the toothbrush and toothpaste out of his blazer pocket. He examined the label, ‘MUMMY’S’. It was such a comforting brand name. How could you not trust anything called ‘MUMMY’S’?
The boy unscrewed the lid of the tube. Immediately some sticky yellow gunk, the colour of pus, snaked out of the end. It smelt rank, like warm sick. A small glob of it fell to the ground. It hissed and fizzed as it bore its way through the stone bridge like acid. What is in that toothpaste? thought Alfie. Just then he noticed the paste was still oozing out of the tube. It was moving dangerously close to his fingers. A smidgen of it landed on his skin, and instantly he could feel it burning.
“Ow!” screamed the boy. He quickly threw the tube into the canal below. It plopped into the water, and he watched as the tube sank to the bottom, the paste still snaking out. Then Alfie noticed he still had the hard wire toothbrush Miss Root had given him in his other hand. The bristles looked like they would scratch your teeth away, rather than clean them. So he threw the brush in the canal too.
As Alfie took a couple of paces to continue on his journey home, a strange sound stopped him in his tracks. Looking back he saw that beneath the bridge, the water in the canal was boiling and bubbling. It was like a mini volcano erupting. The boy watched in horror as a school of dead fish plopped to the surface and floated there. As he peered down at the water, a gaggle of kids from his school passed him, laughing and joking, their mouths full of ‘MUMMY’S’ chocolates and toffees and fruit chews. Every single child looked like they couldn’t be happier, greedily munching and crunching and scrunching them.
If that’s what her toothpaste does, thought Alfie, what on earth is in those special sweets of hers…?
6 (#ulink_233ddcb6-3ecf-556e-90eb-ec0c91b9bbf3)
The Intruder (#ulink_233ddcb6-3ecf-556e-90eb-ec0c91b9bbf3)
“You must be Alfred,” boomed a voice when he walked in the front door of his little bungalow, which squatted in an estate on the edge of town.
“Who are you?” demanded the boy. Alfie was very protective of his dad and didn’t like seeing strangers in the bungalow.
A flamboyantly dressed lady had plonked herself down in the living room with Dad. Her ample frame was taking up more than one place on the worn and torn sofa.
The riot of colour in her mismatched outfit (yellow scarf, pink stripy leggings, green top and electric-blue shiny plastic coat) looked decidedly out of place in the small, grey room. In fact, it would have looked out of place anywhere.
Dad was sitting in his wheelchair in the corner of the room where he always was, a frayed tartan blanket covering his knees. It was cold in the bungalow. The central heating had been cut off a few winters ago. In truth, their little home was falling to pieces. Since Dad had been confined to a wheelchair, the bungalow had fallen into a state of disrepair. Despite Alfie’s best efforts, water poured in through the roof when it rained. Cracks had appeared in most of the windows, and mould was creeping up the walls all the way to the ceiling.
“Oh, son, this is…” Dad took a loud shallow breath, “…Winnie. She’s a social worker.”
“A what?” asked Alfie, still staring rather rudely at the intruder.
“No need to be worried about me, young man, ha ha!” proclaimed the big jolly lady, as she plumped up a cushion and placed it behind Dad’s back. “I’m here from the council. Social workers like me just want to help…”
“We don’t need any help, thank you,” said Alfie. “I look after my father better than anyone else could, don’t I, Dad?”
Dad smiled at his son, but didn’t say anything.
“I am sure you do!” replied Winnie with a smile. “By the way, it’s very nice to meet you, young man,” she said, reaching out one of her podgy hands with fingers like bejewelled sausages. Alfie just stared at it.
“Shake her hand, son. Be a good boy…” implored Dad.
Alfie reluctantly let his little hand meet hers. The social worker gripped it tight and shook it so vigorously, the boy thought his poor arm would be yanked out of its socket. The multicoloured plastic bracelets that adorned her wrists rattled loudly as she did so.
“Now, young Alfred, could I trouble you for a cup of tea?” bellowed Winnie.
“Yes, a pot of tea would be lovely, thanks, son,” prompted Dad. “Then we can all sit down together and have a good talk.”
“I can’t have coffee, it goes right through me! Ha ha!” added the social worker.
Alfie stared at this intruder as he backed out of the living room to make the tea. Father and son always shared a pot of tea when Alfie returned home from school. He would lay out a tray with two cups. It had been just two cups for as long as he could remember.
One thing the boy had learned from his father was that however poor they were, they should still take great pride in life’s simple pleasures. So when Alfie made the tea he would try his hardest to make everything just so. As the kettle was boiling, he fetched a little chipped teapot with the lid missing and placed it on a tray he had liberated from the school cafeteria. Then he took two cups out of the cupboard. There were only two cups in the house, so Alfie had to think on his feet. Eventually he found an eggcup, and put it on the tray. That would do for his mouthful of tea. The milk jug was really a moonlighting gravy boat Alfie had bought in a charity-shop sale. Last but not least, the boy took out a cracked plate, and arranged three crumbling out-of-date chocolate biscuits on it. The local newsagent had given Alfie a free packet one day when the boy looked particularly hungry.
With a proud smile on his face Alfie entered the living room carrying the tray. Carefully he placed it down on the coffee table (well, it was really just an upturned cardboard box, but he and Dad called it the coffee table).
“I have heard so much about you from your father, young Alfred,” said Winnie, spraying biscuit crumbs all over the boy and the carpet and even as far away as the curtains as she spoke. She took a large and noisy slurp of her tea from her cup, and washed the remainder of the biscuit down her throat.
“Aah!” she sighed, smacking her bright-pink painted lips together. “That’s better. I am soooo looking forward to getting to know…”
As she spoke Alfie tried to smile, and sipped some tea from his eggcup, feeling somehow like a tiny giant. Winnie peered at the boy. She slid along the sofa, and her big fat face came close to his, like a hippopotamus inspecting a little bird that has landed on its nose. “Oh, my word! Look at the boy’s teet!”
“My what?” said Alfie.
“Teet!”
“My teet?” replied Alfie, confused.
“Yes, boy…” said the social worker in a frustrated tone. “YOUR TEET!”
“I think Winnie means your teeth…” ventured Dad.
“Yes, that’s what I said!” implored the lady. “TEET! T, E, E, T, H, TEET!”
“All right, all right. What about my teet, I mean teeth?” asked Alfie, before quickly closing his mouth to hide them. He knew he wasn’t going to be asked to star in a toothpaste advert anytime soon, but they hadn’t all fallen out. Yet.
“No no no, that won’t do. Oh, my word! That won’t do at all. As your social worker, the first thing I am going to do for you…”
“Yes…?” gulped the boy, guessing what might be coming.
“…is make you an appointment with the dentist!”
7 (#ulink_5172d6b5-72de-5d76-89a3-4eb70a37ccf0)
Secrets (#ulink_5172d6b5-72de-5d76-89a3-4eb70a37ccf0)
Alfie gave his father a look, imploring him to throw this annoying lady out. Now. However, Dad turned to face her, squinting a little at the riot of colour. “I think that’s a very good idea, Winnie. I don’t want any more of his teeth falling out before his thirteenth birthday.”
“Ha ha! No!” laughed Winnie. “We don’t want that. A quick trip to the dentist will sort the boy out!”
Without asking, she helped herself to her third chocolate biscuit. It was the last one on the plate. Even though it had a hint of mould, Alfie had been eyeing up that biscuit for the last ten minutes. That was all he was going to eat this evening for his dinner. The woman wolfed it down whole, and took another deafening slurp of her tea.
“SSSSLLLLLLLUU UUUURRRRRPPPPPP!!!!”
She smacked her lips together again, and then let out another sigh.
