“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!”
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.
“Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!”
It was only the second time she had done the slurpyaah* routine in front of him, but Alfie couldn’t hide how deeply annoying he found it.
*Made-up word ALERT
Dad broke the uncomfortable silence. “Oh, it’s so nice to have a visitor, isn’t it, Alfie?”
The boy said nothing.
Winnie slurped and aahed again before enquiring, “Have you got any more of these yummy biscuits, ha ha?” She laughed at the end of her own sentences, in that irritating way jolly people often do.
“Yes,” said Dad. “We should have another biscuit in the tin, shouldn’t we, Alfie?”
Still the boy sat in silence, staring at this multicoloured munching machine.
“Well…?” prompted Dad. “Go and bring another biscuit for the nice lady.”
“Another chocolate one if you have it please, ha ha!” added Winnie brightly. “Naughty, I know! Have to watch my figure! But I do love choccy biccies!”
Slowly Alfie stood up and trudged to the kitchen. He knew there was one last chocolate biscuit in the tin, but he had been saving that for their dinner tomorrow night. Half each. As he passed the scratched and mottled mirror in the hall, Alfie paused for a moment. He needed to pluck the larger fragments of spit-sodden biscuit that had sprayed out of the social worker’s mouth from his hair.
“You must be very proud of him, Mr Griffit,” said Winnie. Alfie could hear them from the hall.
“It’s Griffith…”
“That’s what I said! Griffit.”
“Griffith…” repeated Dad.
“Yes!” said the woman in an exasperated tone. “G, R, I, F, F, I, T, H. Griffit!”
“Well, erm, yes of course I’m very proud of my pup,” wheezed Dad. Long sentences sometimes got the better of him.
“Your pup…?”
“Yes, that’s what I call him sometimes.”
“I see.”
“Over the years he’s looked after me so well. His whole life he has been looking after me. But…” Dad’s voice lowered to nearly a whisper now, “I didn’t tell him but I had a fall last week while he was at school. I didn’t want to worry him.”
“Mmm, yes. I can understand that.”
Alfie shifted his weight so he was standing nearer the door. The boy listened intently as the grown-ups talked.
“I became short of breath and I just blacked out. I fell out of my wheelchair. Smacked straight on to the bathroom floor. I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. The doctors did a load of tests…”
“Oh, yes…?” Winnie sounded very worried now.
“Well, they um…” Dad was struggling to find the words.
“Take your time, Mr Griffit.”
“Well, the doctors told me my breathing was getting worse and worse. And fast…”
“Oh no!” gasped Winnie.
The boy could hear his dad crying. It was heartbreaking.
“Here, Mr Griffit, have a tissue…” said the social worker softly.
Alfie took a deep inhalation of breath. Hearing his dad cry made him want to cry. But the proud man was fighting it, and sniffing back up the tears.
“We Griffiths are strong. Always have been. I worked down that mine for twenty years. As my dad did before me, and his dad before him. But I am a very ill man. And my poor little pup can’t cope all on his own…”
“Very sensible of you, Mr Griffit,” replied Winnie. “I am glad you finally decided to call the council. I just wish you had sooner. And remember, I am here to help you, and your son…”
Alfie stood frozen to the spot. Dad had a habit of keeping bad news from him. The rising debts, the TV and the fridge being repossessed, Dad’s worsening health. Alfie felt he was always the last to know.
Indeed, despite their closeness, there were plenty of chapters in Alfie’s life that he kept from his father. The boy had his secrets too.
That the bigger boys would bully him at school for ‘dressing like a tramp’.
The detention Alfie received for not doing his homework when he had been too busy cleaning the bungalow the night before and hadn’t had time.
When he was caught ‘bunking off’ by the headmaster. Actually he had had to leave school early to make it to the next town before the shops closed to collect a new wheel for his father’s wheelchair.
Alfie felt his dad had more than enough things to worry about without worrying about