Demon Dentist. David Walliams

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 Last but not least, the boy took out a cracked plate, and arranged three crumbling out-of-date chocolate biscuits on it.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

       Secrets

      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