Alfie decided to make the best of it. He went and sat at the table, with his plate and knife and fork and glass of water all ready.

The trouble was that Mrs Stokes – who, according to the having-tea routine, was meant to get Alfie’s meal out of the oven for him – wasn’t with him. She was still in the toilet. She’d been there, Alfie realised, for quite an alarming length of time. He would have been more concerned were it not for the number of strange groaning noises she was making. He’d rather not have heard those sounds, but at least they convinced him that she wasn’t – well – dead.

Finally, he heard a flush, followed about two minutes later by the sight of his babysitter humping her Zimmer frame down the hall.

“Mrs Stokes!” said Alfie. “It’s Broccoli Bake for tea today! Jenny will have left it in the oven, so maybe, if I help you with your walking frame, you can—”

But Mrs Stokes just carried on towards the living room. Alfie sat there for a bit, not knowing what to do. He was shaken out of his reverie by the sight of a boy on a bike flashing past the kitchen window: a very familiar boy on a very familiar bike.

Oh no, thought Alfie.

“HEY!” shouted Freddie Barnes (for it was he), turning round and cycling back in front of the window. “IT’S ALFIE! BORING, BORING ALFIE!!”

Yes, Freddie Barnes did sometimes shout that at Alfie, just as Jenny had feared.

After a little while saying the words “Boring, Boring Alfie” over and over again whilst laughing and pointing – which must have got dull fairly quickly, seeing as he was on his own with no other bullies to share this with – Freddie cycled off.

Alfie shook his head, got down from the table and went through into the living room where Mrs Stokes was sitting in an armchair, watching Strictly Come Dancing on TV. She looked completely engrossed.

“Er … Mrs Stokes?” said Alfie. “It’s time for my tea. Well, actually …” he added, checking his watches, “… we’re already a bit over. We should have been plated up eleven minutes ago. But anyway … you’re meant to … bring me my tea.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs Stokes, without moving her eyes from the TV. “Just do what you like.”

Alfie frowned. “Pardon?”

“I said, just do what you like.”

Alfie wasn’t sure how to take this. “But … you’re meant to bring me my tea. Then, in the next fifteen minutes, I’m supposed to eat it. Then I clear up, bring my plate and cutlery and glass over to the sink and help you load the dishwasher. That’s scheduled to take between six and nine minutes, depending on the size of the meal. Broccoli Bake should be at the lower end of that, I think, which is good because we’re already running late.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs Stokes. “Absolutely. Just do what you like.” And she turned the volume up on the TV.

Alfie didn’t know what to do. So he ran round the house – back into the kitchen, upstairs to his bedroom, stopping on the landing to go into the bathroom, and then back down into the living room. He collected all the bits of paper from all the various walls and then handed them in a neat pile to Mrs Stokes.

“Mrs Stokes!” he said. “These are my evening routines. My having-tea routine, my clearing-up-after-tea routine, my homework routine, my limited-amount-of-TV routine, my bath routine, my cleaning-my-teeth-in-the-evening routine—”

“Is that very different from your cleaning-your-teeth-in-the-morning routine?” said Mrs Stokes.

“Er … no, they are pretty similar” said Alfie, slightly surprised that she’d heard what he’d been saying. “Anyway, there’s also my getting-undressed-and-putting-pyjamas-on routine and my going-to-bed routine!”

“That’s nice, love,” said Mrs Stokes.

“No, but you don’t understand,” said Alfie desperately. “We’re already …” he looked at both wrists, “… fourteen minutes late with having-tea. That means all the other routines will be fourteen minutes behind schedule. Unless we can make up some time, maybe on homework … or I guess I could have a shorter bath … But we need to get started!”

“All right, dear,” said Mrs Stokes, handing all the pieces of paper back to Alfie. “You get on with it. Just do what you like!”