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Alfred was not always easy to find. Wayne Manor was a big place, and while it was true that there were regularities – he was always in the kitchen for roughly the hour before family meals, and usually came in and out of the Batcave while they were patrolling – at any given other time Alfred may be cleaning one of the bedrooms, or doing the laundry, or running any number of errands outside the house. Nobody was individually very concerned, then, when they couldn’t find him.
They were a little more worried when five of them ended up in the kitchen, having searched almost every part of the house for the previous hour without running into either Alfred or each other.
“And nobody’s seen him today?” Bruce asked. “Yesterday?”
He got a round of shaking heads. “I saw him on Friday morning,” Tim ventured.
“Any advance on Friday morning?” Dick said. “No? Okay, has Alfred been missing for two days without any of us noticing?”
“In my defence, I don’t live here,” Jason said.
“Why are you here, Todd?”
Jason shrugged. “Needed Alfred’s help with something. Just like the rest of you, apparently. Seriously, did you ever see the man when he isn’t doing something for you?”
Bruce held up a hand before his sons could descend into squabbling. “We have more important concerns right now. Come on, we need to determine Alfred’s location and if he’s in need of assistance. We have no idea how long he’s been gone.”
“It’s only been two days, Master Bruce, although I have to say that I am a little surprised it’s taken all of you this long to notice.”
As one, the group assembled in the kitchen turned to face the doorway Alfred had just walked through.
“Alfred? Where were you, why have you been gone since Friday? And why didn’t you tell anyone you were going?”
“Well, Master Bruce, the same place I’ve been going every Friday to Sunday for the last eight weeks. England.”
None of them knew how to react to that. Apart from Jason, apparently, who took a second to join some dots and then laughed. “You finally did it then? You’ve been talking about it for years!”
“Indeed I did, Master Jason. I must say, your urging last year was a major factor in my deciding to finally apply, so I have to thank you.”
“Okay, what are you talking about?” Tim said. “Why does Jason know when the rest of us don’t, and why could you possibly need to visit England for the weekend, nine weekends in a row?”
Dick seemed to have joined some dots as well. “No way! Alfred, that’s amazing! Why didn’t you tell us?”
Alfred smiled. “Well, Master Dick, I didn’t want to tell anyone when I first applied – I had no idea if I would be selected or not, and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. And then, the first week happened to fall when you were all out of town.”
“That all-hands mission in space,” Tim recalled. “Even Jason was there.”
“Hey!”
“And none of you realised that I had ever left Wayne Manor, so the next week I decided it might be fun to see how long it took one of you to call me. And then…”
“Nobody called you all weekend,” Bruce realised. “Nobody noticed you weren’t here.”
“After that, it was just a waiting game. I have to say, I’m rather relieved you’ve all put it together now. It would have been a little awkward to ask you all to come with me next week if that was the first time you were hearing about it.”
“Next week? Week ten? And we’re coming with you? That means… Alfred, that’s amazing!” Jason said.
“Okay, we haven’t all put it together. What’s going on, why are we proud of Alfred?” Tim asked. Damian, clearly glad he had asked because he didn’t want to admit his own ignorance, looked expectantly at Alfred for the answer. Bruce liked to think his poker face was better.
“Alfred is going to win Bakeoff!” Dick said.
“That’s a little premature, Master Dick. I have made it to the final, however, so at the least I’ll be a runner up.”
The room exploded with questions before Alfred held up a hand. “All of you are invited to come with me next weekend for the friends and family portion of the final. You’ll get to meet the hosts, the judges, and all of the other contestants this year and their families. I imagine many of your questions will be answered then, and the rest when the series airs in a few months’ time. Good?”
“Wait, is this why you’ve been baking the same things over and over again for around a week at a time for the last few months?” Bruce asked.
“Yes, you’ve all been excellent taste-testers for me over the course of the competition as I refined my recipes. I was also practicing many more unusual bakes earlier in the year once I’d been accepted onto the show, as practice for the technical challenges.”
“Oh yeah, can you make stroopwafels again? Those were amazing.”
“Of course, Master Dick. When this week is over, perhaps. I have a lot to practice before next weekend.”
A week later saw the extended Wayne family touching down in England and excitedly making their way to the hotel with a large white tent erected in the middle of a green expanse.
A few months after that saw them all reunited again, this time in the Manor’s theatre room. They had a whole display of cupcakes ready to eat while watching the show, which they had all made together that afternoon. The quality of decorations ranged wildly, but the actual cupcakes were all Alfred-certified as edible.
The opening titles rolled, and the excitement mounted. And at the first appearance of Alfred on screen, the cheering in the room was so loud it nearly drowned out the transition to the b-roll of Alfred being a butler – cooking in the Wayne Manor kitchen, doing some hoovering, and trimming one of the topiaries.
That year, the actual butler who lived in America and worked for some CEO who made regular tabloid appearances and had a million adopted kids was a fan favourite. When he won, in a final episode that saw Bruce Wayne making small talk with a man wearing so many different colours he had to restrain himself from treating him like a Gotham rogue, the room went WILD.