Ctrl-Z

by Andrew Norriss

  Alex waved his mother off from the pavement before walking up the road to Callum’s house. To his surprise, there was no answer when he rang the front doorbell, nor when he walked round and knocked at the back. There was no car in the drive either and it was clear that the Bannisters had gone out. Alex waited a bit in case they had only gone down to the shops, but no one turned up.

  He went next door to ask Mrs Penrose if she knew where they had gone, but she only knew that the Bannisters had all gone off in the car at about nine thirty. She had no idea when they might be back.

  He hung around the house a bit longer before walking home to find a policeman waiting for him in the kitchen with Mr Howard.

  ‘This is Constable Williams,’ said his father. ‘He says you rang the police half an hour ago.’

  ‘Um… yes,’ said Alex. ‘You said on the phone…’ Constable Williams consulted his notebook, ‘… that you wanted to know what would happen to your neighbour if he was found keeping a three‐metre African python without a licence, and it had eaten a dog. Is that right?’

  ‘Um… yes,’ said Alex.

  ‘Can I ask which neighbour you were worried about exactly?’

  ‘It’s not Mr Kowalski, is it?’ Mr Howard was staring at his son. ‘Is that who you meant?’

  ‘Um… yes,’ said Alex. ‘You’ve seen this snake, have you?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Um… yes,’ said Alex.

  He thought about lying, but there didn’t seem to be any point. Once he got hold of the mains lead for his computer, none of this would have happened anyway, and in the meantime it would be useful to know for certain what the police would do about Mr Kowalski and his African python.

  Constable Williams turned to Mr Howard. ‘This Mr Kowalski lives at… ?’

  ‘Number sixteen,’ said Mr Howard. ‘Next door.’

  ‘Right.’ The policeman put away his notebook. ‘Well, I’ll go and have a word with him. See what he says.’ He smiled at Alex. ‘Don’t worry. You did the right thing!’

  An hour later, there were three police cars in the road outside and a large van with bars on its windows. Alex watched from the sitting‐room window as four burly policemen carried an enormous canvas bag the size of a tent containing Saskia the snake out of Mr Kowalski’s house to the van. Mr Kowalski followed, looking rather pale, and Constable Williams put him in the back of one of the police cars. He looked very small and old and frail, and Alex couldn’t help thinking that the sooner he could use Ctrl‐Z to put everything back to how it had been the better.

  He spent the rest of the morning cycling up and down the road outside Callum’s house, waiting for his friend or any of the Bannister family to come home and let him into the house, but none of them did. When he finally went home for lunch, he found out why.

  ‘Callum called while you were out,’ said Mr Howard, when Alex came back to the kitchen. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. He says Lilly hurt her leg this morning, sliding down the stairs on a tea tray and they’ve taken her to hospital. They’re worried it might start off the infection again. He said to tell you the accident happened at nine twenty‐seven. He was very insistent I give you the exact time for some reason.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alex. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s all happening this morning, isn’t it?’ said Mr Howard. ‘Mr Kowalski gets arrested, Lilly winds up back in hospital… but at least we have one thing to celebrate.’ He pointed to the table where he had set out a bottle of champagne and two glasses. ‘Your mother got the job!’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Yes. But she doesn’t know that we know yet, so you’ll have to pretend to look surprised when she tells us.’ Mr Howard grinned happily. ‘I used to work with the man in charge of the firm she’s applying to, and he told me yesterday he was definitely giving her the job. Said he wasn’t even bothering to interview anyone else, so this morning’s just a formality!’

  At least that was one part of the day he wouldn’t have to change, Alex thought, but it turned out he was wrong. When his mother got home, she said that she had not been given the job after all.

  ‘The man was very nice,’ she said, standing in the hallway to change her shoes. ‘He said he was sorry and I’d come very close, but there was a lot of competition. I suppose I just keep trying. I’m dying for a cup of tea. Can someone put the kettle on?’

  ‘The man told you there was a lot of competition?’ said Mr Howard.

  ‘Yes… there were about a dozen of us being interviewed.’ Mrs Howard pulled on a pair of slippers. ‘Next time, eh?’

  ‘You didn’t even go, did you?’ said Mr Howard in a low voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t go to the interview at all, did you? You didn’t turn up.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Mrs Howard gave an odd laugh. ‘Of course I turned up. I told you…’ She stopped and let out a long, deep breath. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, I didn’t go to the interview.’

  Alex waited for his father to explode, but his voice was very quiet when he spoke. ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want the job, all right?’ Mrs Howard spoke sharply. ‘It’s my life, isn’t it? It’s my decision. I think I should at least be allowed to decide for myself what job I want!’

  She walked through to the kitchen and turned on the kettle. Mr Howard stared after her and Alex thought he was going to start shouting, but he didn’t. Instead he walked into the dining room and closed the door. Mrs Howard came out of the kitchen and went upstairs, leaving Alex alone in the hallway. It was very quiet, but it wasn’t a good quiet. Alex would almost have preferred it if they’d been shouting.

  As he went upstairs to his room, he couldn’t help feeling that the sooner he got the lead for his computer and pressed Ctrl‐Z the better.

  When he could use his laptop again, Alex knew he would be able to put everything right. He could go back to before he had phoned the police so that Mr Kowalski wasn’t arrested. He could go back to before Lilly hurt her leg and warn Callum not to let her slide down the stairs on a tray. And he could go back to before his mother left for her interview and tell her that Dad knew she was going to get the job. That way at least she wouldn’t pretend she’d been to the interview when she hadn’t.

  All it needed was for Callum to come back from the hospital… but he didn’t. Alex called round to the Bannisters’ house every half‐hour or so through the afternoon to see if there was any sign of him, but there never was.

  At five o’clock, Mrs Penrose, Callum’s neighbour, came back from a walk with both Jennings and Mojo. She said Mr Bannister had rung from the hospital to say there had been complications and they were staying until things were sorted out. He had asked her to look after Mojo until they got back, but had no idea of when that might be. That was when Alex thought he should try to get a mains connector cable from somewhere else.

  At home, his parents were still not speaking to each other, and they weren’t talking to Alex much either. His mother was in the garage, polishing the chrome on her Triumph, and didn’t seem to hear when he asked if she knew where he could get hold of a new cable. He had to repeat the question twice before she answered that she had no idea. His father, sitting in his office staring blankly out of the window was no help either. He said it was too late to go to the shops and no, they didn’t have a spare cable that fitted the socket on the laptop.

  The situation was serious, but not desperate, Alex thought. One of the things he had learnt in the weeks since he had discovered Ctrl‐Z was not to worry unnecessarily. What was there to worry about when you had a machine that could go back to before anything bad happened and make sure it didn’t? As long as Callum came back before midnight, all the day’s disasters could still be undone.

  And even if he didn’t, there was always Plan B. Plan B had been at the back of Alex’s mind from the start. He still thought the most likely thing would be for the Bannisters to get back from the hospital so that he could retrieve the cable, but if t
hey didn’t, all he would have to do was break into their house and take it. He had thought of doing it that afternoon, but decided in the end to wait. If he was going to do anything illegal while the laptop was temporarily out of action, it would be better to wait until dark.

  It was ten o’clock at night when Alex got up, crept downstairs to the kitchen, took a torch from the drawer, pulled a coat on over his pyjamas and quietly let himself out of the back door.

  Callum’s house was in darkness when he got there, and there was no car in the drive. The Bannisters were still at the hospital. Alex made his way round to the back of the house. Standing on the patio, trying to decide which window to break to get in, he realized there was no need. In their haste to leave that morning, Mr Bannister had left the patio door slightly ajar. All Alex had to do was push it open and step inside.

  By the light of the torch, he climbed the stairs to Callum’s bedroom. That was where he had left the lead plugged into the wall and, with luck, it would still be there.

  It wasn’t.

  Callum must have moved it. Alex began searching the room, looking for anywhere his friend might have put it. Ten minutes later, he was still looking, the torch battery was giving out and Alex drew the curtains and turned on the light, hoping that no one outside would notice.

  In the next half‐hour, he turned Callum’s room upside down. He searched every drawer and cupboard, looked in and under the bed, went through all the boxes stored in the wardrobe and even pulled the bookcase away from the wall in case the wire had fallen behind it. But it hadn’t. There was no sign of the lead anywhere.

  He was beginning to worry. He should have come here earlier, he thought, whatever the risk. He should have tried to phone Callum at the hospital. He should have got his father to take him into town straight after lunch to buy another lead, and he definitely should have remembered to turn off his computer the night before… There were so many things he should have done.

  In a mood of increasing desperation, he began looking in other parts of the house. He went downstairs and searched the living room and the hallway. He turned on all the lights and looked in the kitchen and the dining room and then went back and searched all the rooms all over again. He was still frenziedly searching when he heard the grandfather clock in the Bannisters’ hallway striking twelve.

  He turned on the television in the sitting room to double‐check the time, but there was no mistake. Midnight had passed. As he had learnt the first day he had got the computer, you could change the time with Ctrl‐Z, but not the date. You could only use it to wind back events within the space of the same day. He sat down in an armchair, feeling suddenly very tired. There was no point looking for the lead any more. Even if he found it, it was too late.

  Mr Kowalski’s arrest, Lilly’s leg, his parents not talking… There was nothing he could do about any of them now.

  The day was over and there was no going back.

  Alex let himself in through the back door, hung up his coat, and was tiptoeing through the hall when the door to the sitting room opened.

  ‘Alex?’ Mr Howard stood in the doorway in his dressing gown. Behind him, Alex could see pillows and a blanket laid out on the sofa.

  ‘You couldn’t sleep either, eh?’ His father put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s cheer ourselves up with a hot drink.’

  In the kitchen, while his father busied himself collecting two mugs and heating up milk in the microwave, Alex couldn’t help thinking that it was going to take more than a cup of hot chocolate to cheer him up at this point. It was probably the worst day of his life. Worse than the time he had got lost on the beach when he was three years old, and even worse than the time…

  He stopped. In front of him, lying openly on the kitchen worktop, was the black wire of the power lead for his computer.

  He picked it up. ‘How… how did this get here?’

  ‘Mrs Penrose brought it round.’ His father was watching the milk through the door of the microwave. ‘It’s the power lead for your computer. You left it at Callum’s.’

  ‘When did she bring it round?’

  ‘About nine thirty, I think.’ Mr Howard was spooning the chocolate powder into the mugs. ‘Callum rang her from the hospital. He was worried you might need it, so he asked her to pick it up from his house and bring it over. They’re all staying at the hospital overnight to keep an eye on Lilly.’

  ‘Why…’ Alex was still staring at the wire. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You’d gone to bed by then, hadn’t you!’ Mr Howard carried the mugs over to the table. ‘And it seemed to me like you needed your sleep. Especially after a day like today.’ He sat down with a sigh. ‘Because it’s not been the best day for any of us, really, has it?’ He sipped his drink. ‘Not the best day at all.’

  Alex stared miserably at the lead in his hands. He hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse than he had when he’d heard midnight strike on the clock in Callum’s house, but he’d been wrong. He’d been wrong about so many things all through the day. He’d made so many silly mistakes.

  And the computer lead had been sitting in the kitchen for the last three hours. If he had known. If only he had known…

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ he said miserably.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Alex. ‘Lilly’s accident, Mr Kowalski, you and Mum… it’s all my fault.’

  ‘Well, I think you might be exaggerating slightly there.’ Mr Howard put down his mug and looked across at his son. ‘Mr Kowalski was arrested for keeping a dangerous animal – his fault, not yours. Lilly falling downstairs certainly didn’t have anything to do with you. And as for your mother and me… I’m afraid we managed to mess up that one all on our own.’ He gave Alex a tired smile. ‘From where I’m sitting, you look like the only one today that’s got nothing to blame himself for at all.’

  Unfortunately, Alex knew it wasn’t true. If he’d just been a bit more careful, none of the day’s disasters would have happened. If he’d checked the computer was working before he’d rung the police… If he hadn’t left the lead round at Callum’s… If he’d tried earlier to get a replacement…

  He had made so many mistakes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  At breakfast the next morning, Alex’s parents were still not talking – not to each other at any rate. They said the odd word to Alex, but otherwise they both behaved as if the other person didn’t exist. It was not a pleasant atmosphere, and it was a relief when his mother went off to work, his father announced that he was going out for a walk and Alex found himself alone in the house.

  He badly wanted to talk to someone about what had happened, but there wasn’t anyone to talk to. The only person who might have understood was Callum, but Alex felt so guilty about Lilly that, even if his friend was back from the hospital, he couldn’t face seeing him. And there wasn’t anyone else who knew about Ctrl‐Z and who might understand how he felt and…

  And then it occurred to him that there was one other person who knew about Ctrl‐Z. Godfather John. If he sent him an email, Alex thought, and told him what had happened, he might be able to give some advice, and he was on his way upstairs to turn on his laptop when there was a knock at the front door.

  Standing on the step was a big man dressed almost entirely in black. He wore a long black coat over a black shirt and trousers, with polished black shoes on his feet and a wide black hat on the grizzled grey hair on his head. Above the thick grey beard and the heavily lined face, a pair of twinkling black eyes looked down at Alex.

  ‘Hello, Alex,’ said the man, his voice booming down the hall.

  It took Alex a moment to realize who it was. He couldn’t remember meeting the man before, but he recognized the face. There was a photograph of it on the mantelpiece in the front room.

  ‘Godfather John?’

  ‘That’s me!’ The man came striding into the hallway. ‘I got your email and it sounded like you could do with some help!’

/>   ‘Email?’ Alex frowned. ‘I haven’t written one yet.’

  ‘Yes, I know. You send it in about an hour.’ Godfather John had taken a small palmtop computer from his pocket and studied it. ‘But as I was going to call in anyway, I used Ctrl‐Z to get here early.’

  Alex looked at the tiny computer. ‘Is that…’

  ‘It’s the new model,’ said Godfather John. ‘Easier to carry around. That’s why I passed the old one on to you. Thought you might have a chance to make some useful mistakes!’ He beamed down at Alex. ‘So where are your parents?’

  Alex explained that his mother was at work and that his father had gone out for a walk.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Godfather John. ‘That’ll give us a chance to talk!’

  In the kitchen, while Godfather John made himself some coffee and a plate of sandwiches, Alex started to tell him what had happened the previous day, but his godfather insisted that he start the story right from the beginning. He wanted to know everything that had happened, he said, everything that Alex had done, from the first time he had used the laptop. And he listened attentively and sympathetically, only occasionally interrupting with a question or a comment, as Alex described his adventures with Ctrl‐Z.

  Some of the stories made him smile, one or two made him laugh, but he was particularly pleased, for some reason, when Alex told him what had happened when he sprayed Sophie Reynolds with foam from a fire extinguisher. He made Alex go over the whole story twice, and when he’d finished, banged his fist enthusiastically on the table.

  ‘Now that is exactly the sort of mistake I was hoping you’d make,’ he said, his smile broader than ever. ‘Well done!’

  The smile faded slightly when Alex finally got to describe the events of the previous day – with Mr Kowalski getting arrested, Lilly breaking her leg and his parents having their row about his mother not going to the job interview.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Alex, ‘I could have stopped all of it happening. I should have stopped it. And I feel awful.’