Ctrl-Z (11 page)

‘Why… how… where did you get him?’

‘Ah… Long time ago. Twenty years.’ With a sigh Mr Kowalski sat himself on the carpet beside Alex, his back against the wall.
‘When I come to this country, I have no family, no friends, no one. Only Saskia.’

‘Saskia?’

Mr Kowalski nodded. ‘Engineer on ship give him to me. I keep him in my pocket. Talk to him. Tell him all my worries. Ask what
I should do. He sleep in bed with me. He curl up by my feet…’ He smiled. ‘He is good friend.’

‘But then, time pass, and he grow bigger.’ Mr

Kowalski’s smile faded. ‘He grow big, then more big, then more and more bigger. My daughter she say, “He is dangerous animal.
Is against the law. Get rid of him!” But how can I? Saskia is friend. I cannot get rid of friend! My daughter she say, “I
not visit you any more while you have snake. You choose.” I say “OK, I choose snake.”’ Mr Kowalski let out a long breath.
‘Then he eat dog.’

‘A dog?’ said Alex. ‘He ate a dog?’

Mr Kowalski nodded. ‘I try to keep him indoors. I close all windows and lock doors, but one day he escape to garden. Catch
Mrs Penrose dog and eat it. So I put up fence and barbed wire. Try to keep animals away. And children. I not want him to eat
children. So I feed him. Feed him lot of food so he is not hungry. But lot of food make him grow more big. I put up curtains
at window, so no one see him. I make it dark so he move less, but… I don’t know… is always
something
can go wrong.’

Mr Kowalski looked across at Alex. ‘My sister she say give him to zoo, but how? If I call zoo, maybe they call police. Maybe
I go to prison, I don’t know. If I
know,
maybe I do it, but I think –’

Alex never heard what Mr Kowalski thought because at that moment the old man disappeared, along with his house and sitting
room, and Alex
was standing in front of the desk in his bedroom, with Callum beside him.

‘I keep my eyes on Mr Kowalski,’ Callum was saying. ‘If I see him coming back to the house, I press Ctrl‐Z.’

Alex took a moment to remember when he was.

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Why didn’t you press Ctrl‐Z?’ demanded Alex. ‘Mr Kowalski came back to the house, but you didn’t do anything!’

Callum thought for a moment. ‘Is this one of those “you’ve already done it and come back again” moments?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘only I nearly didn’t come back at all. What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Callum. ‘I haven’t done anything yet, remember?’ He frowned. ‘But I
must
have pressed Ctrl‐Z, mustn’t I? Otherwise you wouldn’t have come back from wherever you’ve been.’

Alex realized this had to be true. ‘All right, maybe you
did
press it, but not until it was nearly too late,’ said Alex.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Callum, ‘but if I didn’t press it, it must have been because I was struck by lightning or something.
You know I wouldn’t have left you there without a reason.’

‘No, no, I know that…’ Alex was beginning to recover. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just a bit… You see, that snake nearly killed me.’

‘A snake?’ Callum’s eyes widened. ‘You were nearly killed by a snake?’

Alex took a deep breath and began telling Callum about the snake, about not being able to move, and about Mr Kowalski coming
in from the garden, when his mother appeared at the door.

‘I need someone to hold the exhaust in place while I screw in a bracket,’ she said, looking at Alex. ‘D’you mind?’

‘Can I do it later?’ asked Alex. ‘Only I need to talk to Callum about –’

‘Come on!’ His mother briskly closed the lid of his computer with one hand and swept up Alex with the other. ‘You can both
come. It won’t take long. Five minutes. Ten at the most.’

‘I think I know why you didn’t press the button now,’ said Alex quietly as he and Callum followed his mother down to the garage.

Much later, as Alex was lying in bed that night going over the events of the day in his head before falling asleep, he wondered
what he was going to do about Mr Kowalski. Twice now, at times of great danger, the old man had come to his rescue. He had
saved Lilly from being burnt alive and
now he had saved Alex from being crushed by a snake. Again, Alex faced the problem of how to thank him for doing something
he didn’t even know had happened.

It would be nice this time, Alex thought, to do something more than bake him a cake, and there was one thing he
could
do for his neighbour. The last thing Mr Kowalski had said, sitting on the floor of his living room, was that he wanted to
know whether, if anyone found out about him having the snake, it meant he would go to prison.

And it couldn’t be too difficult to get a piece of information like that…

A
lex rang the police straight after breakfast the following morning. He used the number you were supposed to use if it wasn’t
an emergency, gave his name and address, and asked what would happen to his neighbour if anyone found out that he was keeping
an African python. Would the snake be confiscated and would the owner have to go to prison?

The answer was not good news. The woman on the phone told him that it was against the law to keep any exotic pet that was
a danger to the public and that, yes, the penalties could involve confiscation, a fine and even imprisonment. Alex thanked
her, put down the phone and went over to his computer.

The first thing he needed to do was go back
five minutes to before he had made the phone call, but when he turned on the laptop, nothing happened. He pressed the On switch
several times, but the screen stayed completely blank and there was no little green light to say the power was on. Alex felt
a brief moment of panic before he realized what had happened. In all the excitement last night, he had forgotten to turn the
laptop off and now the battery had run down. All he had to do was plug it into the mains and then he could use Ctrl‐Z.

Except that he couldn’t find the lead. He searched his room for several minutes and then remembered he had left it at Callum’s
house the day before. Using Ctrl‐Z took a lot of power and the laptop needed recharging at least every two or three days.
It was no problem. He would walk round and get it.

‘Wish your mother luck!’ said his father, as Alex came downstairs.

Mrs Howard was standing by the front door, wearing a smart black suit, a white blouse and a slightly nervous expression.

‘She’s off to a job interview,’ his father explained. ‘But she’s going to get this one, aren’t you, love?’ He beamed at his
wife. ‘Don’t forget. If the car breaks down or anything, you ring and I’ll come and pick you up.’

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.