Ctrl-Z (12 page)

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
they 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.

A
t 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.’

‘Yes…’ Godfather John nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s not easy, is it?’

‘Is there anything you could do to help?’ asked Alex.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well… I was wondering if you could go back to yesterday and change things.’ Alex pointed to the palmtop on the table. ‘Can
the new machine do something like that?’

‘Sorry,’ said his godfather. ‘No, it can’t.’

‘Isn’t there
anything
I can do?’

‘Well, there’s only one thing you ever have to do when you’ve made a mistake,’ said Godfather John, ‘and that’s decide not
to do it again.’

‘Oh,’ said Alex, disappointed.

‘And apologize to anyone who got hurt, of course.’ Godfather John put the last bit of sandwich in his mouth and washed it
down with his third mug of coffee before leaning back in his chair. ‘I’m not sure why that bit’s important, but it seems to
be part of the process.’ He pointed his finger at Alex. ‘So my advice is to get round to Mr Kowalski, say you’re sorry and
promise not to report him to the police again. Not without a working Ctrl‐Z, anyway.’

The last thing Alex wanted to do was go anywhere near number 16. He wasn’t sure if Mr Kowalski knew that he was the one who
had called the police or not, but if he
did
know, he would almost certainly be very angry. A picture of the old man shooting at the dog in his garden as he shouted at
it to go away flashed into Alex’s head…

‘What happens,’ he said, ‘if I go round, and Mr Kowalski’s really cross?’

Godfather John gave a chuckle. ‘Oh, I think you’ll be all right!’

‘You think?’

‘In fact I’m sure of it,’ said Godfather John confidently. ‘I’ve got this, remember?’ He held up
his palmtop. ‘I wouldn’t be advising you to do something that I didn’t know was going to turn out OK, would I?’

Alex thought about this for a moment. ‘Right. And then you think I should do the same thing with Callum… and my parents?’

‘I definitely think you should have a word with Callum – he’s your friend, after all.’ Godfather John paused for a moment
before continuing. ‘But I don’t think you should say anything to your parents. Because you don’t really have anything to apologize
to them for, do you? As your father said, they seem to have messed that one up all on their own.’ He gave another throaty
chuckle. ‘It sounds to me like they’ve been making much bigger mistakes than you have!’

Alex was slightly confused. ‘You keep making it sound like making a mistake is a good thing,’ he said.

‘But of course it is!’ Godfather John beamed at him across the table. ‘That’s why I sent you the laptop, remember? So you
could make lots of mistakes.’

‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘I know that’s what you said. I just never understood why…’

‘I said it because we
have
to make mistakes, Alex. All of us. It’s how we learn!’ Godfather John’s eyes glinted under his bushy eyebrows as he spoke.

‘Think of when you were a baby learning to walk. You took your first step, you fell over, you got up, took another step, you
fell over again… And that’s how any of us learns anything. By trying it, getting it wrong and trying it again.’

He leant across the table towards Alex. ‘What would have happened if you’d decided after the first mistake to give up learning
to walk because you were getting it wrong? You’d have been stuck sitting down for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you! No,
no…’ Godfather John shook his head firmly. ‘Nothing to be ashamed of in making a mistake. The mistakes are how we learn and
grow – and the learning and the growing are what we’re all here to do in the first place, aren’t they!’