Ctrl-Z (8 page)

And for Alex, the wrinkle that he was particularly glad to smooth out – the one that had, until recently, made him the most
uncomfortable – was the way his parents kept having arguments.

The simplest way to stop his parents arguing, and the one Alex used most often, was to find out
the cause and put it right before it happened. If he found them arguing, for instance, about who should have emptied the bin,
he would go back and empty it himself so they had nothing to argue about.

A lot of the time this was what worked best, but it wasn’t always that easy. Sometimes the arguments were about things that
Alex couldn’t change, even with Ctrl‐Z. His parents had a huge argument, for instance, the day his mother’s car broke down
on the way to a job interview, and there wasn’t much Alex could do about that. Even with Ctrl‐Z he couldn’t fix a faulty distributor.

Mrs Howard had been working for some years to pass the exams she needed to get a job, like her husband, as an accountant.
The plan was that, after she had got some experience working with a local firm, the two of them would set up an accountancy
partnership together. It was a dream they had had almost from the time they had got married, but at the moment it seemed to
have stalled.

There were not that many opportunities to work locally as an accountant and when they did come up, there always seemed to
be a reason why Mrs Howard didn’t get the job. When she didn’t even get to the interview because her car broke down, they
had one of their worst arguments ever, with Mr Howard saying Mrs Howard should have
allowed more time and Mrs Howard throwing half a pound of butter at Mr Howard’s head.

On occasions like this, although there was nothing Alex could do to stop the cause of the argument, he found he could at least
defuse the situation. His parents tended not to argue if he was in the same room, and if he went back and made sure he
was
in the same room when the row started, it usually meant the argument never properly got off the ground.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a big improvement and sometimes he could do even better than that.

The worst argument his parents had, and the one Alex was particularly proud of sorting out, was the one they had on his mother’s
birthday. It was the Wednesday of half‐term and his father had taken Alex into town to collect the birthday present he had
bought for his wife.

Standing in the middle of a brightly lit car showroom, he patted the bonnet of a brand‐new silver Toyota and grinned at Alex.

‘There!’ he said. ‘You think she’ll like it?’

‘You’re buying Mum a
car
for her birthday?’ said Alex. ‘I thought she said she wanted an engine hoist?’

‘I know!’ His father’s smile grew even broader. ‘This is going to be a real surprise! I chose it last week and all I have
to do now is pay for it. With
this.’ He held out a banker’s draft. ‘It means she won’t break down on the way to important interviews any more. And she won’t
have to spend all her spare time repairing that old Triumph, either. She’ll be able to concentrate on getting the sort of
job she deserves!’

When Mrs Howard got home at four o’clock that day, swinging her bicycle on to the driveway, Alex and his father were waiting
for her, standing either side of the new car. Mr Howard had got a huge piece of pink ribbon and tied it round the middle into
a big bow at the top, so that it looked like a real present.

Mrs Howard got off her bike and looked at it.

‘What’s this?’ she said.
‘It’s for you,’ said Mr Howard proudly. ‘Happy birthday!’ said Alex.

Mrs Howard stepped forward to examine the Toyota.

‘I thought I told you I wanted an engine hoist,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Mr Howard happily, ‘but I got you this.’

‘I’ve already got a car,’ said Mrs Howard.
‘But this one,’ said Mr Howard, ‘is completely reliable! You can go to interviews, drive it to work – it’ll never break down!’

‘And what do I do with that?’ Mrs Howard pointed to the Triumph in the garage.

‘Well… you can sell it!’

‘Sell it.’ Mrs Howard looked at her husband. ‘Of course. After I’ve spent two years doing it up, what else would I
want
to do but sell it?’

‘Look,’ said Mr Howard, beginning to sound rather cross, ‘I think the least you can do after I’ve spent all that money is
–’

‘Yes, that’s the other thing,’ interrupted Mrs Howard. ‘You spent all that money without talking to me about it first?’

Mr Howard stared at her. ‘I can’t believe this! You are
angry
with me for buying you a car?’

‘Yes, I am,’ said Mrs Howard. ‘Very angry.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Mr Howard was beginning to sound quite angry himself. ‘We’ve been working for twelve years so that
you can do something a bit more useful with your life than be a garage receptionist, and I thought at least you’d like –’

‘No, you didn’t!’ said Mrs Howard. ‘You didn’t think what I might like at all. All you did was decide what
you
wanted, and then went ahead and did it!’

After that things followed a familiar pattern. The arguing got worse, the things that were said got more hurtful and the voices
got louder and
louder until they were both shouting so much that neither of them noticed Alex as he quietly walked back into the house and
up to his room.

‘There!’ said his father, patting the bonnet of a silver Toyota. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think it’s fantastic,’ said Alex, ‘but if you’re getting it for Mum’s birthday, I can tell you she won’t like it.’

‘What?’ His father looked rather startled. ‘What do you mean? How can she not like it? It’s brand new. It won’t break down
on the way to interviews. It’s –’

‘She’s already got a car,’ said Alex. ‘The Triumph.’

‘Well, she can sell that!’

‘She’s been working on it for two years!’ said Alex. ‘Would you want to sell something you’d been working on for two years
and only just finished?’

Mr Howard opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

‘You need to trust me on this one, Dad,’ said Alex firmly. ‘Don’t buy the car. Not till you’ve talked to Mum about it. It’d
be a mistake. I know it would.’

There was something in the way his son spoke that made Mr Howard hesitate. Things had not
been working out too well with Lois recently and he had been hoping that the present would improve things. But if Alex was
right…

‘Why don’t you call her?’ said Alex. ‘Just to check it’s what she’d really want.’

‘If I call her,’ said his father, ‘it won’t be a surprise.’

‘If it
is
a surprise,’ said Alex, ‘it’ll be a disaster. Honestly.’

Mr Howard said nothing for several seconds, then slowly took out his mobile and dialled his wife’s number. The conversation
he had was short, but left him in no doubt what he should do.

‘Right.’ He turned to Alex. ‘Let’s go and buy that engine hoist.’

Mrs Howard was delighted with her birthday present. It would mean, she pointed out, that she could get at the driveshaft housing
without all the trouble of taking her car down to the garage. She gave her husband a huge hug and an embarrass‐ingly soppy
kiss, then sat down and opened her cards and her other presents. Later, she ate the supper Dad had cooked, and the cake he
had bought and said at the end that it had been one of the nicest birthdays she could remember.

Mr Howard was pleased, you could see that, but Alex couldn’t help noticing that his father was
quieter than usual and, occasionally through the evening, he would look at his wife with a puzzled expression, as if there
was something about her that he simply didn’t understand. He had wanted to buy her a really expensive present, something that
would be useful as well as smart, something she really needed… and for some reason it was not what she wanted.

He wondered, sometimes, if he understood her at all.

Alex was puzzled as well. The two birthdays could not have been more different, he thought. If you’d seen how furious his
mother was the first time round and how his parents had shouted and yelled, you’d have thought they hated each other and were
heading for a divorce. And yet, when the same two people came together with a different birthday present, they had both been
happy and full of smiles and everything had been just like the old days. Why, he wondered, should what you got for your birthday
make so much difference?

Not that he was objecting. With Ctrl‐Z, he had managed to make things turn out right, and that was the best thing about having
his laptop, really.

That you could make
everything
turn out right.

A
lex was not the only one who appreciated the effects of Ctrl‐Z. Life for his friend Callum had not simply got better, it had
been transformed.

Callum had been accident‐prone for almost as long as he could remember and however hard he tried, he had never found a way
to stop it. A psychologist had once suggested that the accidents happened because he was always worrying that they might,
but as Callum pointed out, he only worried because the accidents
did
happen – and it was very hard not to worry if you walked through life knowing that disaster was always only a footstep away.

In the last few weeks, however, all that had changed. Since Alex had been given the laptop,
Callum had not had any accidents at all. None, at least, that he could remember, and for the first time in years the anxiety
that had once been his constant companion had eased. He no longer walked everywhere with the worry at the back of his mind
that something bad was about to happen because… well, because nothing bad
did
happen any more. And, apparently, if it ever did all he had to do was tell Alex and let him press a couple of keys on his
computer.

The relief was almost indescribable. The tight ball of tension that Callum normally felt in the pit of his stomach had begun
to unwind. The worry slipped away, and it was as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. There was a relaxed
ease in the way Callum walked these days, a calm in the face of any situation that he had never shown before and – and this
was the really odd thing – he
didn’t
have as many accidents now. In fact, fewer and fewer all the time.

When Alex had first got his laptop, he could expect to rescue his friend from some disaster at least once or twice a day but,
as the weeks passed, that number had steadily dwindled. Maybe the psychologist had been right and, now that he was less anxious,
Callum was no longer drawing the accidents into his life. Alex didn’t know, but he did know that his friend had changed.

Mr and Mrs Bannister had noticed it as well. ‘I hope you know how grateful we are,’ Callum’s mother told Alex one day as they
were sitting out in the garden. She pointed to Callum standing at the barbecue in an apron, calmly cooking sausages. ‘Look
at him!’ she said proudly. ‘He’s in charge of an open fire and we’re not worried at all! It’s like he’s a different boy!’
She beamed down at Alex. ‘And we all know why, don’t we!’

‘Do we?’ said Alex a little nervously. He had explained to Callum the importance of not saying anything to his parents about
Ctrl‐Z.

‘It’s you, isn’t it!’ Mrs Bannister placed an affectionate hand on his shoulder. ‘Callum’s told us how you’ve been helping
him. Talking to him. Teaching him how to stay out of trouble.’

‘Oh, that…’ said Alex.
‘And whatever you’ve said to him, it’s certainly worked.’ Mr Bannister had come over to join them. ‘We can’t believe how much
better he’s been the last few weeks. It’s a miracle.’

‘Oh good,’ said Alex.
‘And because of that,’ said Mrs Bannister, ‘we were wondering if perhaps you’d be able to come on holiday with us this summer.
Only it makes such a difference when you’re around, and we thought –’

‘We thought it’d be safer for all of us,’ Mr

Bannister took over, ‘if you came too. We’re renting a villa in France. With a swimming pool. If you’d like, I’ll have a word
with your parents.’

And Alex said he thought a villa in France with a swimming pool would be… very nice. Thank you!

The one thing Alex hadn’t been able to do with his computer was use it to make money. Godfather John had said that, if he
thought about it, he would find there were at least twenty‐seven ways to make himself rich with Ctrl‐Z – and Alex had thought
about it, but without coming up with
one
idea, let alone twenty‐seven. Not that it bothered him, really. At the moment, he was having too much fun.

One day he painted the sitting‐room sofa blue (to see what it looked like); on another he experimented with putting half a
dozen eggs in the microwave to see if they’d explode (they did); and on another he nailed a set of planks to the staircase
so that he could use it as a ski run. In fact he did all the things that a boy his age might want to do if he knew they wouldn’t
get into trouble for doing them.

So, when he found a box of fireworks in the back of the cupboard in the dining room that his father used as an office, there
was never any doubt about what Alex would do with them. He only
had to look at the box to see they were begging to be set off.

It was a Saturday, and Alex had just set the time on his computer and collected the box from its hiding place when Callum
appeared at the front door.

‘We’re going down to the park,’ he said, gesturing to the pavement where he had left Lilly in her wheelchair, holding Mojo
the dog on a lead. ‘Lilly wants to feed the ducks and says can you come too.’

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Alex, and showed his friend the fireworks. ‘Dad’s gone to a conference and Mum’s not back for
an hour, so we can let them off now. In the garden!’

‘If you let them off,’ said Callum, ‘won’t your dad notice they’ve gone?’

‘They won’t
be
gone, will they!’ Alex reminded him. ‘We fire them off, I press Ctrl‐Z and they’re back in the box in the cupboard!’

‘Yes…’ said Callum doubtfully. It was the same every time Alex suggested something like this. He would hesitate and wonder
if it was safe. And fireworks definitely
weren’t
safe. Everyone knew that.