I have, according to the letter from my dad, one week to act on his instructions.
That’s a whole week to consider, very carefully, exactly why it’s a truly, epically bad idea.
So, next day I’m deep in thought all the way to school. I’m walking because Grandpa Byron’s off on some meditation retreat in Wales. I’m going over and over in my head the reasons why I can’t do what my dad wants me to do. In order, they are:
I decide I will think them through one by one, starting with the easiest one.
Number three is no biggie. I keep telling myself: what’s the worst that could happen? Yes, I’d get one heck of a telling off, but twelve-year-olds don’t get sent to jail and I could always pretend that I was suffering some sort of mental breakdown and that I wasn’t responsible for my actions, sent crazy by delayed grief for my dad, that sort of thing. Back in primary school, Hector Houghman stabbed Conrad Wiley in the thigh with a compass and he wasn’t punished at all because his mum came to school and said he had ADHD and that it was the school’s fault for not ‘adapting to his needs’, so I should be OK.
For a while I walk along practising how I’d behave if I had had a mental breakdown. I try to make my left eye twitch, which is really hard, but making my tongue loose is easier, and it hangs out of my mouth a bit, but some Year 10’s see me and start laughing so I stop. I think I’ll be fine.
I’ve reached the school gates and I feel better now that I can tick off one problem on my list, but the other two are battling for attention. Thankfully it’s PE first period and it’s cricket, which is just brilliant for thinking, especially if you always get given a distant fielding position.
So I’m as far away from the proper bat-and-ball action as I can be without looking like I’m actually skiving, in a position called Deep Mid-On, or Deep Mid-Off (I’ve no idea), and I’m on to reason number two – breaking into my old garage.
Unlike every other house on the street, our garage had old-fashioned double wooden doors rather than one of those tip-up metal doors, and the lock never used to work properly. You can get your fingers under the two doors and sort of joggle them till they ease apart. I did it once when I was locked out and Mum was late back and it was raining.
Anyway, there I am thinking I can almost tick that one off and feeling quite pleased, when I hear yelling.
“Al! Al, man! Chaudhury! Catch it!” A cricket ball is sailing towards me from out of the sky and a tiny wave of despair comes over me. I am truly hopeless at catching (and throwing, and batting for that matter; cricket’s not really my game). Without any confidence I cup my hands in the vague direction that the ball is heading and …
Plop! The ball lands exactly in my grasp. And doesn’t fall out again. There’s a wild cheer and over at the wicket Freddie Stayward is glaring at me as he tucks the bat under his arm and starts to walk. I decide that it’s a good omen, and even my throw back to the bowler is not as bad as usual.
It’s reason number one that’s really bothering me, though, and the question lingers with me all through double maths, through lunch, geography, French and history. How do I get to my old house in Culvercot?
Years ago, there used to be a train between Blyth and Culvercot, then it was replaced by a bus service, and then that stopped as well, so now you have to take two buses and change at Seaton Sluice and it takes forever. Besides, if I’m going to break in somewhere, it’ll have to be at night so that scuppers that idea.
I’d cycle, except my bike was stolen last year when I left it unlocked outside the house.
This is all, of course, ignoring the biggest objection of all: what if it goes wrong? The ‘time travel’ bit, that is. I mean, I trust my dad, but still … He’s basically asking me to go to our old house, which is ten miles away, commit a bit of breaking and entering, and then use an actual time machine to travel through time.
Great birthday present, Dad, I think.
But I have to, don’t I? If there’s a chance – even a small one – of preventing his death, of having him back again.
And I have to admit it: there’s a part of me (quite deep down, I think, because it’s not always there) that’s so excited it makes me feel a bit sick.