I’ve got the tiniest bit of power left in my phone, so I call Mum.

“The number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please check the number and try again.”

So I do, even though the number is in my phone memory as MUM MOB.

“The number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please check the number and try again.”

I’m about to give it another go when the phone dies. I get a sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach. This is not going the way I had hoped. Mind you, the way I had feared – not so long ago, when I was back in 1984 – was a lot, lot worse and basically involved me being dead or never even existing, so I’m kind of stuck between dread and hope and it’s not a nice feeling. Perhaps Mum’s changed her mobile. Perhaps the ‘network is down’, whatever that means. More likely there’s a fault on my phone caused by travelling through aeons of spacetime.

Grandpa Byron would put things right. He’s never let me down.

This is what I’m telling myself on the walk to Grandpa Byron’s house. But I’m not convincing myself, however hard I try. For in my heart, I know that something has gone very, very wrong.

You see, by rights – according to the Grandfather Paradox – I should not exist at all, because my father died in a tragic accident when he was twelve and could never have fathered me.

But here I am, so clearly that bit of time travel theory is rubbish. The thing is, I’m scared about what else might be happening.

As soon as I walk up Grandpa Byron’s front path, my fears increase. Where is his moped? Why is the front door painted a different colour? Where are the wind chimes tinkling by the side door?

I ring the doorbell anyway, but when a lady answers that I’ve never seen before, I just mutter, “Sorry, wrong house,” and quickly walk away.

It’s getting late and dark. I’m feeling weak with hunger, I’m thirsty, and almost dizzy through trying to piece together what’s happening.

Don’t get me wrong. I have worked out the basics, as – no doubt – have you. In case you haven’t, here’s a neat list. (Incidentally, a ‘neat list’ is just about the absolute opposite of how these thoughts are arranged in my head. Even ‘arranged’ is wrong. What’s happening in there is total chaos – thoughts and fears colliding and contradicting and the ‘what ifs’ forming a noisy queue, trying to cancel each other out. But anyway, here goes.)

1. When Pye drowned, a lot changed. (OK. A nice gentle start. Hang on for a bumpy ride.) So:
2. Pye didn’t grow up to meet Mum and become father to me. Which means:
3. He didn’t die four years ago, so:
4. Mum didn’t meet Steve and move in with him and me and Carly.

Yes, I’ve worked that out. But there’s a fifth thing that is nagging at my mind and that is:

5. Grandpa Byron didn’t then move from Culvercot to Blyth

And there’s a sixth thing as well, but I hardly dare allow myself to think it, or write it, but I’m going to have to, so here it is:

6. If Pye died when he was twelve (and he did, I was there) then he wasn’t alive to be on the beach with Grandpa Byron and the other Indians the day that Mum nearly drowned.

In other words – quite apart from the fact that I don’t understand what I’m doing here, in some weird spacetime bubble where I have no parents or home, and by rights should not even be alive – I may also be the more-or-less direct reason that my mum died some time in the mid-90s by being the more-or-less direct reason my dad died ten years before.

And this is why I’m wandering the street muttering to myself, blinking hard and trying to create some order out of the traffic jam of confusion in my head. Sitting down on a wall, I take off my backpack, and take out the box that holds Alan Shearer. Letting him run over my hands and up my arm always makes me smile, and I put him down next to a little puddle for him to take a drink. He then circles around a bit and licks his tiny hands. (I should say ‘paws’, really but if you look at a hamster’s paws they are just like hands, so that’s how I think of them with Alan Shearer.)

It’s the distraction offered by my hamster that clears my head. You know when sometimes in a traffic jam there’s a gap ahead and once you’re there everything speeds up and suddenly all the revving and honking is behind you? It’s like that.

Putting Alan Shearer back in his carry-box, I turn down the street that leads to the coast road and the buses to Culvercot, and I start running – partly because the bus is approaching and partly because I suddenly know where I need to go.