Janine squinted at the package. Then, as if it might help, she extended the arm holding Margaret Scratcher towards it, as if she – Margaret – might be able to spot something she – Janine – could not. “No. That’s odd. There’s no other writing on it.”
“Anyway, Mum, can I have it?”
Janine looked uncertain, but suddenly Margaret Scratcher made her move.
Janine Stone was always, day and night, holding Margaret Scratcher. Ellie and Fred would sometimes wonder how the cat ever went for a wee or a poo, since, apart from when feeding, their mother always seemed to have her lying across her left arm. What wasn’t clear was how Margaret felt about it. Well. It was sometimes clear. Sometimes, Margaret would clearly think, What am I doing constantly hanging about on this woman’s arm? and make a bolt for it. Up Janine’s arm and round the back of her head.
But Fred and Ellie’s mum was not one to give up easily. She would grab Margaret and hold her at arm’s length while her paws wheeled about like a furry electric fan with claws, until finally the cat calmed down, gave up and went back to sleeping on her arm.
This is exactly what had just happened. There was a lot of yowling and Janine shouting: “Margaret! Margaret! Margaret! Margaret!” – higher and higher each time – and then she dropped the package.
It was Fred who caught it, but Ellie who said: “Great! Let’s go to the playroom!”
The playroom in the Stones’ house was about as much of a playroom as the computer room at the school was a computer room. It was basically the spare room. It had a bed in it that Fred and Ellie’s grandparents used when they came to stay, a threadbare carpet and a basket for Margaret Scratcher to sleep in.fn1
But the playroom did also have a TV screen on the wall, and so had become the room in which Fred and Ellie played video games, normally sitting on the floor, or sometimes – when it hadn’t just been slept in by their grandparents and could be a little … musty – on the bed.
As soon as they got in there, Ellie tore at the package, ripping it to pieces.
“It can’t be, can it? I mean … it just can’t!” she was saying.
“No, it can’t,” said Fred. “It’s not possible.”
But it was. Ellie reached into the box and took out … the Controller. The black one with the blue lines and the buttons like jewels. Exactly the one that they had seen on the computer only half an hour earlier.
“I don’t understand it,” said Ellie. ”How can it have got here so quickly …?”
“I don’t know,” said Fred.
Ellie turned the Controller over, looking for clues. But on the back there was no company name, no writing: just a shiny metal plate underneath which, she assumed, were the batteries. A very shiny metal plate: she could see her face in it. This distracted her for a minute. Ellie never really thought about her appearance most of the time. She just looked how she looked.
But, since Isla had said that thing about girls with glasses, Ellie had started wondering about it. If maybe she should try to look a bit different. If, maybe, the glasses and the braces and stuff – the whole looking just like her brother thing – if maybe it was a bit—
“But … how does it feel? In your hands?” said Fred, breaking her train of thought.
Ellie held the Controller and moved it slowly up and down in her hands, as if weighing it. She flicked her thumb on to the control stick, rolling it around. Her fingers roamed searchingly over the front buttons.
She looked up at her brother. She was smiling. She may even, although Fred wasn’t sure, have had the beginnings of a tear in her eye.
“Perfect. It feels perfect.”
Fred smiled back, pleased that his sister was pleased.
“Is that how it comes?” he said. “Just straight out of the package? No instructions?”
Ellie looked back in the box. She scrunched around some paper.
“No. Just … this …” she said. She took out a black bracelet, also with a blue glowing line around it. There was a label attached to it, which read:
“What does that mean?” said Fred.
“I don’t know,” said Ellie.
“Well, you’re the video-game expert,” he said.
Ellie shrugged and put the bracelet on. It fitted well on her wrist. But, when she picked up the Controller again, it knocked against it, disturbing her sense of perfection.
She tried flicking it further down her arm, but every time she put her hands back on to the Controller the bracelet slid down and got in the way.
“Aargh!” she said, handing it to her brother. “Can you hold this, till we find out how it works?”
“OK,” said Fred, sliding the bracelet round his wrist. He quite liked the look of it. It made him feel like a pop star. Perhaps I should get another one, he thought, to wear on the other wrist. With spikes …
Meanwhile, Ellie was trying to make the Controller work. She switched on the console. The TV screen came on, with all the graphics on it.
But the graphics didn’t seem to know that the Controller was in the room. She pressed the main button on it, the one with a picture that looked like someone dancing; she pressed all the other buttons, the ones that looked like jewels; she even shook it, like a maraca. Nothing. Both the console and the screen seemed unable to pick up the Controller.
“What are you meant to do?!” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Fred.
“Are you meant to charge it up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you meant to set it up with a computer?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you even switch it on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Urrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!” said Ellie. And lifted the Controller up in the air, with both hands, as if she was going to smash it down hard on the floor of the playroom. Fred, who hated the thought of anything breaking – and who was still, as he always had been as a toddler, a little scared of loud noises – held up his hands to stop her.
And it was then that the Controller – and Fred’s bracelet – lit up.
“Uh-oh,” said Ellie.
“Oh-uh,” said Fred.
Her hands were in the air. So were his. The Controller and the bracelet were close to each other. Something about this closeness must have had an effect because the blue lines on the Controller were suddenly pulsing. As was the blue light on the bracelet.
“That’s … good … isn’t it?” said Ellie, bringing the Controller back down again.
“Yes,” said Fred. “I think so.”
Ellie pointed the Controller at the screen.