The Person Controller. David Baddiel

he was about to do. He was standing by the Christmas tree holding a plugboard. But …

      “Don’t you dare, Derek White!!” said Janine. “I’ll have you reported to the RSPCA!!!”

      “Look, Janine,” Derek replied, “I always put my Christmas lights on at 7.15 on October the 22nd. It’s 7.13 now. If your cat hasn’t come down in two minutes, I’m afraid I can’t answer for the consequences …”

      “MARGARET!! MARGARET!!” shouted Janine.

      “Yes, come on now, Mrs Scratcher,” said Eric more quietly and only after he’d swallowed the last bit of his sandwich.

      “Meoooowwwwwww …”

      Fred and Ellie looked up, following the sound with their eyes. A ball of white fluff was perched on top of the Christmas tree, holding on with the tips of its paws to a big silver star: a silver star which was wired up with many, many tiny lights around its five points.

      “Will she be OK up there?” said Fred.

      “I’m not sure,” said Ellie.

      “Oh please, Lord … I promise this Christmas that I’ll do anything you want … if you only rescue Margaret Scratcher from this terrible fate …”

      They looked round. Janine was indeed, as these words suggested, praying: something neither Fred nor Ellie had ever heard her do before, not even at Christmas. She had her eyes closed and was facing away from the tree, possibly because that was in the general direction of the nearest church, about two miles away.

      “… I promise not to watch so much daytime TV … promise not to have a go at Eric so much … promise to make sure the kids don’t have to eat his bacon sandwiches …”

      “Fred,” said Ellie. “Prepare yourself.”

      “What …?” said Fred. Then he realised that Ellie was still carrying the Controller. And he was still wearing the bracelet.

      He didn’t know what she was going to do. But, whatever it was, he didn’t have a good feeling about it.

      

      “… I promise that I’ll look after the kids better and make sure they don’t come to any harm …” Janine was saying when she suddenly stopped praying. She stopped praying because she stopped talking. She stopped talking because she was staring, mouth open, at the tree. Which her son was presently climbing up.

      Well, climbing isn’t exactly correct. He was going up it quickly, but he wasn’t clambering: he was leaping two-footed from branch to branch. He wasn’t even grabbing the higher branches with his hands. He was bounding – springing – from branch to branch, jumping two-footed off one and landing two-footed on the next one up.

      “Blimey,” said Eric.

      “Isn’t that dangerous?” said Kirsty White.

      “I think it is,” said Derek White. “What’s more, I want to turn my Christmas lights on very soon and this is just distracting from the whole event. Could you control your cat – and son – please?!”

      “Ellie,” said Janine, ignoring him. “How long has Fred been able to do … that?”

      But Ellie didn’t answer. To Janine’s surprise, her daughter was just playing with that new video-game controller that had arrived today. Frantically playing with it, like there was a screen in front of her, which there wasn’t. Obviously. Because they were outside next-door’s front garden. Janine made a note to herself to have a word with Ellie at some point about this video-game obsession – she hadn’t realised it had got to the point where Ellie was pretending to play them.

      But Janine didn’t think about that for very long because Fred was moving so fast he had nearly got to the top of the tree.

      Ellie, meanwhile, was concentrating very hard. It was one thing to control her brother’s movements in the playroom, to make him jump up and down on to the window. It was quite another to make him leap all the way up a six-metre-high tree.

      But Ellie was, as we know, very, very good at video games. So, even though Fred was quite frightened, every time he jumped and landed on a new branch, he (and she) got a little more confident about what they were doing. In fact, he started to really enjoy it.

      “Wheee!” he said. “Wheheyheey!”

      “Is he saying … wheee! and wheheyheey!?” said Derek.

      “Yes,” said Eric, dumbfounded.

      “Eric,” said Janine. “We should tell him to come down …”

      “Yes,” said Eric. “Fred! Come down!”

      “After he’s got the cat, Eric!!” she said.

      “Oh,” said Eric.

      Someone who was even more confused about what was happening than the grown-ups was Margaret Scratcher. That confusion was, in fact, quite useful because it meant that Margaret just stayed stock-still, watching in amazement as Fred came closer and closer.

      Finally, Fred neared the top of the tree. He reached out a hand towards the cat.

      “Hello, Margaret …” he whispered. “Come on, Margaret. Come down with me. Come to me.”

      Margaret Scratcher stared at him with big cat eyes. Then she turned away, in order to have a very important and absolutely-necessary-at-this-point-in-time side wash. Lick! Lick! Lick! she went. Fred reached out his other hand and Margaret Scratcher suddenly stopped her wash, hissed and jumped off the tree, towards the living room. She landed on one of Santa’s reindeer – Rudolf – and then from there, with a single leap, she moved to the Whites’ roof.

      “MARGARET!” shouted Janine.

      “Oh dearie me,” said Eric.

      “One minute,” said Derek. “You’ve got one minute before these lights go on …”

      “But it’s our son up there now!!!” said Eric.

      “Rules is rules,” said Derek.

      Fred looked down at Ellie. Ellie had her hand on the Controller, one finger poised over the buttons. She nodded at him and mouthed the words: Go for it – I’ll make sure you don’t fall.

      So Fred – because the twins, as we know, were able to lip-read each other at some distance – nodded back. He crouched down. And Ellie’s fingers flew.