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finished up, ‘any time anything bad happens to you, you
     have to tell me about it, straight away. OK?’
    ‘Because you can go back and stop it happening?’ said Callum.

    ‘Right,’ said Alex. He sat down on the floor beside his friend. ‘Now, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen this afternoon…
     ’
    At the fête that afternoon, Alex was finally able to put the second of his ideas into practice. He began at a small table
     near the entrance where his form teacher, Miss Simpson, stood behind a large jar of Smarties. If you guessed how many Smarties
     there were, said the sign along the front, then you could win the whole jar.
    Alex consulted a piece of paper he had taken from his pocket. ‘It’s six thousand, three hundred and ninety‐four,’ he said.
    ‘You’re sure?’ asked Callum.
     ‘Positive,’ said Alex confidently. ‘I’ve done all this before, remember?’
    Alex had already seen the prize jar of Smarties being awarded and been careful to make a note of the winning number. He had
     written it down – then written down the location of the square in which the £20 note was buried in the Treasure Hunt, the
     combination on the padlock to the bottle of champagne, and all the numbers on the winning tickets in the Grand Draw.
    He didn’t have that piece of paper with him now, of course, because as soon as he had gone home and pressed Ctrl‐Z, he had
     gone back to
before he had written it. However, the last thing he had done before pressing the keys on his computer, had been to go over
     the numbers several times in his head, and the first thing he had done when he found himself back at nine o’clock in the morning
     was write them all down again before he forgot. They were listed on the piece of paper he now held in his hand.
    ‘Come on.’ Alex led Callum across the grass to the Treasure Hunt. ‘We’ll do the twenty‐pound note next.’
    After the Smarties, the Treasure Hunt and the champagne, Alex moved on to buying raffle tickets. He bought the winning numbers
     for a flat‐screen television, a hamper of groceries, the use of a cottage in Cornwall for a week in August, an oil painting
     of a sunset and seven other smaller items.
    ‘You’re going to win them all!’ said Callum excitedly. ‘You’re going to win everything!’
    ‘And that’s only the beginning,’ Alex agreed happily. ‘Next Saturday, I’m going to do the lottery.’
    ‘The lottery?’
    ‘Think about it,’ said Alex. ‘All I have to do is wait till they’ve announced the winning numbers, use Ctrl‐Z to go back to
     earlier in the day, then buy the ticket. I can’t lose!’

    For a moment, neither of them said anything as they considered what this meant.
    ‘The week after,’ said Alex, ‘I could give you the winning numbers, if you like.’
    Callum said he’d like that very much, but pointed out that you have to be over sixteen before you are allowed to buy a lottery
     ticket.
    They were still discussing the best way to get round this when the tannoy system announced that the prize‐giving was about
     to start.
    When Mr Eccles the head teacher said that Alex had won the jar of Smarties by guessing the exact number inside, there was
     a big cheer from the assembled parents and children as he went up to collect it.
    When it was revealed that he had also guessed the magic square in the Treasure Hunt, there was another round of applause and
     some laughter as he went up to collect the twenty‐pound note as well. There was rather less applause when he won the bottle
     of champagne and, as he went up to collect the hairdryer, the first of the prizes in the Grand Draw, most people were not
     clapping at all.
    That was when Alex realized he might have made a mistake.
    ‘They don’t like it, do they?’ said Callum, as Alex came back with the hairdryer. ‘When you win everything, I mean.’

    And he was right. By now there were hostile murmurings from several parts of the crowd. A girl from Alex’s class