The Day the Screens Went Blank Danny Wallace (best summer reads .TXT) 📖

certainly. Champagne, at a push. But petrol?’

‘Well… do you have the number for that taxi company?’ says Dad.

‘No taxi company in their right mind is going to drive you to Rendlesham,’ she says, like that is the craziest idea ever. ‘It’s at least two hours away.’

Dad sighs. The car is broken. We have no petrol. We can’t get a taxi. We’re stuck.

And then Ellie looks at Dad. Freshly cleaned but broken. Freshly shaved but helpless.

And she says, ‘Why don’t you just borrow my car?’

And Dad goes, ‘But you said you haven’t driven in years?’

And Ellie goes, ‘I said I hadn’t driven, not that I didn’t keep my car. Of course I kept my car!’

And Dad goes, ‘But why did you keep it?’

And Ellie says, ‘Because, darling, you don’t just get rid of a Rolls-Royce!’

This was the fanciest, sleekest, shiniest, most ridiculous and most purple car in the world.

It was so wide in the back you could slide around every time you turned a corner. I felt like we were all supposed to be wearing suits and caps or something. I felt like Meghan Markle or someone who’d won a competition on the radio.

This was the car that Ellie and her husband had driven, visiting their friends all over the country together. It obviously meant the world to her. Each week a member of her staff kept it ‘polished and ticking over’. I couldn’t believe she was lending it to us.

‘Yes, well, needs must,’ Ellie says, preparing to wave us off. ‘Better that your grandmother isn’t alone. Just make sure you return it!’

‘Thank you for letting us stay,’ I say, and she leans over to ruffle my hair. I don’t know why grown-ups do that, but I guess you have to let them.

And then Teddy does the most brilliant thing.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a present for Ellie.

‘What’s this?’ she says, taking it.

And she’s still staring at it as we drive away, polishing it on her cuff and holding this Royal Air Force badge close, and smiling.

‘Just like you would do, Stella,’ says Teddy, beaming at me.

And I squeeze his hand and tell him how proud I am to be his big sister.

‘Woooooooooo!’ yells Mum from the front seat. ‘Okay, let me drive now.’

‘Absolutely not,’ laughs Dad. ‘If this car gets so much as a scratch, we’ll have to sell our house to pay for it.’

‘Come on!’ says Mum. ‘We’ll get there so much faster with me behind the wheel!’

Dad laughs again. For a second I wonder what life was like for Mum and Dad when me and Teddy weren’t here. Were they always making jokes and messing about?

‘Dad, what did you play as a kid?’ I ask.

‘What do you mean, Stels?’ he says.

‘Did you play Ding Dong Ditch?’ I ask, thinking of Uncle Tony.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Because I was not born in 1903. No, we played… Street Fighter 2. And Sonic the Hedgehog.’

‘Sounds like you were on your screens a bit too much,’ I say. ‘Doesn’t sound healthy.’

‘We played football too. And sure, I guess we must have played Ding Dong Ditch.’

‘Ding Dong Ditch?’ says Mum. ‘That’s where you knock on people’s doors and run off before they answer them? We used to call that Knock Down Ginger. That’s naughty! I can’t imagine you doing that!’

‘Well, I did actually,’ says Dad. ‘And it was fun. I know it’s naughty, but gosh, the adrenaline! Am I right, Stels?’

He looks at me in the rear-view mirror.

‘Stella?’

I shrug at him.

‘Wait – you’ve never played Ding Dong Ditch?’

Dad has found a small street in a little village just off the main road.

I look over the field next to it and I can see the rise of the motorway. It’s completely empty. If we got on that road for just a few miles, we’d be able to cut out so much of the journey. A quick left after that and we’d be heading straight for Grandma’s house. But I guess rules are rules.

We are crouching behind the Rolls-Royce as Dad gives us his team talk.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘So again, what we’re about to do is naughty. But every kid needs to do it at least once in their life and I’m sad to say we have been failing you as parents if we have deprived you of this experience.’

‘Things get busy,’ I say, very understandingly.

‘Well, we’re not busy now,’ says Dad. ‘We’re going to do one each. I’ll take house number one. Stella, you take house number three. Mum and Teddy, you go for house number five.’

‘And what do we do?’ I ask because I like to get a real sense of the rules before I play a game. I read the rules of Scrabble five times before I committed to my first go.

‘We walk up, we knock on the door – and then we run off!’

I can’t believe Dad is about to do this. And, what’s more, I can’t believe he’s about to do this with me. He’d never have done something like this in Mousehole.

‘So, are we ready?’

We nod, and Mum has to put her hand over her mouth to stop laughing, and we each walk up the path of a different house.

Dad looks serious, and cracks his knuckles and wiggles his fingers, like this requires real skill and aptitude (word of the month in May).

I have started to tremble because this is not like me at all. This is the opposite of being a responsible member of society. I can’t seem to walk normally. My back is all stiff and I can’t remember how to bend my knees. But I am so excited.

Mum can’t stop giggling.

We each reach a separate door and raise the doorknockers before looking at each other, ready to slam them down and run.

But then a middle-aged man in a cardigan opens the door of the house Mum’s at.

‘Oh, HELLO!’ yells Mum, surprised,