There's something you need to know about Pa. He is a scientist by training and by no means a technophobe, but for a long time he had an aversion to mobile phones. He did own one; a company he used to work for donated it to him. It was an old model and most people would have been embarrassed to use it in public. He only ever used it to send us text messages when he had to go away on business, or to make a short call home in the evening. The phone would sit in his home office, forgotten, for long periods. I would see it on the desk when I went into his office to get some paper to refill the printer. Pa's indifference to mobile phones was what made the other phone so odd.

I discovered it by accident. One day, I was bored and went into Pa's office to get the card reader so that I could transfer some data onto my computer. I was distracted by the other gadgets there – memory cards and sticks, wireless dongles and so on – and then I spotted a pile of CDs. I picked them up to see if there was any good music to listen to - Pa did have some good music occasionally – and that was when I saw it. It looked as though it had been hidden behind the pile of CDs. It was a black clamshell phone, quite stylish at the time and completely out of place. Intrigued, I opened it up and flicked idly through its features. It had to be Pa's, because of the "Don't panic" message on the screen - he had always been a great fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was just thinking that it was a really cool phone, when it beeped. A text message had arrived.

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