We must wait until Charlie Boo’s left for the day because he’s far too efficient for his own good.

Then it’s quietly, quickly, to the carved door. I open it a sliver. Basti’s not there. No idea where he is. The house is quiet. He may be watching, may know exactly what we’re doing – but he may not. We’ll have to risk it. Pin’s on door watch, the rest of us scatter inside. Looking frantically under couches, flipping through books, throwing open drawers, ruffling through papers; looking for anything related to Dad.

‘He’s coming!’ Pin says. ‘Up the ladder, from the entrance hall.’

Quick, quick. Nowhere to hide, not four of us. We’ll have to go outside, gather around a cage, pretend we’re absorbed in its inhabitant. Just as we’re going I spy a notebook under an address book. Yellow paper.

My heart thuds.

The yellow paper.

That Dad’s last letter was written on.

The notebook’s empty but I rip off the top pages and stuff them down my shirt. They’ll have to be examined. We’re on to something. I can feel it, taste it.

Dad’s getting closer . . .

‘Quick, quick,’ Bert urges.

Just in time to gather around the cage of an ambilobe panther chameleon.

‘Good grief, Kick, why are you panting?’ Basti exclaims.

I clutch my chest, laugh. ‘I’m just so overwhelmed, Uncle Basti. At everything. It’s all so lovely, amazing. And family. So overwhelmed I think I need a rest . . . in the library.’

‘Why, I’ll come too. I haven’t seen you all day. I need to know what you desert creatures have been up to. A full report, no less.’

Pin goes to joyfully blurt out everything; Scruff scoops him up and whizzes him around into silence.

‘The library!’ I laugh, my hands crossed at my shoulders.

The yellow pages burning a hole in my chest.

‘Who exactly am I? Gosh, what a question. And you’re all awfully full of them this afternoon, aren’t you?’ Basti’s lying with legs in the air, balancing a fire-belly newt on his feet. ‘What peculiar things you ask, you lot. I’m not entirely convinced, you know, that children are raised to be proper children in that desert of yours.’

‘Maybe they’re more like kids over there than they’re ever allowed to be here.’ Scruff’s in full-on teasing mode, on the floor, copying exactly his uncle’s position. ‘Do you know how to hunt with spears, and climb water towers with bare feet, and dive to the bottom of billabongs and shoot jumping roos at fifty feet?’

‘I’m sure I could try,’ Basti says witheringly, sitting up and deftly catching the newt in his hands. ‘Now, what was the question? Who am I, yes.’ He raises an eyebrow at his nephew. ‘Young man, my full name is Sebastian Octavio Rollo Caddy, if you must know. And precisely who I am, I fear, is now dictated by the four new specimens who have suddenly appeared in my life. Childus Australis Desertus indeed. Whom I did not invite to share my world but who are here nonetheless. Most fulsomely.’

He stands.

‘One is a chocoholic, just like yours truly. One, I am convinced, is going to take over my business one day and travel to the rivers of China as well as the jungles of the Amazon because she has it in her blood. One of them will be a world-famous fashion designer because she has quite a spectacular way with clothes, yes indeed.’ He stares admiringly at Bert’s outfit of the day (which consists mainly of the feathery horse’s plumes from a funeral procession). ‘And one of them, when he’s not disappearing and giving the lot of us heart attacks, just wants to cling to my knees for the rest of his life. Most contradictory and changeable, oh yes. Here, there, all over the place, quite a Caddy trait.’ He sighs, staring down at you know who. ‘And yes, he’ll be clinging forever, I can feel it in my bones.’

The newt is placed on his hat. ‘An amalgamation of the lot of you, I do believe, at this point. That is how you could describe who I am. Quite swampingly, it seems, right now.’

‘But why are we here?’ I ask in anguish. ‘Who sent us?’

‘It was your father’s wish. I’m sure. Wasn’t it?’

I’m silent. Need time alone, to think, need to examine those yellow pages.

‘Did you love him?’

A pause, as if Basti’s thinking very, very carefully about what to say next. ‘As much as anyone can love a brother, Kick.’

‘What was your favourite thing about him?’ If he doesn’t know who our dad was, this will snare him.

‘His tall tales, if you must know. His mad, crazy, unbelievable stories that never stopped.’

I’m quiet. It was my favourite thing too. Wrestling anacondas in the Amazon, scaling the Sydney Harbour Bridge, helping pandas to give birth on the slopes of Tibet.

‘I’m sorry if I haven’t been quite what you expected, Kick,’ Basti adds softly. ‘I don’t believe any of us were prepared for this.’

Everyone’s silent. Pin cuddles Basti furiously. Our uncle bends down and picks him up, literally prises him off his leg. ‘You know, sometimes in my darkest moments I’ve wondered if it might be rather interesting to have people around me – family, neighbours, something, anything. I don’t know. But you see, it’s so overwhelming . . . the change. From what I’m used to. Too much. It’s been so long since I’ve embraced the world.’ He looks at us as if he’s only just noticed us. ‘Temporary, this, isn’t it? Yes, yes.’

A blanket of sadness falls over the room. Pin clings tighter still.

‘Now hurry off and play . . . or whatever it is children do these days. I’m expecting a shipment of extremely rare hippopotamus worms and there’s much to be done. They need absolute quiet while they settle. They’re quite my favourite animals in the world.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of where they live.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Inside the eyelids of hippopotami. And guess what they feed on?’

‘What?

‘Their tears.’ Basti smiles in wonder. ‘Can you believe it? How beautiful the world can be. Now run along, quick, there’s so little time and so much to be done.’

‘But – but it’s almost Christmas!’ Scruff wails, can’t contain himself any longer.

The air is jangly with shock. The unmentionable . . . mentioned.

It’s too much for Pin; his favourite thing, of course, is thrillingly unmentionable words. ‘Christmas! Christmas!’ he chants gleefully. Yep, he’s off.

‘Really? So soon?’ Basti murmurs vaguely, looking at his watch. ‘Good grief. Well, the sooner it’s gone the better. Dreadful time of year. Wouldn’t know where to begin. And it’s so difficult to get fresh mice . . . must start making contingency plans . . . good riddance to it.’ He shuffles off, oblivious, tapping his hat to remind himself.

Pin is suddenly – extremely – still. In shock. Can’t even bring himself to say the thrillingly forbidden word any more. Scruff just stares after Basti, speechless. Because he now knows, with absolute certainty, that the closest we’ll be getting to Christmas is . . . an extra supply of mice.

I pull the yellow pages from my shirt and hold them high. We need some distraction here, some forgetting. ‘Quick, come on. The Lumen Room!’

‘Why?’ Bert asks.

‘We need their light.’