Home. Perdita extremely pleased to be back in her cage.

Her face saying it all – she’s practically begging us to padlock the door and leave her in peace. For good.

Little Pin won’t unwrap himself now from Basti’s neck. It’s as if his hands have been stuck together with industrial-strength glue. None of his siblings are putting him to sleep tonight – there’s someone else in the mix now. The Hero Rescuer of the Universe.

‘Come on, sleepy head,’ Basti says softly, his old self now that we’re safely inside the comfort of his home, with the front door firmly shut on everything else.

The four of us tuck Pin into his bed. His uncle tenderly smoothes his curls, and keeps smoothing, until Pin’s finally asleep. Basti finally, delicately, slips his hand from Pin’s grip – our brother hasn’t let him go since he’s been back in his house.

‘Now, who’d like a banana?’ Basti whispers.

‘Pardon?’

‘There may well be several waiting downstairs in the kitchen, as we speak. Just for you lot.’

‘No!’

‘Possibly yes. A contact in Africa sent them in gratitude for rescuing the hippopotamus worms. They’re more valuable than gold at this moment – and it just so happens that we have only three of them.’

‘Race you!’ Scruff cries.

Cue four people thundering down the ladders as fast as they can.

Guess who wins?

Basti.

Of course.

He won’t have a bar of having one himself, despite us offering several times over. ‘Not interested. Off you go.’ Which we most certainly do. ‘There are oranges, too.’

And from that point onward the evening degenerates into the most ridiculous silliness – banana-peel hats on heads and orange quarters in mouths and competitions over who’s got the most outrageous face – Scruff wins every time, closely followed by Basti. Bert keeps on making orange party hats for every head. Finally, finally, our uncle calls it a night.

But wait, not yet; we mightn’t get this chance again for some time, it’s a sudden new lightness and we shouldn’t waste it. I can feel my notorious bluntness bubbling up. It’s meant to stay put but I can’t help it . . .

‘Why didn’t you ever see Dinda any more, Basti, after you got back from the war? If she was such a good friend.’

His face changes in an instant. Whoops.

‘Yeah,’ now Scruff’s onto it too, ‘how come?’

‘Please tell us,’ Bert adds, ever the romantic.

Our uncle sighs. And in that long, weary exhalation I get the feeling that this is one of the hardest questions he’s ever had to face. And now, perhaps, is the time he has to stop running from it.

‘Because I was broken, if you must know.’

He slips a banana peel from his head.

‘Just . . . stopped. If that is the word. By everything. And I was too . . . ashamed . . . for anyone to see me like that. Especially the girl next door. Who –’ He stops, can’t go on. I put a hand over his. ‘I’d changed, yes. Dinda was right. I was the golden child once, destined to conquer the world. Everyone thought that. My dear, dear parents, my wild older brother who’d already left for Australia, off on all his mad adventures –’ he smiles sadly at us ‘– the teachers at my school, the neighbours, Lord and Lady Holland who were like mentors to me.’ He pauses, struggling to go on. ‘I came back from the Western Front like a maimed dog. Confused, broken, lost. I couldn’t face any of them. An utterly different man, and utterly ashamed of it.’

‘Boy,’ I correct.

He looks up at me and frowns. ‘Yes, boy. You’re rather handy to have around, aren’t you, Kick? I’ve come to realise that.’

‘But Dinda was waiting for you, Basti, for years and years,’ Bert jumps in.

‘I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know. I just assumed Din would find someone else. Someone better, someone whole. Just assumed that she wouldn’t want the broken dog who’d changed so much; that it wouldn’t be fair on such a beautiful, strong, vivid girl. You see, I couldn’t bear for her to look at me anymore. Couldn’t bear for anyone to look at me. Even now. Couldn’t bear to go out and be stared at, to have them all whispering about what I used to be and how everything had changed so ridiculously. The legendary Sebastian Caddy. And then this.’ He looks up and shrugs with an utter ruin of a face. ‘I couldn’t bear to have children – any children – around me. Even now. I’m no role model. I didn’t want you to know about me. You didn’t need to. I begged my brother not to tell you.’

‘Why?’ We cry. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m ashamed. Of me. Of everything I’ve become.’

‘But you’re amazing!’ Scruff says.

Our uncle chuckles sadly in disbelief as he lifts the banana peel off his nephew’s head. ‘It was the Somme, Master Scruff. That’s what did it.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well, if you must know, there’d been a call for the last Christmas post the day before, and I’d missed the mailbag. As you do. But you see –’ he pauses, his eyes light up ‘– I’d found a candle. A beautiful French candle. It smelt of lavender. Imagine that, in the middle of a war zone. A villager must have dropped it in their hurry to escape the oncoming battle and I found it on the ground – too late – but I knew that if I sent it to a certain address in Campden Hill Square, even without a note, the young lady of the house would know exactly who it was from. You know who I’m talking about. The girl who’s been loving that candle tradition ever since she was a tot. I had to do it. And when I saw that French candle in the dirt I felt like a kid again. It would be our secret signal – and Dinda and I had always had our secret signals. Like that knocking Pin heard on the door, that very first night you were in the house. It was her. I recognised it, from our childhood. She was checking up on you, I think, wanting to find out what was going on.’

I nod, smile. Little Pin was right – he did hear something.

‘Now, where was I? The war, yes. I slipped away with my precious candle to the closest village, to find a post office. But on the way I passed these huge pits. They were being dug by some Tommies, which means our own men. The pits were so odd. Large and deep. I couldn’t work out what they were for because they were digging them behind us as we marched forward. I hadn’t been in the war for very long; had done my one foolhardy act of bravery, saving my mates, and that was about it. Then it suddenly dawned on me –’

‘What? What?’

‘Those pits being dug were for my own body. In anticipation. For the dead bodies of me and all my friends around me. What did the generals know that we didn’t?’

We’re silent, horrified.

‘I just ran. And ran. And ran.’

I squeeze Basti’s hand.

‘I still can’t explain why.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I heard shelling in the distance. Boom, boom. I just ran deep into the night, like a little boy in over his neck, not knowing what he’s doing really, just utterly spooked. It was horribly dark. Cloudy. No stars, no moon. Finally I found a barn. Couldn’t see clearly. Crept inside, feeling my way in the black. I was so tired, we hadn’t slept for days and days, the trenches were full of mud and lice and rats and overflowing toilets. I nestled into a corner of the lovely clean straw and just wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up. I found a spot next to a great knobbly wall and couldn’t make it out but I didn’t care, I was so exhausted. Then when I woke I could see exactly what it was that I’d camped up hard against . . .’

I hold him tight, dread what’s coming.

‘The bodies of men. British men. My men. Stacked to the ceiling, to the very top. And all their boots were facing me. That’s what I’d been sleeping against the entire night. My own men. And I was next.’

Without a word the three of us cuddle our uncle hard, squeeze him, the tightest we’ve ever cuddled anyone in our lives.

‘Yes, I was just a boy. I realised at that exact moment. And that this great wall before me was what this glorious and glamorous war was really, actually all about. Be careful what you wish for, eh?’

I press my wet cheek to his.

‘The next day, well, I posted that candle to Campden Hill Square. And that was the last Dinda ever heard from me. Then I walked back to the battlefield.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. I had to. For those mates who’d lain beside me all night. For me. But I was punished, of course. Desertion. Despite me heading back to the Front an example had to be made. As it does. And the punishment for that wretched term “desertion”, even when it wasn’t, was being strapped to the wheels of the gun carriage. For hours and hours. In the middle of the battlefield. I was barely fifteen.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘It . . . it broke me.’

He’s so quiet we can barely hear him now.

‘I never recovered. I couldn’t have my darling Dinda see me like that. She had to live on gloriously, find a beau, live her life. Not be chained . . . to me. It was just easier after that to . . . never go out. On the rare occasions I did I just scuttled away if I saw her. Avoided her, wouldn’t talk to her, couldn’t. I was so ashamed. Then gradually I just stopped stepping into the world. Charlie Boo was here for everything, he’d been here since I was a child and he was a huge help. I didn’t answer calls, didn’t respond to letters from anyone. Dinda. My brother in Australia. Old neighbours, friends. I can’t explain it, it was just easier that way. And eventually, after many years, one by one they all gave up. And now –’ he takes a deep breath ‘– here I am. And always will be. And here you are.’

Basti looks at us, bewildered.

‘Most . . . fulsomely. Yes.’

He smiles. There is a huge, crushed lifetime in that smile. And in the great balloon of sadness that follows I just know it’ll be too cruel to ever force our uncle into visiting his neighbour for a drink, as much as I’d like to; into collecting presents and lighting candles; into Christmas, into anything. Charlie Boo’s right. He’s broken, oh yes. And on this frazzled evening something is stirring in the Reptilarium, something like forgiving love. And with that, finally, comes understanding.

We shuffle off to bed. It’s time, for all of us; we’re exhausted.

‘One more thing,’ Bert says, at her door. ‘Did you write Dad’s letter?’

‘Pardon?’

‘His last letter, that the policeman gave to us. Telling us to come to the Reptilarium. On the yellow paper. It was in his handwriting.’

Basti looks like he has absolutely no idea what his niece is talking about. ‘Well, I do have yellow paper in my notepad, yes, but I’m not sure what you’re alluding to here, Albertina.’

It’s obvious he doesn’t, it’s in his face.

‘The letter we got,’ I say. ‘It told us we had to come to you immediately, because you’re our uncle. That you’d look after us. It said Dad had vanished, somewhere up north.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I received a letter from the War Office, as your father’s closest living relative . . .’

‘What?’ I rub my head.

‘Tomorrow, troops, tomorrow, we’re all so tired now . . .’ He waves us off in exhaustion, and shuffles away.

We look at each other. The War Office? Is that really what he said?

Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.