“What have you remembered?”said a breathless voice behind Malcolm. He turned round, to see Benny and Bjornita approaching.

“Oh, hi! Where have you been?”

“We’ve been with you all the time!” said Bjornita.

“Well, not with you,” said Benny. “Behind you. Quite a long way behind you.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Bjornita, haughtily, “we’ve always been operating as part of the group.”

“Anyway,” said Benny, “What have you remembered?”

“Where my family always head to first when they go to the zoo!” said Malcolm, turning round and trotting off as fast as his little legs would carry him, leaving the tortoises far behind again.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Bjornita. “I’m off to the reptile house. To see my giant great-aunt.”

It wasn’t that difficult to find what Malcolm was looking for. He again had to follow signs, but this time the signs had pictures on them to help. The Elephant House arrow had a cartoon elephant on the end of it, the Lion and Tiger Area arrow was decorated with, well, lions and tigers, and the one Malcolm was looking for had, on the end of its arrow, a dancing, crazy, smiling monkey.

He followed the way set out by three of those arrows and ended up in front of the Monkey House. The cage he was looking at was huge and contained nearly twenty chimpanzees, rolling around and scratching each other and staring into space. It made Malcolm uncertain, watching them. Something about the monkeys⁴⁰ was making him feel uncomfortable. But he couldn’t quite place it.

Never mind, thought Malcolm. What about my family?

He looked away from the cage. It was still early but there were already people in the zoo. A few of them had noticed him as he’d been walking around – he’d heard one grown-up say, “I guess it must be some kind of new initiative, letting some of the animals just roam about” – but so far he hadn’t seen anyone he recognised.

Malcolm went to sit on a grassy area just behind the concrete path in front of the chimpanzee enclosure. He had a good view of the chimps from here and could see any families approaching them.

He settled down on a small muddy patch. Hmm, he thought, mud. How nice.

And even though he was meant to be keeping a sharp eye out for his family, he soon found himself rolling upside down in the mud, rubbing his head and ears into it, and closing his eyes. It had after all been a long night, travelling all the way there on the back of a big white horse. He’d had no sleep. So it was nice, just for a moment, to let himself sink into this little bit of mud. It was amazing, actually, just how comfy mud was. It was like halfway between a bath and a very soft bed. If you didn’t worry about it being dirty – and strangely, Malcolm, as a pig, really didn’t – it was just very, very relaxing.

So relaxing, in fact, that Malcolm soon found himself drifting off to sleep, thinking, as he did so, that maybe Fatty Bum-Bum was a really nice name after all.