Over the course of the afternoon I watched Ted pass from dazed disbelief to almost uncontrollable excitement. When the last bell finally rang, he dragged me, Kat and Kai to the corner of the park, to the little copse of trees where we made our dens.

‘Well, show them then!’

‘Show us what?’ asked Kat.

‘Yeah,’ said Kai. ‘Dude, you’ve been off-the-scale weird all day. And now you’ve got Ted at it too.’

Ted was grinning from ear to ear, like the cat who’d got the cream. And before I could say anything, he’d blurted out:

‘It’s true. He’s only gone and got an actual real live dragon!’

Kat and Kai stared from Ted to me and back again, obviously trying to suss out where the wind-up was heading. Then, figuring they should just play along, Kai called our bluff.

‘OK, then. Show us.’

So I did. I opened my pocket and let the twins peer in at the glowing red dragon nestled there. His warm, smoky smell floated up towards us. And this time there was no talk of me telling stories.

There was a moment’s stunned silence, and then –

‘THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING IN THE WORLD EVER!’ Kai shrieked.

‘The totally awesomest,’ agreed Kat in an awed whisper, her eyes not leaving Flicker for one second.

And they weren’t wrong. I stood there soaking up the glorious moment, the moment when for once I had the coolest pet in the world.

But Flicker didn’t seem that happy with all the attention.

He fluttered up to my shoulder, curled his tail around my ear and lay his head against my neck. I scratched him behind the horn, trying to turn the huge smug grin across my face into more of a look of cool casualness.

‘What else can he do? Does he breathe fire? What’s he eat? Is he going to get bigger? Where does he come from?’ asked Kat, unleashing a tumble of questions.

‘It’s more sparks than fire at the moment,’ I said, laughing, ‘and he eats leaves and vegetables.’

I didn’t want to admit that for the rest I was about as clueless as they were. They were looking at me like I was this expert dragon whisperer or something, and I didn’t want to spoil that.

It didn’t take Flicker long to get used to the others, and soon he was fluttering from hand to hand.

‘He’s so cute,’ said Kat, running her finger down his spiny back.

‘Do you think he understands stuff?’ said Ted. ‘I mean, could we train him, do you think?’

They tried calling him from one to another, and although once or twice Flicker flew onto the hand of the person that had called him, mostly he didn’t.

‘He’s still a baby,’ I said, feeling like I wanted to stick up for him.

‘Or as daft as Dexter,’ said Kai.

Dexter was their terrier. They’d had ideas of training him up to do cool circus tricks when he was a pup, but the most they ever got him to do was sit and stay and now he didn’t even often do that.

‘Can he come home with us?’ Kai said suddenly.

‘Er, no,’ I said.

‘Why not? You’ve had a turn. You’ve had him for ages.’

‘He’s not a toy!’ I said crossly. I made out that I was sticking up for his rights as a majestically free and independent animal, but actually I was overcome by a very deep feeling that I didn’t want anyone else having the coolest pet any of us had ever owned.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Kai. ‘I just meant we should share him.’

It was true that we did share most stuff. Toys, books, games, all got swapped from house to house. But Flicker was different.

‘He’s mine,’ I said quietly.

Kai scowled. It reminded me of how Lolli looked just before she lost it. Of course Kai was old enough not to go supersonic, but I could see he was pretty ticked off.

It was at this point that Ted had his brilliant – or not so brilliant – idea.

‘Hang on. Didn’t you say there were others that hatched out of those weird fruits?’

‘Yeah …’ I said, knowing exactly where this was heading.

‘Well, then we could all have one, couldn’t we?’