I’d like to say it happened like this: we strolled down to the end of the garden, picked up a few dragons, strolled back and had a good night’s sleep in our luxurious tent. It didn’t though.

First of all, the face paint we’d been going to use for camouflage stripes had dried up. So we improvised with dirt … only Kai soon realised he’d accidentally used the horse manure Grandad keeps for his roses.

‘Well, it’s better than dragon poo,’ Ted snorted.

‘Yes, at least that doesn’t explode,’ I added.

We tried, and failed, to stifle our laughs.

‘It’s a good thing,’ said Kat, biting back a snigger. ‘Animals won’t smell your human whiffiness and run away, so it’ll help with sneaking up on the dragons.’

‘Go on then, you smear yourself with it,’ said Kai, who was getting grumpier by the second.

‘If you want to escape a T. rex you cover yourself in poo so it won’t eat you,’ added Kat in a fit of giggles. ‘So if a big mummy dragon turns up, you’ll be the safest one of us.’

I snorted so much at this point that the lemonade I’d been guzzling shot out my nose.

‘Shh,’ Kat suddenly hissed as the kitchen light flickered on.

Grandad appeared at the window and stared out at us. A second later he was at the back door. ‘Everything all right, Tomas?’ he asked. ‘No one having second thoughts? I want you all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow – I’ve been looking forward to having some extra hands in the garden.’

Poor Grandad! I’d been so busy looking after Flicker I’d hardly spent any time helping in the last few weeks.

‘We’re all fine thanks, Grandad,’ I said quickly. ‘Just, you know, having a stretch before bed.’ We all started stretching our arms up and running on the spot like we were in some manic exercise video.

Grandad looked at Kai’s poo-smeared face. For a second his eyebrows furrowed, but then he said, ‘Okey-dokey, sleep tight then.’

I smiled at him. But the heat from the lie was already burning my cheeks – I just hoped the mud was hiding it.

We’d all felt quite brave talking it through beforehand, but when we actually ventured down the garden, we kept a bit closer together than usual. And no one said much. We were all too busy listening.

Night-time noises are freaky. Things that you don’t notice in the day, like branches creaking in the breeze, suddenly make you twitchy. Every other tree cast a shadow that made it look like some terrifying monster was just about to jump out on us. So it wasn’t surprising that we all shrieked in terror when a cat in Grim’s garden made a high-pitched yowl as we passed.

When we got down to the end we were all a little jumpy to say the least. In fact, when a stray leaf drifted down onto Kai’s hair, he started karate-chopping the air in a mad panic, shouting, ‘Something’s on me, get it off, get it off!’

At which point we all leaped about as if we were being attacked – until we finally figured it out. At least laughing about the attack of the killer leaf made us relax a bit.

As we crept towards the dragon-fruit tree, we began to realise we were not alone.

Strange dark shapes flitted above us, careering about, darting over our heads and criss-crossing under the branches of trees. At first we thought they were bats. But when one of the winged creatures dived towards Kai, it soon became clear that they were dragons! A whole flock, herd, flight – I don’t know, what do you call a mass of baby dragons? – whatever you call it, we had one right there.

I looked around at the others. Kat had her hands plastered over her open mouth, trying to hold back the squeal that was threatening to escape. Kai was standing staring up into the trees, eyes wider than a wide-eyed lemur who’s just sat on a drawing pin. And Ted looked like the cat who’d not only got the cream but a huge bowl of sardine trifle too.

A few of the dragons were simply flying off up into the moonlit sky, but others had obviously decided to stop for a bite to eat. It was easy to see why Grim thought he was the victim of vandals. The dragons were not exactly bothered about the mess they were making. They had even finally found a way into his greenhouse and were happily demolishing the tiny new shoots. I knew exactly who’d be the ones getting the blame for that. Sparks fizzled in the night air as the little dragons darted from one plant to the next.

‘Quick,’ said Ted, waking up from his stupefied gazing. ‘Get the nets.’

We dashed around, fruitlessly trying to capture the flitting dragons in our fishing nets. But they were way too speedy for us. We staggered about the garden, tripping over brambles and landing in muddy heaps.

‘This is no good,’ cried Kat. ‘We’ll never catch them like this.’

She watched sadly as another dragon zipped over her head and flew up, up and away into the night.

Suddenly there was a THLUMP and we turned to see one of the fruits drop from the tree. A second later the red spiky skin began to bulge and then, just like with Flicker, the fruit burst open and out shot a little grey dragon with yellow spines. Before any of us could get to it, it had darted away.

We made our way over to the dragon-fruit tree and gathered round it, eyeing up each of the fruits still left hanging there. A handful of them were fat and red ripe. All we had to do was wait.