‘I wouldn’t,’ Ted said the next morning as I flopped on his bed.

My hand wavered in front of my mouth, the crumpet I’d just picked up from his desk half in and half out.

‘That one’s Sunny’s.’

‘You mean you’re giving your dragon first dibs over your best mate?’ I asked.

‘It’s not that,’ Ted said hastily. ‘I mean it’s one of Sunny’s specially prepared delicacies.’

I looked at the crumpet in my hand and the treacle dripping from it.

‘Looks OK to me,’ I said.

‘Sure, if you like slug slime on your teatime treat.’

The crumpet shot out of my hand as I hurled it across the room. I screwed up my face.

‘Sunny is a bit of a gourmet,’ Ted said. ‘The other day he brought me marmalade chocolate fingers. They were great. But sometimes his tastes can be a bit of a stretch – like these and the greenfly pancakes. He brings them like little offerings. So you have to be careful what you accept because you’ll hurt his feelings if you spit it out.’

I looked up at Sunny, who was watching me from the top of the wardrobe. I shrugged apologetically and tentatively picked up the slime-smothered crumpet, holding it out for him.

He swooped down and plucked it from my fingers.

‘He’s got quite a collection of slugs now,’ Ted went on. ‘I thought he was eating them, but he just seems to want their slime. Maybe it’s like honey for dragons.’

I gave a shudder and tried not to think about the slug farm developing up on the wardrobe. I had visions of them in hamster wheels, their juice dripping into tiny thimble-sized buckets.

‘So where’s your sunflower?’ I asked. ‘I left mine at home in the end. It’s sort of … well … it’s not what you might call thriving.’

The truth was, the sunflower I’d been growing for the school competition had been sadly neglected. I’d eventually found it this morning under my bed. It hadn’t even grown past the seedling stage. All it needed, Miss Logan had said, was some sun, some water and a little care. Well, it hadn’t got any of those since Flicker had arrived.

‘Mine’s struggling too,’ Ted said.

And he pointed to a blackened plant pot and the shrivelled remains of a sunflower head. ‘It got fire-belched.’

Outside the school gates we met up with Kat and Kai. Kai had a similar story with his sunflower. There had been an exploding poo incident on Dodger’s first day, and the flower had never recovered. Kat however had somehow managed to keep her sunflower safe. And it was enormous. Taller than their dad, who was tottering up the playground with it, the huge yellow flower head nodding above him.

‘It’s brilliant!’ I said. ‘You’re bound to win with this, Kat.’

She smiled and then leaped forward to stop her dad face-smashing the closed door he was about to walk into.

Everyone had been looking after their sunflowers for weeks. And today we were supposed to be planting them along the school wall. At the end of term whichever one had grown the tallest would win the prize. So far Kat’s was the biggest by a mile. Almost as big as the smile she couldn’t stop from spreading across her face.

It would be great to beat Liam at something for once. He always had to be the best at stuff or have the best thing. Even in show-and-tell he’d do the most extravagant yawn to make it clear that whatever was being shown couldn’t impress him. But if I thought Kat’s skyscraper of a sunflower was going to wipe the smug look off Liam’s face, sadly I was wrong. Because just as we were settling down on the carpet, Liam swaggered in. At first I thought he’d messed up. He was empty-handed and I couldn’t help hoping that like me he hadn’t even managed to grow a seedling let alone a flower.

But then I saw him looking past us out to the playground. Twenty-five heads turned in unison. And then twenty-one breaths were released in an awed ‘Whoa’ and everyone bundled to the window to stare out. Only the four of us stayed silent, eyes fixed on the colossal towering stalk, its leaves like dinner plates and its huge yellow sunflower head as big as a beach ball.

‘How?’ Kat whimpered.

Liam sauntered up next to her, smugness oozing from him like slug slime onto a crumpet. ‘Well, if you’ve got the know-how, you know how,’ he said. ‘Some of us just have it.’ He looked Kat up and down. ‘And some of us just don’t.’

Poor Kat’s eyes filled up and she pushed past him and hurried out of the classroom.

Ted and I glared at Liam, and then Kai, who probably should have known better, given that Miss Logan was hovering behind, shoved Liam. He stumbled back and knocked into the table. The yell he gave when his leg banged it was louder than anyone expected. Trust Liam to make it look ten times worse than it was.

‘Kai, that’s enough,’ Miss Logan said sharply.

Now you see why we call Liam ‘King of Trouble’. Although after what happened later that week we might have to change that to ‘Emperor of Trouble’.