By home-time that day, the story had taken on a life of its own. The imaginary unruly pigeon that had started the whole thing had been transformed into an irate ostrich. An ostrich that had escaped from a local farm and tried to trample Mrs Fear in the corridor as it made its escape from Mr Woddle. He, in turn, had been trying to lasso it with a fire hose. And Mrs Battenberg’s lone bat had become a whole colony of blood-seeking vampire bats that had threatened to attack the whole dinner hall. You know, we probably could have got away with telling the truth and no one would have batted an eyelid in our school. Even so, we didn’t think we’d risk it.

One thing was clear, if we wanted to keep the dragons, we really needed to find a way to teach them some basic commands. You know like: stop, stay, don’t demolish the fish pie – that kind of thing. We spent the rest of that afternoon at Kat and Kai’s, trying to come up with ideas.

Because I’d been the one who’d first found the dragon fruit and Flicker, I think everyone expected me to know what to do. But honestly, I was as clueless as the rest of them. Flicker had always come to me and followed me of his own accord, not because I’d trained him to do it.

I was very aware that I was not fulfilling my role as Grand High DragonMaster. Which meant I needed to up my game and figure this out.

When you have a dragon, you have to expect the unexpected. So, when Kat and Kai’s mum dropped me off home that day, I wasn’t as surprised as you might think to find what greeted me when I opened the door.

First off, there was my dad with his head in the downstairs toilet. Then my mum with two ferrets cradled in her arms and a cockatoo clinging to her hair. And finally my little sister, Lolli, shrieking with laughter and running in circles dressed in a pair of gardening gloves and a tutu. A very muddy tutu.

‘They’re just here for a few nights so I can keep an eye on them,’ Mum said as the cockatoo launched itself from her head. ‘But I’m afraid these two might have had a disagreement with your dressing gown. Sorry about that, love. Bit of a troublemaker, this one.’ And she stroked the silky fur of the snowy-white ferret who eyed me as beadily as Liam.

Being a vet, Mum often brought animals home ‘to keep an eye on’. Sometimes they even stayed for months, if they were strays and she had trouble finding them a home.

‘It’s OK, Mum,’ I said.

The truth was, the furry duo had done me a favour. It was Flicker who had destroyed my dressing gown with his treading claws, and I’d been trying to keep it out of sight ever since. I would have pointed the finger at Tomtom – he was getting the blame for a fair bit of dragon damage – but lately our cat had been keeping a very low profile. Probably wise under the circumstances.

‘Thanks, love. Oh, by the way, don’t use the loo.’

I turned and saw Dad, a plunger in his hand, ready to reach down into the stinky depths.

‘At least not till Dad’s finished fishing,’ Mum added.

As usual Dad was plugged into his headphones with the music turned up so loud you could have sung along to it halfway down the garden. He was nodding to the beat so manically I was afraid he would actually lose his head down the toilet as well as the plunger.

‘It’s blocked,’ Mum went on. ‘Flooded everywhere.’ She made a face and I realised that, having kicked off my trainers, my socks were now squelching on the carpet. I hastily jumped onto the first step of the stairs.

I thought of all the dragon poo I had put down the toilet in the last few weeks. As you know, dragon poo is explosive, but only if it dries out. So I’d figured the best thing to do was get to it quick and stick it down the loo. That way it couldn’t detonate. But I always flushed, so surely it couldn’t be that, could it? Then again, I had also hidden a few bits of dragon-destroyed evidence down there. You know the kind of thing: burnt socks, chewed letters, the odd bit of scorched homework.

I gulped. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the poo if it started blocking the drains.

Just then Dad shouted, ‘Eureka!’ and started waving a bedraggled sock puppet in the air. Its googly eyes were spinning wildly and its wonky grin was even more wonky now. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was Lolli’s. It looked as if I wasn’t the only one hiding things down the loo.

I could feel Flicker starting to wriggle in my rucksack, so before I could get roped into ferret-watching or toilet-plunging I hurried away upstairs to my room. Except Lolli saw the rucksack moving and immediately followed me, calling, ‘Mewannaflicka!’ all the way up.

Lolli was the only other person in the family Flicker had allowed to see him. And she was besotted with the little dragon. And who could blame her really? A real live pocket-sized dragon living right there in your house!

Flicker was great with her too. He flickered sparkly gold whenever he saw her. And he didn’t even mind when she tried to feed him with her doll’s fake milk bottle or bounced around my room with him stuffed into her jumper like a mummy kangaroo. Sometimes I found him blowing warm breaths on her toes as she drifted off to sleep. And then she’d have an even bigger grin than usual on her always sticky face.

‘Mewannaflicka,’ she giggled as she came in after me.

‘Just a second,’ I said, lifting Flicker out and settling him on my bed. ‘Give him a chance. He’s been cooped up in there – he probably needs a fly.’

Sure enough Flicker soared up into the air and started whizzing back and forth. Lolli jumped around madly flapping her arms, trying to take off after him. She chased him, squealing with delight when he sent out little smoke rings for her to bat away.

I didn’t want Mum hearing the noise. Lolli might be small but she has the footfall of a baby rhino, so in an attempt to calm her down I grabbed a book and waved it at her.

‘Story, Lollibob Bobalob?’ I said, using her full nickname to be sure to get her attention. ‘Your favourite.’

She flapped over and flopped onto my lap, leaning back on me like I was a chair. Her thumb went in to her mouth as Flicker in turn settled on her legs. By the end of the story my bum was completely numb, but at least everyone was calm and I’d been in the house a whole half an hour with no mess to clear up. Which was definitely a result.

Sadly the lack of mess didn’t last. When we headed down to find some snacks for us, and some broccoli for Flicker, Lolli took my hand and pulled me into the lounge first. From the lack of parental shrieking, I could only think that the ferrets and the toilet had kept Mum and Dad too busy to notice what Lolli had done in there. Because what she had done was make a monumental mess.

I understood now why her tutu was quite so dirty. In the middle of the carpet was a huge mound of mud. Wet, mucky footprints led in and out of the patio doors to the garden. Several upturned plant pots littered the floor and Lolli’s pirate bucket and spade were lying on the sofa, leaving soil smeared across the cushions.

‘What have you done, Lolli?’ I hissed. Lolli and I have this unspoken pact that we stick together. And I owed her big time for keeping Flicker secret and saving the day in Grandad’s garden, back when cabbages were flying and Grim was about to launch another attack. But even I didn’t know how I was going to talk us out of this one.

‘Mewannadagon,’ she said with a smile.

My eyes fell on the mound. There was something sticking out of the top. I leaned forward and pulled it out. It was a pineapple. Now a very dirty pineapple. And suddenly I knew exactly what Lolli had been trying to do. She must have decided a pineapple would be the next best thing to a dragon fruit. And she had planted it, hoping to grow a dragon tree of her own.

‘Oh, Lolli,’ I said. ‘I think –’

But what I thought was cut short by the rather loud scream coming from my cockatoo-hatted mum.