By the time we’d cleared up the mess we looked like a family of mud monsters. The bucket of water Lolli had helpfully poured over the pile of mud to make things clean again hadn’t been a great success. Little rivers of mud streamed across the floor, spreading the mess even further. Dad had stepped in to take control, but actually stepped on Lolli’s spade, slipped and fell face down into the muddy mound, splattering us all. Even the ferret wasn’t looking quite so snowy.

When the doorbell rang we all looked at each other, wondering who was in the best state to answer the door.

‘If it’s Mrs Snoop from Number Ten I’d rather no one answered it,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll have a field day seeing the state of us. She already thinks I’m a bit odd after she came round and saw Eunice and Terence.’

Eunice and Terence were the pythons Mum had looked after last year. I imagine most people would be a bit startled if you answered the door with those draped around your neck.

‘You go, Tomas. You’re a boy. She’ll expect it from you.’

I was going to protest – she was usually the last person to believe girls couldn’t get into just as much mess as boys. And, after all, Lolli was twice as muddy as any of us, which just went to prove it. But I could see she’d reached the end of her usually quite long tether so I let it go.

I squelched my way down the hall and peered through the letter box. And grinned at the carrot waving to me from the other side.

‘It’s OK,’ I yelled to the waiting mud monsters. ‘It’s just Grandad.’

‘Just Grandad, is it, Chipstick?’ Grandad said as I opened the door to let him in. ‘Just Grandad? Well, there’s a welcome for you, I must say. And there was I thinking you were my number-one grandson.’

I was actually his only grandson.

I laughed and cleared my throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.’ I paused and did a drum roll on my leg. ‘It’s only the one … the only … the INCREDIBLE … Grandad.’

‘That’s a bit better.’ He laughed. ‘Still needs some work, mind you.’

He turned to brace himself for the hurtling mud missile that was Lolli.

‘Bit young to worry about mud packs, aren’t you, littl’un?’

He lifted her up, not seeming to mind the mud she was getting all down his jacket.

‘Megroodagon,’ she babbled.

He gave her a grin and winked at me.

‘Well, that sounds just great.’

Luckily for me – and Flicker – no one really bothered to listen to what Lolli actually said. They usually just smiled and nodded.

We all crowded round the kitchen table to see what Grandad had brought. Most days he turned up with a fruit or veg box of some kind, and right now it was strawberry season. My favourite. I’d eaten so many of them one year I’d come out in a rash. No one had cottoned on to why and I got to stay off school, eating more strawberries to make me feel better. Best result ever!

As Grandad unloaded the berries, Lolli grabbed a handful and squished them into her mouth. Sweet red juice mingled with the mud and dribbled down her chin.

He’d also brought the latest of his VIPs – Vegetable Impersonator Produce.

He held up the carrot I’d seen through the letter box. It wasn’t like the carrots you see in supermarkets. All neatly packed in a cellophane bag, all the same size, all the same shape. Grandad’s carrots – and all his veg – were like us, covered in mud. And really strange shapes. This one had split in two at the bottom so it looked like it had legs. And the sprouts off the top grew like wild hair. It even had knobbly bits out the side as if it had its hands on its hips.

‘Thought this one looked a bit like Ringo Starr.’

I knew Ringo Starr was a musician in this band called ‘The Beatles’, because Dad listened to them all the time and had old-fashioned records with their faces on. If you ask me, the carrot didn’t actually look like Ringo at all, but it was pretty fun writing out the nametag and lining it up alongside fellow-carrot Simon Cowell, potato Paul McCartney and Beany Beckham.

‘So, up for a bit of hard graft?’ Grandad asked me.

I nodded, my mouth too full of strawberries to answer properly.

The truth is, I owed Grandad a visit. Well, I owed him a lot more than a visit. Without his grand idea to clear the end of his garden I’d never have found the dragon-fruit tree or carried the dragon fruit home that first day. The same fruit that Flicker had burst out of in the middle of the night. I also owed him for looking after me so well when I was little and had a poorly heart, even though he always said you don’t owe your family for that sort of thing; it’s just what they do.

But I had promised to help him in the garden, and ever since Flicker and the other dragons had arrived I really hadn’t spent much time doing that. I popped in and out to keep an eye on the tree, but until there was a new crop of dragon fruit to keep an eye on, raking weeds and picking slugs off leaves couldn’t really compete with spending time with a dragon.

‘Don’t worry about his tea. We’ll feed him,’ Grandad said to Mum as I raced upstairs to change my mud-splattered clothes.

‘Fancy a trip to Grandad’s garden?’ I said to Flicker, whose claws were shredding one of my comics into pieces to line his bed in the toy box. There was no way I wanted to leave Flicker behind, especially not with beady-eyed ferrets patrolling the house. And he knew the way. He was used to following me, flying from tree to tree to keep out of sight. I opened the window for him and looked across the rooftops to the park and over towards Nana and Grandad’s house beyond. I watched Flicker dart up into sky and then headed back downstairs.

As we turned into the park Grandad stopped to rescue a snail slowly slithering its way across the path. Most people wouldn’t have even noticed the tiny creature, and some like Liam probably would have made a detour to squish it if they had, but Grandad’s philosophy was ‘Let all things be’. It was part of the reason why gardening was proving a challenge. Lots of people would have chucked a load of weedkiller and pesticide over the garden. Grandad said the farmer behind their house did it all the time, spraying everything in sight. But Grandad was different. He was as organic as they came. Which is why I was stuck with a bucket for collecting slugs.

Flicker had stopped too, and was peering down at Grandad from the branch above. I just hoped he didn’t sneeze and rain sparks down on us.

‘You off with the fairies again?’ Grandad asked after he’d settled the snail on a nearby bush. He looked up to where I’d been gazing. Flicker thankfully had already flown to the next tree.

‘Feels like I’m talking to myself half the time these days,’ he added.

I gave an apologetic smile. It was true. A large chunk of my brain was currently tied up reliving the chaos in the canteen. And the rest was in a spin trying to think up how to train the dragons and worrying about keeping them secret from nosy Liam. Any part that was left was keeping an eye on Flicker. How I didn’t fall down through lack of available brain power was quite a miracle.

‘So what’s been going on with you and those mates of yours? You used to bend my ear no end with all your shenanigans. What’s new?’

What’s new, of course, was dragons. So all the stories I had to tell were about Flicker and Crystal, Dodger and Sunny. I racked my brain for something I could share with him. But there wasn’t anything. I chewed my lip. And then shrugged.

‘Nothing really.’

‘Busy with school. That it, hey? Them teachers keeping you busy?’

I nodded awkwardly. I hated fobbing him off with a fib. It was like when I hadn’t told him about being in Grim’s garden that time, or admitted that we’d all been out of the tent the night we had camped. I used to tell Grandad everything and I wished I could now. It suddenly felt like all the little thorny fibs were growing into a great big prickly bush between us.

When I didn’t answer, Grandad gave a little sigh. His twinkly eyes closed for a second longer than usual as he paused to take a sniff of a rose in a hedge. He pulled it towards me so I could take a whiff.

‘There’s always time to stop and smell the roses,’ he said. ‘However busy and complicated life gets. Remember that, Chipstick.’