Sometime later. Maybe it was five weeks or five months.

Sometimes it seems a short time.

Sometimes it seems a lifetime.

Whichever, we went to the airport to welcome Eric and Shatter home. We waited in arrivals, clutching our ‘WELCOME HOME, ERIC’ sign.

Really waiting for someone feels very different from just pretending to wait for someone. You don’t think about other people’s food. You don’t look too much at other people’s faces. You just stay focused on those big doors, waiting for them to open.

Now I realised where I’d seen it before - that look that Mum had on her face when she sat on the end of your bed, watching over you. It’s the look that people have when they’re looking at those big automatic doors, waiting for someone they love to walk through them.

It’s the look we had on our faces that afternoon at the airport.

We weren’t the only ones with ‘WELCOME HOME, ERIC’ signs, by the way. Eric’s famous now. Everyone loves him for getting rid of landmines. But they love him even more for the explosive ways he does it. Eric’s all over YouTube. You can get Eric mugs, gifs and ringtones.

When he finally came clunking through those big doors into arrivals, there was a thunder of applause and a lightning storm of camera flashes. I’m part human/ part machine. I’m a bit bionic. But Eric is part human too. His body is metal but it only works because we filled it with our imagination, and our memories, and our hopes. Also WD-40.

We waved our ‘WELCOME HOME, ERIC’ sign in the air. Not going to lie, it wasn’t the biggest or the sparkliest sign there. I wasn’t sure he’d even seen us. His huge blue eyes flickered over the crowd. Someone shoved me forward. People stood back to let me pass. Someone else shouted, ‘Go on, Alfie!’ Everyone seemed to know that I was the one who’d found Eric. Everyone thought I was the one he was looking for.

But I wasn’t.

He looked past me.

He looked straight past Mum,

and D’Arcy

and Tyler.

Eric walked straight through the crowd, bent down and looked into the face of the person next to us.

WHO ARE YOU?

‘I’m Arthur.’

Because it really was you. It was your first day out of the hospital.

HOW DO YOU DO?

‘I’m doing OK,’ you said.

I AM ERIC, THE WORLD’S MOST POLITE ROBOT.

‘I know who you are.’

Eric held out his hand. You put your hand in his. He squeezed. You squeezed back.

The he held out his other hand. I put my hand in his. He squeezed. Lefty squeezed back.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

I AM YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT.

Then we walked out of the airport – you and me and Eric.