I ran through the full-moon night to Bert’s place, hoping for one last look before the bulldozers arrived. I was too late. The property was wrapped in mesh screens printed with the words PARADIGM – YOUR NEW SANCTUARY, over and over. What a bitter irony to swallow, like a fat green pickle in a glass of sour milk. I crawled under the mesh where the gate was and forced my way in. The plane tree and the fake totem pole were the only things standing. Bert’s house had been demolished.

I sat in the rubble and told old Bert about finding the message and what it said, even though I knew it was too late. Too late because I’m pretty sure that Bert had already opened the egg, read the message and resealed it – sticky tape wasn’t invented till 1930. Too late because Bert died more than a week ago. And yet the broken pipes and piles of bricks conveyed a finality I hadn’t fully comprehended when Lana had broken the news to me. I never had the chance to talk to Bert about being related. He must’ve been too ashamed of the feature we shared and the way he’d treated his own family. At least I’d told him I was glad that I’d found him.

I got up and searched through the debris, scouring the area like a volunteer rescue worker, stupidly hoping to discover a trace of a life lived there before construction began.

And then I found Percy. Flattened and dirty. Both eyes missing.

I brought the little guy home and laid him next to Ethel, then went out onto the balcony. Twenty-seven levels above the ground. The night was still and cold, the air sharp, city lights unblinking and the moon high.

One hundred and twenty years ago, my great-great-great-grandfather ventured across the world to save his family by putting himself on show, exploiting the thing that had made him feel ugly. The thing we have in common. I remembered seeing Edwin’s real name, Theodore Stonehouse, on Mum’s family tree. Knowing where it came from and who had gone before me, I wasn’t so ashamed.

This tail is in my genetic make-up. Its appearance was inevitable – my predetermined legacy. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. But everything has a cause. Knowing the cause of the tail has liberated me from the search for its meaning. The only meaning is the one that I choose to attach to it. If Theodore Stonehouse had fronted up to the physical examination for Crestfield Academy 125 years ago, Joseph Millington Drake would have been disgusted by what he saw and rejected him as the progeny of depraved parents. Maybe I should’ve whipped mine out at the interview? Theodore was right. The tail is, after all, quite funny. And laughing at it was one way of redeeming my affliction. The other would be daring something worthy.