The next day at school was a nightmare. I looked for the girl but I couldn’t find her. I was silently annoyed with myself for not finding out her name. I didn’t even see her friend, the one she was always hanging around with. It was like they had just disappeared. I asked around but it’s really hard to ask where somebody is if you don’t know their name. I stumbled around describing here but realised just then how bad I was at describing girls.Eventually someone figured out who I meant and said some of her science class were on a school trip to the city farm that morning. I had forgotten about the trip. It was too small for a whole class to go at once so they split us up. My group was due to go that afternoon. This meant I wouldn’t see her unless she came back in time for lunch.

The clock seemed to tick ever slower. At one point I thought it was going backwards. History was a complete waste of time. We were looking at the Romans and whilst I was initially excited, because I thought we’d look at some of the great constructions they made, all we ended up talking about were floors. Floors! I mean how can you spend half an hour talking about floors? Floors are just, well, just stuff you walk on.

Eventually the lunch bell went and we all drifted outside. By which I mean some of the others drifted, I walked as fast as I could without running. As I got outside I saw one the most welcome sights I had seen for some days: the school bus was parked outside. They had come back.

I scanned the playground until I saw her, sitting with her friend on the benches by the play equipment, smiling. Smiling! How could she smile when her text had practically turned my brain into spaghetti!

I ran to them and then realised as I reached them I didn’t know how to start. That was because I didn’t know how I felt. Was I angry that she had spied on me, confused over why I should leave Johan alone or relieved that I could talk to somebody else about this?

“Hi Martin,” she said as I approached, “I’m sorry about the text message. It was a bit out of the blue.” Her smile put me at ease.

“Have you been spying on me?” I asked.

“No I haven’t.” she said, glancing at her friend. “But I can imagine you’re wondering how I know about the visitor in your garden.”

“Just a bit.” I said.

“I have a confession,” she said, “I knew about it when I came up to you yesterday.”

“What! How?” I shouted.

“Shh!” her friend said. “Keep your voice down.”

“Okay but how did you know?” I pressed.

“We have some friends who are interested in that sort of thing and they knew it had arrived.” said the girl.

“Friends?” I said, “You mean like the government?”

The girl laughed. “No but they are a little unusual. The point is that we knew it was in your garden and were keeping an eye on you to make sure you were okay.”

“Are we in danger then?” I asked. This was beginning to worry me.

“Not if you ignore it.” she said, “It thrives on attention.”

“You what?”

“Your visitor, it loves attention. The more attention you pay it, the more it likes it and the more it grows. That’s why I told you to ignore it.”

“Grows? You mean it gets bigger if we pay attention to it?”

“Exactly that.”

“Not by how much it eats?”

“It does grow when it eats, like anything does, but if you give it attention it gains a hold on you and yes, it grows bigger.” she was really beginning to worry me now. I was wondering what I got mixed up in. To be honest, if I didn’t have a large purple troll in my garden, I might have questioned whether these two were on drugs.

“How do you know all this,” I asked, “and how did you find out about our, er, visitor?”

“I told you, our friends told us. I said we were resourceful.” the girl smiled, “I could tell you more but you won’t believe me.” that made me smile as she used the same words I had said to her the day before.

“You know me that well do you?” I replied with a grin. I was a little freaked out though. They were beginning to sound like people in spy movies. “So why did you decide to help me then?”

“Look,” interrupted her friend, “we’ve had similar experiences ourselves. We just figured you could do with some help.”

I looked at them, not even trying to hide my amazement. “You have had experience with - what I have in my garden?”

They both laughed. “Not exactly but we have experience of other things. Things that other people wouldn’t believe.” the girl said.

I couldn’t quite figure these two out. First there was the fact that they had no other friends. Second I couldn’t see what that had in common – apart from books. The girl had beside her an e–book reader which I guessed had a bunch of books about girls who didn’t get on with their sisters. Her friend had a huge book on electronics beside him. I don’t know how he fitted in his bag which was bulging as it was. I was starting to think they might be working for the government and were actually placed in my school to find out more about my troll. I decided to push my luck a bit with them.

“Okay, look, you two have clearly spied on me or bugged my house or something and so you know what I have in my garden.” I held up my hand as they started to protest. “You say you have experience and some strange , all-knowing, friends you can’t tell me about. All I know is that right now it seems a bit unfair because you know my secrets and I don’t know yours. I mean I don’t even know your names but I’m beginning to think that none of that matters.”

“Really?” they said, looking at each other.

“Yes really. None of it matters because what really matters to me right now getting rid of the thing in my garden. If you can help me with that, without involving the police or the government or letting my Dad find out I told you, then I’d be grateful.”

“Okay,” said the boy, “I think we can say this much for now. We knew where the visitor was and we worked out it was where you lived. After that we just needed a look around when you and your family weren’t in. To confirm what we suspected.”

“So you did spy on me! What did you do, break into my house?”

No. We had a friend take a look from a distance. Sorry but we had to find out whether our suspicions were correct.”

“Actually they weren’t our suspicions” said the girl, “they were,” she hesitated, “somebody else’s.”

“True, “ the boy continued, “we have some friends who are a little different and are quite knowledgeable. Particularly about things most of us wouldn’t think existed.”

“Like my visitor?”

“Like a lot of things. They have knowledge we couldn’t have.”

“And who are these people?”

“As I said,“ the girl looked at me, “you wouldn’t believe us if we told you.”

“Are they like my visitor?”

“Sort of.” the boy said, “They certainly know a lot about him. The first thing you need to know is he is not what you think he is.”

“He’s not?” The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I wasn’t sure what Johan was. We had just taken him at his word.

“No. He’s an alien.” the girl said and I laughed. “I wouldn’t laugh,” she continued, “because if he’s not then he must be something that’s only been heard of in fairy tales.” She had a point but I wasn’t sure which idea sounded more ridiculous. Either I had a fairy tale creature making friends with wild animals in my garden or it was a traveller from another planet. Presumably a fluffy, purple planet where everyone speaks in rhyme.

“His race thrives on attention. They crave it like we humans crave chocolate. They managed to destroy their entire planet and almost wiped themselves out. It seems some managed to escape and now you have one in your garden.”

“You said they destroyed their own planet, was in some kind of accident?” I said.

“No it was a war. It turns out they don’t care what kind of attention they get, just as long as somebody is paying attention to them. Apparently they figured out it was easier to draw attention to yourself by being nasty to others than by being nice. So they started arguing, selfishly. Eventually that turned into a mass war until they pretty much blew up the planet. This is the first time one of these has been spotted on Earth.”

“So why does it call itself a troll then? It seemed to know a lot about troll legends?”

“We’re not sure but we think when it arrived here it must have found out about troll legends and decided to pretend to be one.” the boy said.

“Your friends seem to know a lot about life on other planets, are they aliens too?” I joked but I saw they weren’t laughing. They just shot looks at each other. “You’re kidding?” but I could see that they weren’t. “Blimey!”, I continued, “If aliens are invading the Earth shouldn’t we tell the authorities?”. They looked at each other for a while and then the boy nodded and the girl spoke.

“Okay we owe you some kind of explanation. We were going to tell you this later but it seems things have got ahead of us. Sit down.” She shuffled up to make room.

I sat, with a very strange feeling in my stomach.

“First let start with some names.” she said, “This is Tim and I am Priya.”

I nodded to both of them. It was odd, she said them like I was supposed to recognise the names. She carried on.

“What we are about to tell you is something nobody but us knows. If you tell other people we will deny it. Last year we had an encounter with some refugees from another planet. Their planet had been destroyed and they had been looking for a new home. At first we thought they were coming to invade the Earth but it turned out they were just looking for a new home because their old one was destroyed.”

“They wanted to live here alongside us.” said Tim.

“So where are they then? I mean if they’re anything like the thing I have in my garden they’ll be hard to hide.”

“They are nothing like your visitor and they are good at hiding.” he said. “We’re not going to tell you where they are, for obvious reasons.”

“Okay, how do I know you are telling me the truth? This could be all part of some big game to wind up the new kid at school.”

“Look around you Martin,” Priya said, “Do we look like the sort of people who’d do that? I mean we’re not – what did you call them – FOTS?”

I laughed, “No, you’re not but still you are asking me to believe you without giving me any evidence.”

“Fair point,” Tim said, “but these are our friends and we have been trusted to protect them. We can’t risk them being found. I’m not sure how we can prove it to you without putting them at risk.”

“I do,” said Priya, “The visitor in your garden, it talks to you right?”

“Yes it does.”

“Well our friends said that the race it belongs to prefer to speak in riddles or rhyme. Does it speak in rhyme?”

“It does, “ I said, “but your spy could have told you that.”

“Our spy couldn’t hear anything,” said Priya, “he was looking from a distance.”

“What like with a telescope?”

“Not exactly,” Tim said, “but he didn’t set foot in you garden or your house. He couldn’t hear anything from where he was.”

“Okay so you know it speaks in rhyme,” I said, “but that doesn’t prove much. So far you’ve not told me anything you couldn’t have found out from your spy.”

“Tim, I think we need to show him.” Priya said.

“What? No!” Tim said grumpily.

“If we don’t then he won’t believe us. If he doesn’t believe us then we don’t know what could happen with that, er, visitor.”

“But we don’t know if we can trust him!” Tim hissed.

“He doesn’t know if he can trust us either. You know what could happen if we let this situation continue. We can only find out if we can trust Martin by, you know, trusting him.”

“What on earth are you two on about?” I asked. “You’ve told me about the aliens, the one in my garden and the ones you have hidden in your attic or somewhere. What secret could you possibly have that is bigger than that?”

“Tim,” Priya said, “we have no choice.”

“Okay, okay!” Tim said, holding up his hands, “Are you free after school?”

“Yes,“ I said, “I have to be home by five but I can spare ten minutes.”

“That’s all it will take.” he said. “Meet us at the gate after the bell goes. It’s time you met our spy.”

I was about to ask more when one of the teachers came out asking those of us who were going on the trip to the farm to get ready. I’d forgotten about that.

“I’m at the city farm this afternoon but I guess we’ll be back in time. If I’m not I’ll see if my Dad will let me come round tonight. He seems to quite like the idea that I may have made new friends.”

“Enjoy the farm!” Priya said as I ran off.

“And watch out for the goats.” Tim yelled, “They bite!”

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