By the time I got home it was a bit later than Dad had said but he was so preoccupied with the troll that he didn’t tell me off. If anything he seemed relieved I was there.“I was worried about you.” he said.

“I told you I was going to Tim’s house after school.” I said.

“Yes, I know,” I guess I just got concerned that Johan had done something to you.”

“Done something to me?” I said, “What would he do to me?”

“He could have eaten you.” Angie said, “That would have been nice. Well nice for me!”

I was about to complain but I saw her grin and realised she didn’t mean it.

“So,” Dad said, “what’s all this about having some more information about the troll?”

“More information?” Angie said. “Where did you find that?”

“A friend at school had some really old encyclopaedias at home.” I said, sticking to the plan I had agreed with Tim, Priya and Sugar.

“Ooh, which ones?” she asked as her eyes lit up.

“I don’t know.” I said, “The covers were missing. But it had a lot of information on the original legends of trolls.” This wasn’t true but I was hoping it would fool them. It was a awkward choice, either I lied to my family or I got myself into a million other questions that none of us had time for.

“The Scandinavian trolls?” Dad asked.

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“I thought you didn’t like encyclopaedias?” Angie sneered.

“I didn’t say I don’t like them, I just think they’re out of date. In this case that helps us. We are talking about very old information, after all.”

“Okay, so how does this information help us?” Dad asked.

“Not here.” I said, now feeling like I was the one who was in a spy movie.

“Why not?” Dad said.

“Because I don’t want you-know-who to hear me.” I said, nodding towards the back garden.

“So what you want to meet in a park at midnight, wearing sunglasses and making sure we’re not followed? Martin this isn’t a game, just tell us.”

“Not here.” I repeated “We need the car.” I said, walking towards the front door.

They got their coats and followed me and we all got in the car. I told Dad to drive away from the house so Johan couldn’t hear us. He drove for ages and kept driving into car parks. Then, when he realised there was another car in there, he would drive out again.

“Dad,” I said, “what are you doing?”

“Finding somewhere where we can’t be overheard.” he said.

“We’re twenty minutes drive from the house Dad!” Angie said, “I don’t think the troll is going to follow us all the way out here.”

“But he might have friends! We need to make sure we are absolutely alone.”

“Oh for goodness’ sake Dad!” I said. “You go from one extreme to the other. Just pull over up here. We don’t need to be quite that careful.”

“How do you know?” asked Dad, scouring another almost–empty car park.

“We’re wasting time.” I said, trying a different track. Dad eventually pulled the car into the car park of a disused factory. Once I was happy that he was happy and we weren’t going to keep trying car parks until we hit the ocean, I started talking.

“Okay, the first thing we need to know is that trolls do not grow when they eat food.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Dad said, “Have you seen how much he has grown?”

“Yes,” I said, “but not because of the food. He grows because we give him attention. The more we talk to him, laugh at him, humour him or even get angry with him, he grows. The bigger he gets the more troublesome he’ll get too.”

“So are you saying we should just ignore a fluffy, purple bear camped in the garden with a host of animals?” Angie asked, flippantly.

“It’s too late for that.” I said, ignoring her attitude “That would have worked if we had done it on day one but now he’s too big to ignore.”

“I’ll say.” said Dad, “Mr Peaflummock nearly saw him yesterday. Towards the back of the garden where the fence has broken. I just managed to throw a sheet over the washing line to hide him. I’ve fixed the fence but I don’t know how long we can keep this a secret.”

“We won’t have to.” I said, “We can use the fact that he loves attention against him.”

“How?” said Angie, “And how do you know all this?”

“I told you, from encyclopaedias.” I smiled. “As for how, we are going to need to do this at night so nobody else sees.”

“We’re not going to kill him, are we?” Dad said.

“No, we won’t have to. If this works.”

“Go on.” Angie said, suspiciously.

“We need to get him out of the garden and into another hole. One that nobody will discover.”

“Do you know of such a hole?” Dad said.

“As it happens, I do.” I smiled, trying to show confidence in a plan I had only just heard myself. “Here, I’ve written the plan down.” I handed out bits of paper with instructions on them.

They started reading and then Dad exclaimed “You want me to do what?!”

“It’s the only way Dad. He thinks he has got you where he wants you. He can wind you up really easily. So it has to be you that tricks him into leaving. Dad shook his head, sighing.

“How did you find this hole?” Angie said and then smirked, “Oh don’t tell me, your new buddies told you.”

“As it happened they did.” I said, “Do you think we can do it?”

“I think we have to least try.” Dad said and Angie nodded.

So we headed back to the house, picking up a few supplies on the way.

As we got near home Dad dropped Angie and me off so we could get on with our parts of the plan. He then drove home to start “Operation Gruff”, as we had named it.

• TOC