We’ve gone for a tasteful selection of rags to decorate our corner of the Big House at the moment – me, Lana and Kate. They’re mainly all different sorts of brown, of course, but we pulled them into strips and then wove them into a hanging which is supposed to look like trees in a forest. You have to use your imagination, because the background is also brown, just like the trees, so there are a few places where it’s difficult to tell which is background and which is forest. Also, none of us could really remember what a forest looked like, so it might not be that accurate.

You do get sick of the people. Even the lovely ones. You get sick of never having any time to yourself, you get sick of hearing the same stories over, and over, and over again. You get sick of being able to tell what somebody is going to say before they even open their mouths.

This morning I bumped into James. Well, I say I bumped into him, it’s not like there was anywhere else to go, really. He was standing in my way, and I diverted so we could have a chat about what had happened to Pete and how we might be able to get past those tentacles.

‘Hi, Martha,’ he said. He never normally calls me ‘Martha’ except when he wants something. It’s normally ‘Bucketface’, or ‘Idiotbrain’, so I was immediately suspicious.

‘Uh huh,’ I said. ‘What do you want, James? I’m busy.’

‘Are you, Martha? Are you really?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not. I was dropping hints that I don’t want to talk to you right now. The polite thing to do would be to take those hints.’ I put my hands on my hips to make it clear I was telling him off.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got more important things to think about, Martha. We should all start thinking about repopulating the planet.’ He grinned, and I swear his eyes gave an actual twinkle, though it could have just been light reflecting off the mesoglea.

‘Right.’

‘So are you up for it?’ he said.

‘I’m up for saving the world and the planet,’ I said.

James did look surprised at this point, to give him some credit.

‘Erm . . . good. Shall we get started then? In the Big House?’

‘I don’t see why not. Shall I invite some of the others?’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Do you think that’s appropriate?’

‘The more the merrier, surely?’ I said. ‘Kate! Lana! Come here! James wants to repopulate the planet.’

From all over the Jellyfish, people started walking towards us. Old Albert was waddling faster than normal, Dr Jones put down her fishing rod, and even Pitiful Pete lifted his head to listen. It doesn’t take much to get us all interested here.