“No!” Lady Kraken rolls one wizened eye (but only one). “Don’t be a dunderbrain, boy! I mean, how long have you been with us at the hotel?”

“Well…” I get my fingers out, and tot up the seasons. “Five years. Almost to the day.”

“Five years!” Lady K blinks, lowering the lantern. “Is it really five years already? I recall it as if it were yesterday. You were found on the beach, were you not? Washed up in a crate of grapefruits.”

“Um, lemons, Your Ladyness,” I correct her. “It was a crate of lemons.”

“Ah, yes, of course. And you refused to tell anyone your name.”

“I couldn’t remember my name!” I blurt out. “I still can’t.”

“Yes, indeed.” Lady Kraken nods. “So we gave you one.”

I say nothing. Even I have to admit that the name Herbert Lemon suits me somehow.

“And since no one knew what to do with you,” Lady Kraken continues, “and since our last Lost-and-Founder had gone missing, we gave you a job, too. I’ve always felt the post of Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel is best fulfilled by a child. And you were our youngest ever.”

Here comes the chop, I can’t help thinking.

“But I wonder, Mr Lemon,” says Lady K, her eyes narrowing till they are almost shut, “are you really happy here?”

I open my mouth to reply yes, but nothing comes out.

Am I happy here?

I mean, happy?

My mind dances with images from the last few years – the kind faces of the hotel staff who’ve watched over me, the regular guests who treat me with affection, the way old Mollusc’s moustache twitches in outrage when he sees all this but can do nothing about it. What’s not to be happy about? And yet there’s that crate of lemons. And the mysterious blank in my memory that leads up to my strange arrival in Eerie-on-Sea.

“I can honestly say, Lady Kraken,” I say eventually, “that the day you made me Lost-and-Founder was the best day of my life.”

That I can remember, I add, but only in my head.

Lady Kraken breaks into a slow smile – one that spreads up both sides of her face and makes her look more like a turtle than ever.

“Ah, good. Then you won’t mind if I add a few little extra tasks to your duties, will you, Mr Lemon?”

And of course I have no choice but to nod in agreement.

“Because, you see,” Lady K continues, leaning in closer still and lowering her voice, “there is one place in this town I can’t see with my cameraluna, and that’s inside my own hotel. But you, Mr Lemon – you could be my eyes and ears, could you not? My eyes and ears, both inside the hotel and beyond. You could be my spy!”

I nod again, and manage to suppress a squeak.