Marty sat down quietly and shrugged. Now, Grandad was always sparkly-eyed but today he was fizzing inside about something. This wasn’t entirely unusual, because Grandad had a history of getting very excited about strange things. Such as the time he thought he had brewed a new wonder fuel from rhubarb leaves and wanted to call NASA, and the time he built an automatic slug squisher out of six pairs of old boots and an old vacuum cleaner, oh, and the time he built the bum scratcher 2000, and an automatic tea stirrer 250, which worked so well it stirred and stirred Marty’s mug of tea until it started sloshing from side to side more and more violently and suddenly flew off sideways in a spray of scalding liquid, forcing them both to throw themselves on the ground for fear of burning themselves. Today though, Marty could tell that something else was up.

“I got you something,” he said, smiling. “Been waiting for it to arrive for weeks!”

He pulled a small brown envelope from his pocket and held it out.

“Happy birthday, Marty my boy.”

Marty blushed. He thought everyone had forgotten. His mum hadn’t said anything this morning. Even he had tried to forget for most of the day too.

“I didn’t have much money, but I wanted to get you something special…”

Marty didn’t get many presents, and since the house had started filling, Marty didn’t really care for “stuff,” but it was nice that Grandad had remembered.

“Open it, then,” said Grandad eagerly, his eyes prompting Marty to tear open the envelope. Even though he wasn’t a kid anymore, Marty still felt the shyness of being watched opening a present.

Marty took his time. He put down his mug of tea and slid his finger under the envelope flap. It was a small brown square one, like the kind they used to put his mum’s wages in when she worked at the shop. His grandad was still smiling at him. The envelope was so light, it didn’t seem to have anything in it, to be honest. So he tipped it upside down and shook it over his palm and out plopped a seed. Marty’s heart fell a little.

“Wow!” he said. “A seed!”

“One of Hodgkins and Taylor and Sons’ finest, I’ll have you know!”

Grandad was smiling at him still. Marty didn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. He swallowed down his disappointment.

“It’s really great…,” he heard himself saying.

Marty held the seed in his fingers. It was an extraordinarily large seed. Smooth, with a plump belly, and it was lightly striped as if it were wearing pajamas. Marty studied it; it was too big for even a sunflower …

“What kind of seed is it?”

Grandad flashed a grin of excitement.