Lucy said because it was late we should all just kip on the boat and he’d do us a full English in the morning, and Leonard said it seemed like a good way to finish an adventure and that it was fine by him. So that’s what we did and it was the coolest thing ever.

Even though it was nearly two o’clock in the morning by the time Lucy had finally said it was time to stop blethering and get ye all to bed or what’ll pass as one, I woke up earlier than everyone else. When I opened my eyes I knew where I was straightaway, though. Because the first person I saw was James, stretched out on one of the bench seats with a tea towel rolled up under his head and his legs sticking way out past the edge. Then the second person I saw was Leonard, curled up on his side on the other seat with his two hands under his head like he was saying a prayer and nothing sticking out off the edge anywhere.

Beano and Gray were top and tailing it at the bottom of the stairs and I could hear Lucy snoring in his little bedroom at the end of the boat. It didn’t look like any of them were going to be getting up anytime soon, but I was wide-awake, so I wrapped my blanket around me and carefully stepped over Beano and Gray and went up onto the deck.

It was totally quiet up there and it kind of felt like the houseboat was floating out in space. Even though it was still pretty dark the sun was starting to come up behind the trees on the other side of the canal, and I thought how weird it was to only find out what a place looked like when you’d already been there a whole night. It felt like nobody else in the world was awake except for me, and for all I know maybe it was true.

I should have been really tired, but I wasn’t. I actually felt like I’d just had the best sleep of my life and everything inside my head and my tummy felt kind of different. Like maybe all that stuff that happened to me on the best night of my life had actually made me into a different person. Like one who breaks into nightclubs and dresses in disguise and goes on high-speed rides on the back of a moped. One who hangs out with a bunch of guys on a houseboat and stays up all night blethering. The kind of person like Little Big Man who’s actually going to be brave enough to get up in front of a bunch of strangers and try to make them laugh, by telling them the story about a Five-Year Plan that turned into a real-life adventure.

But I knew I hadn’t woken up an entirely different person really, because even while I was thinking about all that amazing stuff, when I was sat on the deck of the houseboat with maybe nobody in the world awake except for me, the thing I most wanted was to see my mum.