‘Now that would be telling. It would spoil the game. The game is to guess.’

I look at Big Ben. He’s screwing up his face to think.

‘Deer? Badgers? Monkeys?’ he says.

Le Temps looks angry and scared. I wonder if he gets a headache when he feels like that. He talks to Big Ben’s hat, not his face.

‘SENSIBLE guesses. Since when did monkeys live in the woods?’

‘We only saw cows,’ says Big Ben.

‘So you met my prize herd in the woods today? Who gave you permission to go there?’

‘Mrs C Eckler,’ I say.

‘Looks like you brought the woods back with you.’

He’s looking at Big Ben’s hat, with the dirt and twigs in it. Big Ben looks back at him.

‘Lamb?’

‘No.’

‘Sheep, then. It must be sheep, by process of elimination.’

Le Temps burns his hand on the barbecue, says a bad word and gives Big Ben the bull’s-eye stare.

‘How do you spell “sheep”, Ben?’ He pauses. ‘As I thought, you have NO idea. No idea at all. And I think you’ll find the correct term is “mutton”.’

‘He wouldn’t know that.’ I find my mouth speaking before my brain has caught up. I’m angry with Le Temps for humiliating Big Ben. He can’t help being dyslexic.

‘Hot potatoes! Hot potatoes!’ sings the Triple M teacher like he’s selling vegetables in the market and the background noise of the barbecue is his bassline. I turn away from Le Temps to get my jacket potato. I’m starving. But as I leave I can hear Big Ben still guessing.

‘Is it hedgehogs?’

We eat the cake indoors because the food has begun to get soggy. Maria dropped her burger on the ground and swore in Portuguese so she got away with it like she always does. We have to take our boots off and leave them at the entrance to the Common Room. I’m worried someone might steal my boots and throw them down the toilet because that happened at my primary school, but Mrs C Eckler says everyone here is well behaved.

The 2048 cake is set up on a large circular table in the middle of the room. It’s fully white-iced and decorated with the cupcakes we made earlier. I want to take a photo on my TwentyTwenty so I can look at it forever but don’t want the grown-ups to know I still have it. I’ll have to memorise it in my brain. Millennia gives a speech about the importance of leap birthdays. She says some bissextiles choose to celebrate their in-between birthdays on the 28th of February or the 1st of March and that is OK. But some bissextiles only celebrate the leap birthday once every four years. That makes it more special. I know from the way she says it that Millennia’s like me. She only celebrates on the true day.