Up and Down Like the Tide

'MARKETS TUMBLE', said Dad's newspaper, in letters as tall as fish fingers.

It was propped against the marmalade on Saturday morning, and Asha read it upside down while her toast went cold. Underneath, in smaller letters, it said that shares had fallen sharply all week. There was a photograph of a man in a tie holding his head. He looked as if he had lost his keys. Or a thousand pounds.

Asha put her toast down.

'Dad. Can I see that?'

Dad passed it across without looking up. He was writing BRAKE PADS £14 on a bit of cardboard for the stall, and the marker pen squeaked on every B.

She read the whole article twice. It didn't mention Puffin Rail or Big Dipper Biscuits, because they weren't real, but it didn't need to. Everything had gone down. Everything. Her stomach went down with it.

'I need to sell,' she said.

'Sell what?' said Kit. He was building a tower out of cereal hoops on his spoon. It was four hoops high.

'All of it. My shares. Before they get any worse.'

'Your pretend ones?'

'Yes.'

Kit thought about this. A fifth hoop wobbled and held. 'Can you lose pretend money?'

'Obviously.'

'Then can I have some? I'll lose it for you.'

Asha ignored him. She pulled the paying-in book out of her school bag, which she had brought down to breakfast for exactly this sort of emergency, and turned to the page with the neat box round one thousand pounds. It didn't look safe any more. It looked like a box with nothing in it.

Dad capped his pen. 'Market's not even open on a Saturday, love.'

'Mrs Oddie's is.'

She was already pulling her coat on over her pyjama top. Through the front window she could see the shop door standing open across Gull Street, as it always did, and a ginger shape in the window, curled against the brass legs of the telescope.

Kit's tower fell over. Six hoops, all at once, into the milk.

'Markets tumble,' he said.

Mrs Oddie did not let her sell anything.

She listened to all of it, standing behind the counter with the lifeguard on the end of her nose. The headline. The man holding his head. The sum in the paying-in book, which Asha had done twice on the way across the road:

Sat 15 Feb: pretend shares £1,000.00
Sat 22 Feb: pretend shares £860.00
Lost: £140.00

Then Mrs Oddie took a small folded booklet from the drawer under Barnaby, put on her coat with the toggles, and said, 'Barnaby, you're in charge. Don't let Dividend give anything away.'

'But I need to—'

'Harbour,' said Mrs Oddie.

It was three minutes' walk, down the end of Gull Street and past the bakery, where Bernie's sign still said BEAR WITH ME. The wind came off the sea with salt in it. Asha held her coat shut over her pyjama top. She was wearing her school shoes with no socks.

At the harbour wall she stopped.

The sea had gone. Not far, just out past the end of the pier, a grey line glittering. Between the wall and the water there was nothing but mud, shiny and brown, with seaweed lying flat on it like wet hair. And the boats. They lay on their sides in the mud, every one of them, tipped over as if someone had pushed them. The Kittiwake, with her blue hull, had her mast pointing at the bakery. A crab pot had rolled out of the Saltash Lass and stopped by a puddle. It smelled of seaweed and diesel and something older.

A gull walked across the mud, leaving little arrows.

Mrs Oddie unfolded the booklet. HOLLINS BAY TIDE TABLES, it said, with a lighthouse on the front and 50p in the corner. She ran her finger down a column, then looked at her watch. Then at the booklet again.

'Twenty-two minutes past nine,' she said. 'Low water was at four minutes past.'

'Mrs Oddie, I'm losing twenty pounds a day.'

'Pretend pounds.'

'Still.'

Mrs Oddie pointed at the Kittiwake. 'What's wrong with her?'

Asha looked. The boat lay there, helpless, with her deck tilted towards the sky.

'She's fallen over,' Asha said.

'Has she,' said Mrs Oddie, and it was not a question.

Mrs Oddie folded the tide table and tucked it into her coat pocket.

'Same time next Saturday,' she said. 'High water's at nineteen minutes to ten. Bring socks.'

'But my shares...'

'Will still be pretend on Saturday. Don't sell them.'

It was the longest week of the year. Asha did not sell. She wanted to, mostly at night, and once in double maths, when she drew a small boat lying on its side in the margin of her exercise book and had to turn it into a slipper before Mr Achebe saw. On Wednesday Kit asked if her pretend money had died yet. On Thursday he asked if he could have the funeral.

On Saturday 1 March she wore socks.

The harbour was full. That was the first thing. The mud had gone, and the seaweed, and the gull's little arrows, and in their place was green water slapping at the wall a foot below Asha's shoes. The Kittiwake sat upright on it, her blue hull bobbing, her mast pointing at the sky where masts were supposed to point. The Saltash Lass tugged at her rope like a dog that has seen another dog. Somebody had put the crab pot back.

Asha stood and looked at them for a long time. Same boats. Same rope. Same wall.

Mrs Oddie took an envelope from her pocket. On the back, in her careful bank-clerk writing, were five made-up companies and five new prices, copied from her own list under Barnaby that morning. She held it out without a word.

Asha did the sum against the harbour railing, the paying-in book flat on the cold metal:

Sat 22 Feb: pretend shares £860.00
Sat 1 Mar: pretend shares £920.00
Back: £60.00
Still down: £80.00

She read it twice. Puffin Rail had gone up. Big Dipper Biscuits had gone up a lot.

Below them the Kittiwake rose on a small wave, and sank, and rose again.

'If I'd sold last week,' Asha said slowly, 'I'd have eight hundred and sixty pounds. And that would be it.'

'That would be it,' said Mrs Oddie.

'Even though they came back.'

'Even though. Selling at low water doesn't lose you the tide. It just means you're not in the boat when it comes in.'

Asha chewed the end of her plait. 'So you never sell when it's down.'

'I didn't say never.' Mrs Oddie tapped the railing with one gloved finger. 'Some tides don't come back for a long while. Years, sometimes. Over a long stretch the market has mostly come up again, but nobody promises it, and anyone who does is selling you something. That's why your telescope money stays with Kerry.'

'Because it's safe.'

'Because it's soon.' Mrs Oddie looked out at the Kittiwake. 'Suppose you needed eighty pounds next Saturday. And next Saturday was low water.'

Asha thought of the boat lying in the mud with its mast pointing at the bakery. She thought of having to sell it like that, tipped over, for whatever someone would give.

'Then I'd have to sell anyway,' she said.

'Bankers have a word for how long until you need your money. Mr Pengelly used to say it as if it were a hymn.' Mrs Oddie cleared her throat. 'Time horizon.'

'Like the edge of the sea?'

'Like the edge of the sea. Near money stays in cash. Far money can afford to wait for the tide.'

Asha opened the paying-in book against the cold railing. Under the sum she wrote it in capitals, TIME HORIZON, and then, because it didn't look like enough, she drew a small boat beside it. Upright. Mast pointing at the sky. She gave it a little flag.

'Very nautical,' said Mrs Oddie.

They walked back up Gull Street with the wind behind them. On the bench outside the bakery sat Ravi, earbuds in, hood up, his phone lit bright in both hands. He was grinning at it.

He looked up and pulled one earbud out.

'Ash,' he said. 'Have you ever heard of a coin called MoonPup?'