MoonPup

The graph was green, and it only went one way.

Ravi propped his phone against the gravy jug so the whole table could see it, which meant Asha saw it upside down first, and for a moment she thought the line was falling off a cliff. Then he turned it round. The line climbed. It climbed like Kit up the climbing frame on Cliff Road, in little jerks, never once looking back.

'That's me,' said Ravi. 'That's my eighty quid.'

Sunday lunch was roast chicken and Nani's lime pickle, which only Dad and Ravi were brave enough to eat. Rain ticked against the kitchen window. Out past the rooftops, the sea was the colour of a wet slate.

'It was eighty on Friday,' Ravi said. He tapped the screen with a pickle-yellow finger. 'Now it's ninety-four pounds and sixty. While I was asleep. I didn't do anything.'

Asha did the sum without meaning to. Fourteen pounds sixty, in two nights. She had been dusting Mrs Oddie's top shelf since October and had not made fourteen pounds sixty in two nights.

'What is it?' said Kit. 'Is it a dog?'

'It's a coin.'

'Can I hold it?'

'You can't hold it. It's on the internet.'

Kit looked at the phone with deep suspicion. 'Then where's the dog?'

Mum passed the potatoes and said nothing, in the particular way she said nothing when she was saving it for later.

'There was this video,' said Ravi. 'Bloke in Dubai. He says MoonPup literally cannot lose. Like, mathematically.'

'Asha's got jars,' said Kit, helpfully. 'Three. One's for giving away.'

Ravi grinned at her across the chicken. Not unkindly, which was almost worse.

'Still doing the jars? That's cute, Ash. Honestly. Two quid a week.' He picked up his phone and kissed it, actually kissed it, on the screen. 'This did fourteen sixty before breakfast.'

Asha put down her fork. Under the table, on the back of her hand, the biro still said £198.40.

For three days Ravi was unbearable.

On Monday he texted Asha a screenshot: £112.30. On Tuesday he walked past Oddie's window with his hood up and his earbuds in and did a little bow at her through the glass, as if he had personally invented money. Asha, halfway through dusting a row of Agatha Christies, pretended not to see. Dividend saw. He closed his eyes again.

By Wednesday night it was £131.20. Ravi came round for tea because his mum was on a late shift, and he ate three fish fingers without looking down once.

Thursday it rained again. Fish pie, and the white tablecloth with the faded blue anchors, because Nani was coming. Ravi's phone lay face up beside his plate.

It buzzed. Then it buzzed again. Then it did not stop.

Asha could read it from across the table, because the messages kept popping up on top of each other like gulls landing on a bin.

Deano: bro is moonpup ok??

Deano: BRO

Tyler M: mine says 61

Deano: is the dubai guy saying anything

Tyler M: his account's gone

Ravi picked up the phone. He didn't kiss it this time. He held it very close to his face, the way Kit held a crab he wasn't sure about.

'It's just a dip,' he said. 'It does this.'

The screen said £48.90.

Nobody said anything. Mum put the serving spoon down very quietly. Nani, who did not know what MoonPup was and did not wish to, went on picking the peas out of her pie.

The phone buzzed. £39.15.

Asha did the sum without meaning to. Again. Ninety-two pounds and five pence gone since last night, which was more than the whole of her first ledger, all eight sad pages of it.

'Is the dog dead?' said Kit.

Ravi didn't answer. His face had gone the colour of the tablecloth, all except the anchors.

The phone buzzed one more time.

Tyler M: SELL

Ravi came into Oddie's Books & Bits at twenty past nine on Saturday, hood up, as if he had just happened to be passing a shop he had never once set foot in on purpose.

'Sold it,' he said, to nobody in particular. 'Twenty quid. Whatever. It's only money.'

Asha stopped dusting. Twenty pounds. Eighty take away twenty was sixty, and sixty pounds was thirty Saturdays of her SAVE jar. She opened her mouth.

Mrs Oddie looked at her over the lifeguard, and Asha shut it again.

'Kettle, Barnaby,' said Mrs Oddie, though the kettle was in the back and Barnaby had never boiled anything. She came out with a mug that said WORLD'S BEST GRANDAD, which had arrived in a box of donations and never left, and put three sugars in it without asking.

Ravi sat on the step stool by the atlases. Dividend opened one eye at him from beside the telescope.

'This man in the video,' said Mrs Oddie. 'Did he say when you ought to buy?'

'Now. Before Friday. He said after Friday it'd be too late.'

'Goodness. Very busy man. And how much did he say you'd lose?'

Ravi snorted into the tea. 'Nothing. It couldn't lose. That was the whole...' He stopped.

Mrs Oddie dusted a biscuit tin. She seemed in no hurry at all.

'Did he own any MoonPup himself?'

'Loads. He showed us. That's how you knew he was legit.'

'So every time somebody like you bought some,' said Mrs Oddie, 'what happened to the price of his?'

Ravi stared at the mug for a long time. A gull walked past the open door. Asha counted to eleven in her head.

'It went up,' he said. 'Mine made him money.' He put the tea down. 'He said hurry. He said it couldn't lose. And he got richer every time I bought.' His voice went small at the end, smaller than Asha had heard it since he was about seven. 'That's three things, isn't it.'

'It is,' said Mrs Oddie, and wrote them down in her careful bank-clerk hand on the back of a paper bag.

Ravi looked at the paper bag. Then he looked at Asha's hand, which was holding the duster, and at the faded blue numbers on the back of it.

'Can I borrow a pen?'

Asha gave him the anchor pen from Kerry. She had never lent it to anyone. Not even Jonah.

Ravi pushed up his sleeve and wrote on the back of his hand, slowly, pressing hard, the way she did when a sum mattered. A pound sign. A six. A nought. The pen squeaked on the last line. He held his hand out at arm's length and frowned at it.

'Does it come off?'

'Not for about three days,' said Asha. 'Longer if you don't use soap.'

'Right.' He didn't pull his sleeve down. 'Right.'

Mrs Oddie took the WORLD'S BEST GRANDAD mug from him and set it on the counter beside Barnaby, who said nothing, as usual. Rain ticked against the window. The orange tree sat in its cracked blue pot with its new leaves and no buds. Dividend stretched one paw against the telescope's brass leg and went back to sleep.

'I put all of it in,' said Ravi. 'The whole eighty. Every penny Nani gave me.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Oddie. 'I rather thought you had.'

'Was that bad as well?'

Mrs Oddie took off the lifeguard and polished it on her cardigan. She did this, Asha had noticed, when she was deciding how much of a story to tell.

'When are the Easter holidays?' she said.

Ravi blinked. 'Dunno. Two weeks from Friday?'

'Then I shall need you both at the harbour wall at low water. With your brother, Asha.' She put the lifeguard back on. 'And a bucket.'

'One bucket?' said Asha.

Mrs Oddie smiled at her over the top of the glasses. It was not a smile that answered anything.

'Ask Kit,' she said, 'how many he'd bring.'