Borrowing the Future

Green felt-tip, Kit said, was the most legal colour, because it was the colour of money and also of the Penny's Pocket sign.

He wrote the IOU on the back of the Golden Gull leaflet, kneeling on the landing carpet with his tongue poking through the gap in his teeth. The pen was nearly dry. He pressed hard. Some of the letters came out pale and squeaky, like they were whispering, and some came out fat and smudged where he went over them twice.

'What's an IOU stand for?' he said.

'I owe you.'

'Then why isn't it I-O-Y?'

Asha did not know. She sat on the top stair with her SPEND jar in her lap. It held £4.60, mostly in twenties and one bent fifty. The Golden Gull Series was £4 a go, which was fifty pence more than the old series. Kit said this was because the gulls were gold. Asha thought it was more likely because people like Kit would pay it.

'Four pounds,' she said. 'And you pay me back five.'

Kit's pen stopped. 'Why five?'

'Because Kerry pays me rent for having my money. So you have to pay me rent for having my money.'

He thought about this for some time. Downstairs, Dad was running the tap and singing the wrong words to something. A gull walked along the gutter outside the landing window. Its feet went tick, tick, tick.

'One pound of rent,' said Kit slowly, 'for four pounds.'

'Yes.'

'That's fine.' He shrugged, enormously. 'It's only one.'

He wrote it underneath in green: I OWE ASHA £5. Then, because a proper signature took too long, he drew a seagull instead. It had a wide beak and a determined eye. It looked a lot like him.

Asha counted four pounds into his hot palm and opened the paying-in book on her knee.

Sat 26 Apr: lent Kit £4.00
Kit owes £5.00

Kit was already halfway down the stairs, shoes in hand, shouting for Dad.

The capsule came out silver, not gold. Inside it was a gull made of soft white plastic, holding a chip in its beak, and by teatime the chip had come off and gone down the back of the sofa. Kit said the gull was 'still basically good'. He kept it in his pocket with a broken keyring and a stretchy frog.

The week went quickly for Asha. It went slowly for Kit.

On Saturday morning Mum left two fivers on the kitchen table, one each, and went to work. Kit picked his up. He looked at it. He looked at Asha, who was eating toast and saying nothing on purpose.

'Can I give you four now and one later?'

'You said five.'

'I know what I said.' He went off to Dad, came back with a fistful of coins and lined them up on the table like soldiers. Two pound coins. A fifty. Some twenties. A sad heap of tens. He pushed them across one at a time, and every coin got slower.

'That's more than four pounds for no reason,' he said.

'There is a reason. You had my money for a whole week.'

'I didn't have it. The machine had it.' He held up the last twenty pence and did not let go. 'This one's just air. I'm paying you for air.'

Asha held out her hand. Kit dropped the coin into it as though it had personally let him down.

She counted it twice. Five pounds exactly. He had nothing left. All of his pocket money, the whole week of it, had gone on a silver gull with no chip.

Sat 3 May: Kit paid back £5.00
Lent £4.00, got £5.00: profit £1.00

Kit read it upside down over her shoulder.

'That pound,' he said, 'used to be mine.'

He went upstairs. A minute later she heard his bedroom door, and then, very quietly, the rattle of his empty piggy bank being shaken anyway.

Mum came home at half past six with her blue tunic creased and her lanyard still round her neck. She put the kettle on, then took it off again and sat down at the kitchen table instead. Her phone was in her hand.

'Asha. Come here a minute.'

On the screen was the building society app, the little anchor in the corner. The number under Asha's name said £214.00.

'I was looking at it on my break,' said Mum. 'You've done so well, love. Honestly.' She turned the phone face down. 'So I thought. That telescope's still in the window. What if I lend you the rest? You could have it today. Tonight, even. Saturn's still up, isn't it?'

It was. Low over the sea, just after nine. Asha had checked.

She did the sum on the back of her hand without meaning to.

£240.00 − £214.00 = £26.00

Twenty-six pounds. At £2 a week from SAVE, that was thirteen Saturdays of paying Mum back. Thirteen Saturdays of the jar going in one end and straight out the other.

'You wouldn't have to pay me extra,' said Mum. 'I'm not Kerry.'

Asha thought of Kit pushing his coins across the table, each one slower than the last. She thought of the bus shelter on Harbour Lane, where a poster said GET IT TODAY! PAY IN 3! in letters as big as her head. And of Mrs Oddie telling Barnaby about Mrs Lightfoot, who had bought a three-piece suite on a card in 1994 and was still paying for it when the sofa went to the tip.

None of that was Mum, exactly. Mum was nice. Mum was tired.

But the ledger was upstairs, and every line in it was hers. If she took the £26, the telescope would arrive with a bit of someone else's Saturday stuck to it.

'No,' said Asha. 'Thank you. I want to get there myself.'

Mum looked at her for a long moment. Then she laughed, a small surprised laugh, and put the kettle back on.

'You sound like that woman across the road,' she said.

On Monday morning Asha opened her curtains the way she always did, with one hand, already looking across Gull Street.

The window of Oddie's Books & Bits was empty.

Not quite empty. The orange tree was there in its cracked blue pot, and the lace cloth, and the faded card that said SECOND-HAND MAPS 50p. But in the middle, where the three brass legs had stood since before September, there was only a ring of clean wood in the dust. Dividend lay curled inside it. He was asleep. His tail was over his nose.

Asha stood there in her school jumper with one sock on.

She crossed the road without remembering to look, which Mum would have had something to say about. The door was open. It was always open. Mrs Oddie was behind the counter with the lifeguard on its chain and a mug of tea going cold beside Barnaby.

'Where is it?'

Mrs Oddie took her glasses off. She put them back on again.

'A gentleman came yesterday,' she said. 'From out of town. He had a car with a roof box and he was in a hurry for the M5.' She looked down at the till. 'He paid the full price, Barnaby. Didn't even haggle.'

Barnaby said nothing. He was a till.

'You didn't keep it,' said Asha. 'I told you I was nearly there.'

'I never held anything for anyone, love. You know that. I said so on the first day.'

She had said so. Asha remembered it exactly, which made it worse.

Dividend woke up, stretched until he was twice as long, and went back to sleep in the same ring of dust.

At school Asha did not hear a single thing Mr Achebe said about fractions. That night she opened the paying-in book and wrote, very small:

Mon 5 May: telescope sold
Saved: £214.00
Still to go: £26.00

Then she looked at the last line for a long time, and could not think what it was still to go to.