Dog Walks and Seaweed

Halfway along Gull Street, the spaniel sat down.

He did not lie down, which would at least have been restful. He simply planted his bottom on the pavement outside the launderette and looked at the sea with the air of a dog who had seen it before and was not impressed.

'He does this,' said Jonah. He was wearing his dad's old cagoule, the orange one that came down to his knees, although the sky was clear and the wind off the harbour only smelled faintly of chips. 'Biscuit, come on. Walkies. Good walkies.'

Biscuit yawned.

Asha held the lead because Jonah had said she could, and because she wanted to know what it felt like to be paid. So far it felt like holding a rope tied to a sack of potatoes.

'How much do you get for this?' she said.

Jonah dug in his cagoule pocket and pulled out a card. It had been laminated so many times it was nearly bulletproof. In his best felt-tip it said:

PIKE'S PAWS
One walk: £3
Four walks: £10
All weathers!!

'Why three?' said Asha.

'Mr Okafor on Cliff Road charges twelve, but he's got a van and he takes them up the downs for two hours.' Jonah crouched and offered Biscuit a treat from a crinkly bag. Biscuit stood up at once. 'I only go round the harbour and back. Half an hour. So I'm cheaper, but I'm closer, and old Mrs Tremayne can't do the hill any more, so it's that or Biscuit eats her slippers.'

'And four for ten?'

'People like a deal.' He shrugged. 'And then I know they'll book me again. Four walks means four Saturdays, guaranteed.'

Asha worked it out without meaning to. Four walks at £3 would be £12. He was giving away £2 to make sure of the other £10.

Biscuit trotted three steps, smelled a lamppost and sat down again.

Jonah gave him another treat.

'How much are those?' said Asha.

'Dunno,' said Jonah. 'Pound-something a bag.'

On Sunday afternoon the kitchen table stopped being a table.

Asha had covered it in last week's Hollins Bay Herald, then a layer of kitchen roll, then the seaweed. She had collected it that morning from the rock pools below the harbour wall in Kit's old sand bucket. There was red stuff as fine as hair, a green frilly piece like lettuce, and a brown strand with little bobbles that popped if you pressed them. She had pressed three before she remembered not to.

The kitchen smelled of low tide. Mum had opened the back door and said nothing, which was worse than saying something.

Asha floated each piece in a mixing bowl of water, slid a sheet of white card underneath and lifted it out slowly, so the fronds spread like they were still swimming. Then kitchen roll on top. Then newspaper. Then the heaviest books in the house: Mum's nursing manual, the road atlas and A Field Guide to British Birds, which Kit said was for seagull emergencies.

'I'm helping,' said Kit.

He was not helping. He was sitting on the counter eating salt and vinegar crisps from a family bag and narrating.

'Seagulls can drink seawater,' he said. 'They've got a special gland. It squirts the salt out of their noses.'

'Lovely.'

'You should put that on a bookmark.'

Asha laid the green frilly piece down very carefully. It was the best one. It looked like a tiny tree in a storm.

Kit leaned over to admire it, and a crisp fell out of the bag. It landed on a drying sheet, right beside the frilly tree, and sat there, curled and orange and glistening.

Before Asha could say a word, Kit picked it up and ate it.

'Kit, that sheet was in a bowl of harbour water.'

Kit chewed thoughtfully. A wet patch spread across the card where the crisp had been, and the frilly tree slid gently out of shape.

'Tastes the same,' he said. 'Bit more beachy.'

The bookmarks were ready the following Saturday. There were nine good ones and two that looked like something a gull had coughed up. Asha laid the nine out on Mrs Oddie's counter in a row, like cards in a magic trick.

Dividend got up from the window, walked the length of the counter and lay down on top of them.

'He approves,' said Mrs Oddie. She lifted the lifeguard to her nose and peered at the frilly green one, which had dried into a slightly different tree but still a tree. 'What are you asking, Miss Mistry?'

'One pound fifty.' Asha had practised this in the mirror. 'The paper ones by the postcards are a pound, and mine are real seaweed from real Hollins Bay, so they're worth more.'

'Quite right. And what will you pay me?'

Asha blinked. 'Pay you?'

'For the counter.' Mrs Oddie patted the polished wood. 'Barnaby and I have been looking after this spot for thirty years. Tourists stand exactly here, with their purses open, while I wrap their Agatha Christies. That is worth something. I was thinking fifty pence.'

'Fifty! That's a third of it.'

'Is it?'

Asha did the sum on her hand. It was not a third, but it felt like one. 'Ten pence.'

'Thirty.'

'Fifteen, and I'll dust the top shelf where the spiders are.'

Mrs Oddie looked at Barnaby as if consulting him. 'She drives a hard bargain, Barnaby. Twenty pence, and the spiders.'

They shook on it over the cat.

Asha opened the green paying-in book and wrote it out properly, the way Mrs Oddie liked.

Card: 10p
Laminating pouch: 35p
Ribbon: 15p
Cost to make: 60p

Sell for: £1.50
Take away cost: £1.50 − 60p = 90p
Take away counter: 90p − 20p = 70p

'Seventy pence,' she said. It had looked bigger before she wrote it down.

'Seventy pence that wasn't there on Thursday,' said Mrs Oddie.

Asha looked at the nine bookmarks under Dividend's stomach and multiplied. Six pounds thirty. She looked at the clock above the door. It had taken her most of a Sunday.

'Six hours,' she said. 'Nearly. For six pounds thirty.'

She wrote it under the rest, because the paying-in book seemed to expect it.

Time: 6 hours
£6.30 ÷ 6 = £1.05 an hour

'A pound and five pence an hour,' said Asha. 'Jonah gets three pounds for half an hour.'

'Jonah has a dog to do the hard part.' Mrs Oddie let the lifeguard drop on its chain. 'The second batch is always quicker. Ask any baker. Ask Barnaby. He took a week to learn my name.'

Asha was still deciding whether that counted as an answer when a woman in a red anorak came in out of the drizzle, shaking her hood. She smelled of chips and wet wool. She bought a battered copy of Murder on the Links, and while Mrs Oddie wrapped it in brown paper, she looked down at the counter.

The cat had moved. The frilly green tree lay right on top.

'Oh, that's gorgeous,' said the woman. 'Is that real? My sister in Leeds would love that. She's never seen the sea. Well, she has, but only at Scarborough, and she says that doesn't count.'

'It's real Hollins Bay,' said Asha. Her voice came out higher than she meant. 'From the rock pools. One pound fifty.'

The woman counted it out in coins: a pound, a twenty, a twenty and a ten. Mrs Oddie pressed the big brass key, and Barnaby's drawer shot out with a ting so loud that Dividend opened one eye.

'There,' said Mrs Oddie to the till. 'Our first.'

When the woman had gone, Mrs Oddie took twenty pence out of the drawer and slid the rest across the counter. One pound thirty. Asha held it in her fist until the coins went warm.

That evening she dropped seventy pence into the SAVE jar, one coin at a time, and opened the book.

Sat 12 Oct: bookmark sold, profit 70p
Left to save: £212.60 − 70p = £211.90

Eight bookmarks left. A sister in Leeds who had never really seen the sea.

Before bed, Asha checked the window catch twice.