Mr Mean owns the car wash. He is a walrus. He wears red braces and he has a face like a wet Monday.

Mr Mean has a dog, as well. Very old. Sleeps in a bucket. And this is the main thing you need to know about him. Say it with me.

He growls at bubbles.

Ava: “At BUBBLES, Louis. They are not even solid.”
Louis: “He is about nine hundred. Let him growl.”

On Saturdays Louis works here with his two green buckets, and Ava comes along, mostly to talk, which she is extremely good at.

The dog has a chew toy. It used to squeak. It has not squeaked since roughly March, and a chew toy with no squeak left in it is, to a dog, just a small sad shape.

So he has moved on to a sponge. Louis's sponge. Louis has feelings about this.

Louis: “That is the fourth sponge.”
Mr Mean: “He likes the yellow ones.”

Mr Mean then paid Louis, which he always does in the end, after a sigh, as though coins had been somebody else's idea.

Ava has three coins. They have been sitting on her band all week with a plan already attached, and the plan is a bag of sherbet twists on Budget Bend, which costs three, which is all of them.

Also on Budget Bend, in the window, hanging on a hook. A chew toy. Bright green. Two coins. It squeaks if you so much as look at it.

And Ava's feet stopped. You have to understand about Ava's feet. They do not stop. They idle. Yours probably do something else entirely. Mine do nothing, because I have not got any.

Behind them, in his bucket, the old dog carried on doing his one trick.

He growls at bubbles.

Ava: “Louis. It is TWO COINS.”
Louis: “It is not our dog.”
Ava: “It is nobody's dog on a Saturday. He is basically staff.”

Nobody has asked Ava for anything. Mr Mean has not asked. The dog has certainly not asked. The dog is asleep in a bucket with his sponge and his day is going fine.

Three coins. Sherbet twists cost three. A squeak costs two. And keeping all three exactly where they are costs nothing at all, which is a real answer too.

Three coins, and three different afternoons hiding inside them. Ask the grown-up next to you which one they can hear best.

Tap. Tap. Pause.