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guy.’
    ‘If you must know, my mum made me wear it. Why this way anyway?’
    ‘My instinct about these things says this way.’
    ‘You tossed a coin more like.’
    ‘Seventh rule of being a private eye: when faced with only two possibilities, both of which are hopeless, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to agonise over the decision.’
    ‘Rule number seven.’
    ‘I hope you’re writing these down.’
    ‘I’m sure rule number seven was something else.’
    ‘If you wrote them down you’d know.’
    ‘So this is Sospan’s brilliant idea.’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘Are you sure you heard him right?’
    ‘I made him repeat it three times. He said to look for a sleeping gull.’
    ‘You could have misheard.’
    ‘If you can think of something that sounds like that we’ll start looking. But it has to be something you’d be likely to find at the seaside.’
    ‘Seeping hull.’
    ‘That’s good but I don’t think he said that.’
    ‘But you’re not sure.’
    ‘He said sea gulls always eat ice cream that’s melted on the pavement, it’s part of the evolution of their foraging habits, like foxes coming to the edge of towns to scavenge from litter bins.’
    ‘Polar bears do that too. In some parts of the world.’
    ‘Well, there you are, you see. They also scavenge from the bin next to an ice-cream van. Sure as eggs, he said, if the
gelati
man was using drugged ripple you’d get snoozing birds everywhere.’
    ‘Well, I don’t see any. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sea gull asleep, have you?’
    ‘No, but then I’ve never looked. And they must do it, I can’t believe they never go to sleep.’
    ‘Albatrosses can stay out at sea for seven years without ever touching dry land.’
    ‘They sleep on ships.’
    The ground was spongy like a mattress, pools of water formed around our shoes wherever we stepped. We continued to walk, without heart or belief in our quest. After half an hour of aimlessly squelching about, Calamity spotted a gull. It was sitting in the gutter of the peat cutter’s cottage. And after a couple of minutes squabbling during which I was forced to pull rank, I gave Calamity a ‘bunk up’ and she peered at the fat grey bird that gave all the signs of being asleep in the gutter. Then shepoked it and it produced a beak that was vaguely s-shaped from within its feathers, made an angry sound and snapped at Calamity. She squealed and fell backwards and I took a step back to counterbalance her fall and she stood on me like a trapeze artist and we stood there wavering like Laurel and Hardy at the circus. And then the sun found a hole in the clouds and drenched the wet landscape with liquid silver. The roof of the peat cutter’s cottage flashed like a heliograph, sequins littered the grass, and beyond the hills of Aberdovey the crescent of a rainbow appeared, sharply outlined against the still brooding clouds.
    ‘Looking for eggs?’ said a voice from behind me.
    I tried to turn but the jittery movement above my head as Calamity struggled to maintain her balance made me stop. The owner of the voice walked round and stood in front of me and I squinted down at a girl of about fifteen or sixteen. She was wearing wellingtons and a navy blue gaberdine mac buttoned at the throat. On her head she wore the distinctive chimney hat with the yellow ‘W’ insignia of the Waifery. Bright blond hair fell from beneath the brim down to her shoulders smearing the wetness of her coat like a dusting of pollen on a bee’s wing.
    ‘We’re looking for a sleeping gull,’ I said.
    ‘That’s a funny thing to be doing in the rain.’
    ‘Pretty funny in the dry as well.’
    ‘Rain’s worse. Although I like it really, but it’s hopeless for looking for things.’
    ‘We’re doing it for a bet.’
    ‘Oh I see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one asleep.’
    ‘We were saying the same thing.’
    She reached out her hand to shake, and then realising that I couldn’t take the hand stopped the motion