Every summer, the Marlows went to the sea. It wasn’t far. You just walked to the end of the road.
But that year there was a storm. It rained for three days, and on the third night half the hill slid down, and in the morning there was a mountain of mud and stones where the end of the road used to be.
A man from the council came and looked at it. He sucked his teeth.
“Spring,” he said. “Maybe.”
Mum looked at the mountain. Then she went to the shed and came back with a bucket.
“It’s only earth,” she said. “We’ll carry it up and over, and tip it down the far side.”
Dad got a bucket. Joe, who was ten, got a bucket. Pip, the very small star, rode on Dad’s shoulder and gave directions. And Dot, who was four, stood in her yellow wellies and held out her hands.
There were no more buckets that Dot could lift. So Mum gave her a spoon.
“A spoon?” said Joe. “That won’t do anything.”
Dot took a spoonful of earth, carried it all the way up and over, and tipped it down the far side. It took a long time. Nothing happened to the mountain.
She did it again the next day. And the next. On the fourth day, she sat down on the step.
“My spoon doesn’t count,” she said.
Dad didn’t say anything. He went and got some chalk, and he drew one line on the garage door for every trip anybody had made. Everybody’s trips, buckets and spoons.
“That’s not fair,” said Joe. “A spoon’s not the same as a bucket.”
“How many spoons are in a bucket?” said Dad.
So they found out. Dot filled Joe’s bucket with her spoon, and Joe counted. It took forty spoons.
Then they counted Dot’s trips. It turned out that she was only a bit behind Dad, who had a bad back and kept stopping for tea. Dot looked at the door for some time. Then she got her spoon.
Summer went by, one trip at a time. Some days Mum was at work. Some days Dad’s back hurt. In August Joe got a cold and stayed in bed for a week, feeling sorry for himself. There was one whole wet Tuesday when nobody went up the mountain at all, except for one small person in yellow wellies.
And the chalk lines went all the way along the garage door, and round the corner, and along the fence.
Then, one evening, Joe came down from the top and said, “I can smell it.”
They all went to look. There was hardly any mountain left. There was just a low bank of earth across the road, and through the top of it came a smell of salt and seaweed.
Mum dug. Dad dug. Joe dug. And then the bank was as thin as a wall, and then as thin as a plank. Mum stopped, and looked round, and held out her hand for somebody.
Dot came forward with her spoon.
She dug it in, and lifted out one spoonful. And there, through a gap no bigger than a spoon, was a tiny blue piece of the sea.
They walked down to it that same night, all together, still holding their buckets.
“I told you,” said Dot.
Which she hadn’t. But nobody minded, because mountains, it turns out, are made of spoons.