The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.

It was a bright, cold Saturday in March, and Tara had finally saved enough.

She had wanted the headphones since November. They were the kind that blocked out noise, big and soft, in dark green, and they cost a hundred and eighty pounds. She had worked it out on the folded plan in her bag: three Saturdays at the bakery, after the deposit money had gone in. Not deposit money. Her own. Next year she would be living with other people in a flat, if everything went to plan, and she already knew that she could not read at the back table of the café with everyone talking. She wanted to be able to put the headphones on and disappear into a book, anywhere.

She had looked at them in the big electronics shop at the retail park four times. Today she took the bus out there with Danya, who had come for the ride and the cheap doughnuts by the bus stop.

On the bus Danya asked to see the folded plan. He had never seen it properly before. It was soft at the folds now, and covered in pencil. At the top it still said £127.50 a month, every month, for the deposit, underlined twice. Under that, in different pencils from different months, were the other things: gym — no, from September; Sundays — keep, from October; laptop — refurbished, from November; presents — £40, from December. At the bottom, in this week's pencil, it said headphones — £180 — mine.

"You've written down everything," said Danya.

"Since September," said Tara. "Every time I nearly spent money on something, I wrote it down first. It's the only way I can tell what I've actually got."

"Does it work?"

"Mostly," said Tara. "It's very boring. But it means today I know the hundred and eighty is really mine, and not the deposit pretending."

Danya gave her the plan back, and a doughnut, and they got off at the retail park.

The headphones were on the shelf where they always were. She took the box to the till with her heart going a bit fast, the way it does when you are about to spend more money than you have ever spent on one thing.

The man at the till had a name badge that said Mr Obi. He scanned the box and smiled.

"Good choice," he said. "These are excellent. Would you like to protect them?"

He slid a leaflet across the counter. It was blue, with a picture of a shield on it.

THREE YEARS' COVER — £39. NEVER WORRY AGAIN.

"If anything goes wrong with them in the next three years," said Mr Obi, "you bring them back, and we repair or replace them. No questions. A lot of people take it with headphones. They get a lot of use."

Tara looked at the box. She imagined dropping it. She imagined the headband snapping, or one side going silent, the way her old earphones had, in the second week of term. She imagined having saved for three Saturdays and then having nothing.

She felt a small, cold fear about it.

"Can I just ring someone?" she said. "One minute."

"I was going to say yes," Tara said into her phone.

She had stepped away from the till, to the end of an aisle full of printers. Danya was with her, eating a doughnut. On the phone, on speaker, was Redline, who was in Tara's year and marked up everything she signed with a red pen, including permission slips for school trips. Redline was at the café with the others. Tara could hear cups clinking in the background.

"It's thirty-nine pounds for three years," Tara said. "If they break, they fix them. It would be awful if they broke. I've saved for ages. Thirty-nine pounds is nothing, really, for not worrying."

It felt good, saying it. It felt grown-up and careful.

"Never sign anything unread," said Redline, calmly. "Have you got the leaflet?"

"Yes."

"Then before you say yes, read the small print out loud. All of it. And then tell me what you're agreeing to, in your own words."

"It's just a warranty," said Tara.

"Then it won't take long," said Redline.

"Says who it's not just a warranty?" said Danya, with his mouth full.

"Nobody, yet," said Redline. "Read it."

Tara looked at the leaflet. The front said NEVER WORRY AGAIN in big white letters on the blue shield. She had not turned it over.

"How do we know what it covers?" Danya asked.

Nobody knew. That was the problem.

Tara turned the leaflet over. The back was covered in small grey writing, two columns of it.

"Read the small print out loud," said Redline. "Start at the top. Mark it up first, if you've got a pen."

Tara found a pen in her bag. She read it out, slowly, standing between the printers, while Danya held the doughnut bag.

"Cover begins at the end of the manufacturer's twelve-month guarantee and continues for twenty-four months."

"Stop," said Redline. "What does that mean?"

Tara thought about it. "The first year is already covered. By the company that made them."

"So you're paying thirty-nine pounds for years two and three," said Redline. "Not three years. Two. That one's ordinary. Lots of covers work like that. It's just not what the front says. Go on."

Tara underlined it. She read on.

"This plan covers mechanical and electrical breakdown arising from normal use. This plan does not cover loss, theft, or accidental damage, including damage caused by dropping."

She stopped without being asked.

"Not dropping," she said. "That's the main thing I was scared of."

"That one's ordinary. That one isn't," said Redline. "The fault cover is normal. Leaving out dropping and losing them, when that's what most people are afraid of, is the bit to notice. What else?"

"In the United Kingdom, your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are not affected," Tara read.

"Which means," said Redline, "that if they're faulty, the law already says the shop has to put it right. Goods have to be of satisfactory quality. You don't have to pay for that. Read the last bit."

Tara found it at the bottom of the second column, in even smaller writing.

"Approximately one in twenty customers makes a claim under this plan. The average cost of a repair is sixty pounds."

"Huh," said Redline. "They actually print it. Good for them. Hold on, Tomas is here. He'll want that."

Danya leaned over to look. "Thirty-nine pounds is a lot of the price," he said. "Who checked how much?"

Tara did it on her phone. Thirty-nine out of a hundred and eighty.

"About twenty-two per cent," she said. "A fifth."

There was a pause and a scraping of chairs, and then a different voice on the phone, dry and amused. It was Tomas, who did maths at college and carried a twenty-sided dice in his pocket for explaining chance to people who had not asked.

"How surprising is this?" said Tomas. "That's my question. You were scared they'd break. How often does the thing it covers actually happen?"

"One in twenty," said Tara. "It says. One customer in twenty makes a claim."

"Right," said Tomas. "And the repair costs sixty pounds, on average. So, if you could buy the same headphones twenty times, in twenty different worlds, about one of those twenty times you'd need a sixty-pound repair. The other nineteen times, nothing."

"Okay," said Tara.

"So on average, across all twenty," said Tomas, "how much is the fault going to cost you?"

Tara frowned. She did it in her head. Sixty pounds, once, spread across twenty. "Three pounds," she said.

"Three pounds," said Tomas. "That's what the risk is worth. Sixty pounds times one in twenty. And they're charging thirty-nine."

Tara stood very still in the printer aisle.

"Real things are noisy," said Tomas. "You might be the one in twenty. That's real. But look at it from the shop's side. Twenty people like you buy the cover. Twenty times thirty-nine pounds is seven hundred and eighty pounds. One of them claims. They pay out sixty. They keep seven hundred and twenty."

"That's..." said Tara.

"That's a business," said Tomas. "Not a crime. It just means the cover is priced so the shop wins, on average, by a lot. That's what it's for."

"How surprising is this if nothing's going on?" Danya asked the phone, in a Tomas voice, and Tomas laughed.

"Very unsurprising," he said. "Shops sell this cover because it's one of the things they make the most money on. Not because headphones break all the time."

There was more scraping, and then Devon's voice, slow and thoughtful. Devon answered almost every offer with a question about Sundays.

"What does it cost you?" said Devon. "Thirty-nine pounds. What's the next-best thing you'd give up?"

Tara knew that one. "It's most of a Saturday," she said. "At the bakery I get sixty-three pounds seventy-five a Saturday. So it's most of a whole day of work."

"Say what you'd be swapping, then," said Devon. "Most of a Saturday, for what?"

"For not worrying," said Tara.

"Not worrying about what, exactly?" said Devon. "You read it out. It doesn't cover dropping them. It doesn't cover losing them on a train, which, if I know you, is what will actually happen. It covers them breaking by themselves in the second or third year. And if that happens, what's the worst case?"

"A sixty-pound repair," said Tara.

"Could you pay sixty pounds, if you had to? Not happily. But could you?"

Tara thought about it. It would be horrible. It would be another Saturday. But yes. She could.

"Then that's the swap," said Devon. "Thirty-nine pounds now, for sure, against a small chance of sixty pounds later, which you could survive. Every yes is a no to something. The thing you'd really be sad about, losing them, isn't in the deal at all."

"Hm. So I shouldn't buy it," said Tara.

"I didn't say that," said Devon. "I said that's the swap. Not in money. In Saturdays. You decide."

Tara walked back to the till slowly. Mr Obi was waiting, patiently, with the box in a bag and the card reader on the counter.

"Everything all right?" he said.

"Can I ask you something?" said Tara. "Honestly. Do you think I need it?"

Mr Obi did not look offended. He looked as if he had been asked before.

"Honestly? Some people do, some people don't," he said. "The cover's real. If you claim, we pay. I've seen people come back with headphones that went silent on one side after eighteen months, and they were very glad they had it. And some people just don't want to think about it, ever. They pay so they don't have to worry. For them, that's worth thirty-nine pounds. That's not silly. Worry costs something too."

It was the strongest version of his argument, and he believed it.

Tara's phone buzzed. It was her mum, who had seen the photo Tara had sent from the bus.

Ooh, are you getting the cover? I always do. The washing machine one paid out two hundred pounds when the drum went. Best thing I ever bought.

Tara read it twice. Her mum was not wrong either. A washing machine was much more expensive to fix than headphones. And her mum had needed it.

Danya was looking at the leaflet over her shoulder.

"How do we know the one in twenty is true, though?" said Danya. "They printed it. It's their number. Who checked it?"

Nobody answered, because nobody could.

"Let me listen first," Tara said, to nobody in particular, when Danya started to argue with the leaflet.

She had thought, at the till ten minutes ago, that the question was whether she would be sad if the headphones broke. And she would be. That part had not changed. But now there were other questions. What did the cover actually cover? What did she already have, for free, from the maker and the law? How likely was the thing she was afraid of? How big would it be, if it happened? Could she survive it? And what was most of a Saturday worth to her, right now, with the deposit to save for?

She looked at the leaflet in her hand, with her underlining on the back.

"I think we missed something," Tara said. "Losing them. That's what I was really scared of. And that isn't even in it."

Mr Obi held out the card reader. The total on the screen said a hundred and eighty pounds. Under it, a little box was flashing: Add 3-year cover — £39? with a YES and a NO.

On the counter in front of Tara were the headphones in their bag, and the blue leaflet, turned over, with years 2 and 3 only and not dropping underlined in pen. There was the number Tomas had worked out, three pounds, and the number the shop charged, thirty-nine. There was Devon's question, most of a Saturday, for what?, and Redline's, what are you agreeing to, in your own words? There was her mum's message about the washing machine, and Mr Obi saying worry costs something too.

Mr Obi waited.

"Would you like the cover?" he asked.

 

 

(Write what Tara says to Mr Obi at the till.)

 

The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.

Back on the Green

That afternoon Lan, who was seven, bought a balloon at the fair on the Green for a pound.

The man said she could have a special clip for twenty pence, so it would never blow away.

Lan asked Danya if she should get it. Danya asked her how often balloons blew away.

Lan thought about it. She said hers had blown away once, when she was five, and never again since, because now she held on tight.

She said she would hold on tight, and kept the twenty pence for a lolly.

Afterword. The idea in this case is expected value: what a chance is worth on average is how likely it is, times how big it would be. A one-in-twenty chance of a sixty-pound repair is worth about three pounds, so a cover priced at thirty-nine pounds is priced for the seller to come out well ahead, which is why shops offer it. That does not make cover always a bad idea. Insurance makes most sense for losses you could not afford to bear, like a house, a car or a big repair, and least sense for losses you could survive. Before you buy any cover, read the small print out loud, find out what you already have from the maker and the law, and check whether it covers the thing you are actually afraid of. You can practise weighing chances by their size in InferForge, and adding up what a choice really costs in LedgerQuest.