Cassie was lucky with her first shot. She'd been sunbathing, then running naked through the sprinkler to cool down. She balanced her brother's camera on the window-ledge of the shed, and set the timer. Then she stood back, and smiled up at the little lens… The sunlight, reflecting from the warm walls of the shed, dappled onto her bare shoulders and stomach, catching the light on the drops of water still clinging here and there. She looked simply ravishing. A skinny nymph, seven years old.

She took the camera up to her brother's bedroom and plugged it into the keyboard of his computer. Then she downloaded the picture, as she had seen him doing with all his football shots, and looked at herself on the screen. She liked the picture, because by lucky chance, the light had fallen very evenly on her face, and it made her look like a model. Gareth, her brother, had said she should avoid harsh contrasts of light and shade on faces in photos, unless she was trying to get a special effect like a horror film. He was away at college now, and did not know she was using his camera or his computer, but she was a clever girl and could switch it all on and off without help. He used the computer mostly for playing games, but he let her do her homework projects on it and print them out.

This time she printed the photograph out, using some of the photopaper beside his desk. She could see it was a good picture - in focus, with her face looking out rather challengingly from the centre of the frame. She'd managed to get her whole self in, without cutting off the feet, and the details of her wet hair and the drops of water were all perfect. She was still naked and it was cool in the room, so she took the photo outside to the garden to look at it more closely and get warm in the sun again. She thought she might take some more, but the sun had moved round and the perfect lighting for that position by the shed had ebbed away.

She was sitting on the lounger with her towel draped over her, looking round and considering where else she could pose to catch the light, when someone came round by the side of the house and into the garden, someone her Dad knew. It was a man, with a crinkly face, dark eyes, not very tall. 'Hello' he said in a quiet voice. I'm Mr Stoner. Michael Stoner.' You're Cassie, aren't you?' She didn't say anything, but she nodded. So he said, 'Is your Dad in?' and she said 'No, no-one is. They're out shopping' and he said 'Alright then' and was going to go when he asked 'What have you got there?' and she said 'It's a photo I've got of me' and he said 'Can I have a look?' and she said 'Yes' and gave it to him. He said 'It's very good', and she smiled and said 'Thank you. I did it myself with my brother's camera and his computer just now' and he said again 'It's very good' and he looked at her rather carefully and then he said, 'Can you keep a secret?' and she said 'Yes', and he smiled said 'I'd like to buy your photograph - as a secret', and she said 'Is it a present for someone?' and he said 'Yes, that's it' so she said 'OK' and he said 'How much?' and she thought about it and didn't know what to say, so she said 'Fifty pounds', and he said 'OK' and took out his wallet. Then he gave her the money and said '’Have you got any more like this?' and she said 'No but I'm going to take some', and he said he'd pay her for them if they were as good as this, and she said 'OK.' He said, 'You're a clever girl to be able to do all this with the computer.'

Then he went away, and Cassie took the two twenty-pound notes and the ten pound one he had given her and folded them all up into her money box. With her other money left over from her birthday she had fifty-three pounds and twenty-eight pence. She was quite good at adding up, so she was pretty sure she had this right.

She took the next few pictures inside her room, using the flash for some and daylight for others, the way Gareth had shown her before he went to college. She wore her party dress for some of them, and her swimsuit for others. What she had in mind was modelling, and so she also put on some mascara and eyeshadow, and glitter, and lipstick, very carefully, trying not to smudge. Not all the prints were as good as the first one, but after a few days and several different tries, she looked up Michael Stoner's telephone number in her dad's address book and rang him up.

'I've got some more pictures for you,' she said. 'Do you want to come and see them?'

He said, 'It's a bit inconvenient for me just now. I'll tell you what, perhaps you can post them in through my door? You know where I live, don’t you? It's the house with the yellow door, on the corner by the traffic lights. I can get the cash to you later on.' And she said she would. She put them into an envelope and then when her friend Marie came round, and her mother said the two of them could walk together down to the swimming pool, she put the envelope with her swimming things into her beachbag and popped it through his letterbox on their way down to the pool.

'What's that?' said Marie, and Cassie said 'It's some photographs for Mr Stoner,' and Marie said 'What of?' and Cassie said 'Me' and Marie said 'Why, does he like you?' and Cassie said 'I don't know' and Marie said 'Perhaps he'd like some of me too' and then they went swimming. Later, back at Cassie's house, after they had had their supper of fish-fingers and peas, and they were up in Cassie's room 'being good' as they promised her Mum, Cassie said 'Well, come on then, let's take some pictures of you too,' so they did. Marie had some good ideas about posing, and they took pictures of each other and printed them out, and then got a bit rude and took more pictures of each other's bums and teeth and nostrils, and used the automatic timer and had a lot of laughs. They used up quite a lot of paper printing them all out, and put them inside a new envelope from Gareth's desk, one of the ones he used for his football pictures, and then they went back down to Mr Stoner's house and posted them through the door.

The next day, Cassie's mum and dad went out shopping and left her in charge of Darren, who was only three and he was watching telly so she sat and watched with him, and just after Mum and Dad had left, Michael Stoner knocked at the door. Cassie said, 'Dad's out' and he said 'I know, I just saw them going. I brought your money.' And she looked at him, and he said, 'The pictures. They're very good. I don't want all of them, just a few. But I can't pay all that amount for so many. How about twenty quid each?' and Cassie said 'OK'. And he said 'Shake?' so they shook hands and he took some money out of his wallet, put it into the envelope and gave it back to her.

Then he said, 'It's very important we don't tell anyone about this, Cassie. I wouldn't like anyone to know we're doing business like this. It's a lot of money. We ought to keep it private. What do you think?' And she said, 'OK.' And he said, 'Your Dad doesn’t know, does he? You haven't told anyone? Not your Mum?" And she shook her head. And she said, 'Darren's too little. He doesn't know either.' And he smiled at her. 'That's good.'

'Cassie,' he said. 'If I can have some more prints of some of them, I can, you know, sell them for you. Some of my friends like pictures too. I can sell them extra copies like.' And she said 'OK. You'll have to tell me which ones, and how many.' And he said, 'I'll write you out a list.'

Then he said, 'Cassie, your friend, you know, the other little girl, she won't say anything, will she?'

'About the money?' said Cassie. '

'No, about the photos. And the money too, actually,' said Michael Stoner.

'No, I don't think so,' said Cassie. 'We were just having a laugh.'

So Michael Stoner went off, and left Cassie with Darren and the large brown envelope, and she left her little brother watching the TV and went upstairs to see what Mr Stoner had liked and what he had left behind. She counted out the money he had put in there. It came to a hundred and forty pounds. She had to count it a few times to get it right, and then she put the notes in with the other money into her money box. Counting it all up again, she had one hundred and ninety-three pounds and twenty-eight pence. Then she went back downstairs and watched telly with Darren.

During the rest of that summer holiday, she took more pictures, some with Marie and some with her other friends at the open air swimming pool. She printed out some of the shots, the ones they liked, and gave them copies, and she put 'Cassie's Modelling Agency' in coloured letters at the top of each page. She told them, 'These are glamour shots' and they took them home and put them on their bedroom walls. Cassie had read about glamour shots in Hello! magazine which her mother brought home from work sometimes. They all studied the photographs with great care, and improved their posing, and retook a lot of the shots. They compared their photos with ones in different magazines, especially ones of young models, who they copied as well as they could - hairstyles, make-up and poses. They used some of Cassie's Mum's party clothes to dress up in, and borrowed other things from various big sisters.

Cassie printed out copies of the pictures Mr Stoner wanted, and posted them through his door. Sometimes he came out and gave her the money, and once or twice he waited till her parents were out and then delivered it to her house. He told her he really liked best of all the pictures of her with nothing on, taken with the auto-timer, and if she was dancing or lying on her bed that was good too, so she managed to get some quite good shots and he was very pleased with them. He said, 'I'm not good with computers, Cassie, or cameras come to that. I leave all that side of the business to you.'

It was harder when her big brother came home from college, because then she had to wait till he was out to use his computer, but luckily he did go out a lot with all his friends down to play football, and to the pool. He noticed all his envelopes and his photopaper had gone and Cassie had to go and buy some more with her pocket money, and her Mum said 'That's kind of you Cassie,' but Cassie thought it was only right since she had used them all up. Even after she bought the paper and stuff, she still had six hundred and ninety pounds and thirteen pence left in her money box. Gareth also claimed his camera back, and shouted at Cassie for using it. He said, 'What rubbish have you been putting on here?' and pressed DEL ALL, so wiped out all the shots.

One evening, her Dad came in late from playing snooker, and he looked a bit stressed. 'I can't believe it,' he said to her Mum. 'Do you remember Mike Stoner? Sold us the loft-ladder last year? He's been arrested. Turns out he's a pervert. Something about - you know - selling pictures. I don’t understand it, the guy can't read or write. He can't even switch on a computer, let alone surf the net, so how could he be downloading stuff? They were all talking about it at the Club. To think we had him here, in the house. Toe-rag'. Then he noticed Cassie listening by the door and said to her Mum 'Walls have ears' and didn’t say any more.

Cassie thought no more about it. Marie taught her to dive, and they went to the open air pool almost every day, sunbathing, taking packed lunches, meeting other friends. Cassie and her family went off on holiday to Swanage all together, 'maybe for the last time,' said Cassie's Mum, 'now that Gareth is a student. He probably won't want to come with us again.' And Gareth grinned and then promised to show Cassie how to use the nightshots on his camera, and some of the other settings. 'You're really good at this, Cass. You’re lucky being able to learn with these new cameras. You can see what you’ve done straight away. My first camera was an Instamatic,' he said. 'I always had to wait to get the pictures back. But film is dead,' he told her. 'It's all digital now'.