Tao (9 page)

Downstairs, Kate was sitting at the table, sipping a mug of her herbal tea. She still looked very pale.

“Sorry about that,” she said when I came in, but I didn’t know what she was sorry about. “It’s just that when I opened the door and there was the rat … I mean mouse. And Jo. I felt a bit faint.”

“Are you all right now?” I asked her a bit crossly. She didn’t have to explain everything.

“I hope Jo didn’t think I was rude?” she said.

“I hope she did,” I said and went out into the garden to practise my keepie-uppies.

It was Dad’s fault for not bringing Rodent home himself.

The next day, I was at David’s house with Kalem playing Wii games. They had questions too.

“So what was Mimi like then?” asked Kalem.

“What he really wants to know is what was Emma like,” teased David.

David and I were playing boxing and it was hard to concentrate and answer questions. The best way to win Wii boxing is to throw punches as fast as you can and not bother about defence. We were both boxing like madmen and moving closer and closer to the telly. In a minute one of us was going to end up boxing the box!

After three rounds, we were both exhausted and collapsed on the couch.

“Loser!” said David.

“I’ll beat you at golf,” I told him.

“I’ll beat you at tennis,” he answered.

“I’ll beat you at basketball,” I said.

“I’ll beat you at…”

“Oh, shut up you two!” shouted Kalem, who never plays Wii, “and tell us about your trip and Mimi and all that stuff.”

“Is she taller than you?” David wanted to know.

“No, she’s the same height,” I told him. “Well, I’m probably a bit taller.”

“Yeah, sure you are,” jeered Kalem.

“What about the vampire?” David asked. “Are they bite marks I see on your neck?” And he tried to pull down the collar of my shirt to look.

“Get off,” I cried and pushed him away. “Anyway, Mimi is coming over with her dad in June, so you can find out everything for yourself.”

“Is the vampire coming?” asked David. “We’ll have to get garlic.”

“Sally’s a vegetarian,” I said, “so there goes your vampire theory.”

“That’s just her disguise,” said David, making big boggly eyes. “A vegetarian by day … a blood-sucking vampire by night!”

Kalem sighed and shook his head slowly.

“David,” he said.

“What?” said David.

“You’re an idiot.”

Paul had decided to bring Mimi over to visit me for the long weekend in June. Conor couldn’t come because he had to study for his tests and Sally had to stay in Ireland to look after her garden and her hens, which Mimi said were turning out to be more trouble than they were worth. Their granny and grandad would move into their house to look after them while Mimi and Paul were with us. Mimi said that she was glad she wasn’t staying at home because it was going to be fireworks between her granny and Sally because her granny thought that being a vegetarian was codswallop and young bones needed meat.

“Sounds like war!” said Kate.

I think that Kate was more excited than I was about Paul and Mimi coming over. Every evening she was on the phone to Paul and they would chat for hours.

“I think your mother has taken a shine to this Paul chap,” said Willy with a grin, when I dropped into The Happy Pear on the way home from school.

“Stop that, you!” laughed Kate and waggled her finger at him, but I didn’t see what was so funny.

“Kate,” Willy said, looking through a book of wise sayings that a customer had given him. “What about this one for over the small window –
Happiness is the china shop. Love is the
bull
. It’s by some chap called Mencken.”

“I think I’ll put
you
over the small window if you don’t stop your nonsense,” she said, but you could tell she was enjoying being teased. Since Easter, she had been like this. Silly and embarrassing. I just hoped she behaved herself when Mimi and Paul came.

The week before they arrived was very busy. The whole house had to get a going-over, apparently. Kate had never bothered much with housework before, but now she was like a madwoman. Dusting and hoovering and painting and washing stuff and humming all the time.

“You do know that Mimi is actually coming to see
me
?” I said to her one day.

“Of course, love,” she said and grabbed me for a quick hug and kisses. “That’s why the place has to look its best.”

“Your mum is a serial kisser,” Kalem once told me.

“Do you mean like a serial killer?” asked David with wide eyes.

“Yes,” I agreed gloomily, “only worse.” And they both laughed.

Jo was very curious to meet “the great Mimi in person” as she kept saying, even though Mimi had nothing to do with her. Rachel and Roger had gone completely off their heads with excitement. Charging around shouting, “MIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMI” was now their favourite game.

The Head Honcho wanted to know was she any good at football because he was looking for a new centre-half to replace the very distracted one he now had! Of course, he meant me.

Dad was the only calm one.

“Mimi will be the nervous one,” he said. “It’s an away game for her this time, but it will all be fine, you’ll see.”

I wished I was as sure as he was. What if Mimi didn’t like my house or my friends? What if we didn’t know what to say to each other? What if Kate drove her mad with her hugs?

But Dad just laughed and tousled my hair and called me an old worry-head.

The best thing we did when Paul and Mimi were with us was the land yachts. Kate heard about it from one of the customers and although it was quite a long drive to the beach, it was worth it. Kalem came as well. David had to go to visit someone, which was just as well because there wasn’t room in the car for him.

On the way, Kalem told Mimi all about his latest great invention.

“Square sausages!” he declared. “What do you think?”

“Of what?” she said and looked very puzzled.

“Square sausages are the answer to the age-old problem of the rolling sausage,” said Kalem.

“The rolling sausage?” I interrupted. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

“You know the way when you fry sausages in the pan and you try to turn them to cook all the sides evenly all over and they keep rolling back…”

“Yeah, they do roll!” said Mimi, suddenly excited.

“Well,” said Kalem, “square sausages wouldn’t roll.”

“No, they wouldn’t!” said Mimi, and looked at Kalem like he was some kind of genius.

“Don’t encourage him, Mimi,” I said. “If his head gets any bigger it will burst.”

Kalem just looked smug.

The beach was miles long. I couldn’t even see the end of it and the sand was hard. The sea was grey. At the top of the beach was a hut surrounded by yachts on wheels – the ones that sail along the sand.

Soon we were all sitting in the land yachts with helmets on our heads and the man who rented them out was shouting instructions at us.

“Keep the sail tight by pulling the left-hand rope and when you reach those yellow cones pull the right rope and let the left go slack. That will turn the yacht. Are you listening to me, young one?” he shouted at Mimi, who was staring straight ahead and blowing out her cheeks. She nodded but I don’t think she had listened to a word.

“Right!” shouted Paul, who looked much too big for his yacht. “An ice cream for anyone who beats me!”

“Racing is not permitted,” said the man.

“Oh,” said Paul. “Sorry about that. No racing, you lot – you heard the man.”

But as soon as the man had turned his back and walked a bit away, Paul looked down the line of us in our yachts and mouthed the words, “Race on!”

It was brilliant and scary at the same time. As soon as we raised our sails, the wind caught them and we were off, speeding down the empty beach. Kate and Paul crashed into each other straight away and had to start again. Kalem got off to a flying start. I got off to a slower start, but there was no way he was going to beat me. Mimi was nowhere to be seen, so she must have been behind us.

“Eat your hearts out, losers!” Kalem jeered, but he made a mess of turning around the cone. “Which stupid rope am I supposed to pull?” he shouted as his yacht slowed right down.

My yacht nearly went over as I skidded around the cone on two wheels. I was neck and neck with Kalem now and pulling the rope as hard as I could.

“Hi, Tao,” shouted Paul as he passed me going the other way. Kate was still stuck at the starting line and the man was giving her a push. There was no sign of Mimi, but I wasn’t going to turn my head to look.

“Watch the master in action,” I shouted across to Kalem. Our wheels were nearly touching. It was like the chariot race in
Ben-Hur
.

But he was heavier than me and the sand was a bit softer here.

“See you later, alligator!” I yelled as I pulled past him and crossed the finish line. I loosened the sail and jumped up in the air.

“Well done, Tao!” called out Kalem, who is a much better loser than David.

But the man who owned the yachts was not happy.

“I said that racing was not permitted,” he said. “There could have been a nasty accident with inexperienced drivers like yourselves on board.”

“Sorry,” we mumbled, but we weren’t.

“As for that girl – she ignored all of my instructions,” continued the man crossly, pointing at a land yacht way in the distance. “Will you look at her, halfway down the beach!”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Paul, who had just finished.

Mimi was nearly out of sight. She had obviously forgotten to turn, or forgotten how to turn at the cones, and carried straight on … and on.

“I’ll get her!” I shouted and jumped back into my yacht. I pulled up the sail and zoomed off after Mimi.

“That’s your twin sister all over,” Paul called after me, “never quite gets it right!” And he laughed.

She really was far away and there was no way I was going to catch her before the end of the beach. She looked tiny on her land yacht, her long black hair blowing out from under her blue helmet. But then she must have hit some soft sand because her yacht slowed right down and then it fell over sideways and Mimi fell out.

But in a second she was on her feet, jumping up and down and waving her arms around and yelling. The wind was blowing her voice away, but as I got nearer I could catch what she was shouting.

“I won! I won! I won!”

It was a long time before we got back to the top of the beach. And it had started to rain. Paul put his coat over Kate’s head and Kalem was helping the man push the yachts into a shed.

“Did you not hear me say ‘turn at the yellow cones’, young lady?” the man said to Mimi as we climbed out of the yachts. “I have other customers waiting for these yachts.” Which was hard to believe because the beach was completely empty.

“What yellow cones?” asked a puzzled Mimi. The man just shook his head and everyone else laughed.

The next day, Dad came over to collect Mimi and me and take us back to his house. He came in to say hello to Paul, but with Kate standing there it felt uncomfortable and I was glad when Dad said, “Right Tao, Mimi, let’s go – there are some very excited children in my house waiting to jump all over you.”

He was only half right. Because when we got there, Rachel and Roger suddenly got all shy and hid behind Jo’s legs, sucking their thumbs. I peeped around her legs and said to Roger, “This is Rachel!” and to Rachel I said, “And this is Roger!”

“NO!” shouted the twins and that was the end of their shyness.

It was a noisy evening with a lot of running around the house and shouting and tickling but in the end the twins (Roger and Rachel, not me and Mimi) were tired out and we all sat down together on the couch to watch
Mary Poppins
while Dad and Jo made supper. I was the only one not sucking my thumb.

“She’s a pet,” Jo whispered to me before we left. I said nothing.

Before bedtime I put Rodent in the plastic running ball and Mimi and I crawled around the sitting room while Rodent ran this way and that … wherever the ball rolled. When it crashed into furniture he just darted off in a different direction.

“You’re a looper, Rodent,” said Mimi, when the ball crashed into her face (she was lying on her tummy on the floor). Rodent ignored her, of course, and raced off straight into the leg of the coffee table.

But after a while we forgot about him and watched telly, so neither of us noticed the ball opening and Rodent escaping.

When the programme was over I saw what had happened.

“Where’s Rodent?” I asked, but, of course, Mimi didn’t have a clue. We looked everywhere but he was nowhere to be found.

“He must have got out of the room,” I said. The door was a little bit open.

“Don’t worry, Tao,” said Mimi. “We’ll find him.”

Well, I wasn’t that worried but I was a little bit because he wasn’t in the hall either.

Then we heard Paul in the kitchen.

“Easy does it. Make no sudden movements. And remember to breathe!”

Then we heard Kate giggling nervously.

Mimi put her finger to her lips and pushed open the kitchen door very gently. Through the crack we could see Kate’s back. Paul was sitting in front of her. He saw us and winked but Kate didn’t know we were there. She was sitting very still. Then I saw my mouse on her shoulder, sniffing her neck! I couldn’t believe it. I pushed the door right open and Kate turned her head slowly and smiled at me.