Tao by John Newman

Mimi and I played Monopoly because there was no point in everybody going. Sally still wasn’t back and Kate was worried that she might be completely soaked, but Paul said that it was her own fault and served her right for being so rude.
    Sometimes it seems to me that every house has different rules for Monopoly. If we had played Kate and my rules I would probably have won, but Mimi and Conor had some rules all of their own. So I lost … for the first time ever.
    Firstly, their board had Dublin streets, not London streets.
    Secondly, Mimi bagsed the racing car first, which is my lucky piece that Kate always lets me use, so I got stuck with the top hat, which turned out to be a very unlucky piece.
    Thirdly, Conor and Mimi didn’t let you take loans from the bank when you needed money, even if you promised you would pay it back when you passed Go.
    Fourthly, they showed no mercy. If you couldn’t pay the amount, they NEVER let you off.
    No wonder I was first out. I was really fed up about that.
    “I don’t like your rules,” I said and threw my unlucky top hat back in the box with a clatter.
    “So who do you normally play against, Tao?” asked Conor as he sorted all the money and the houses and the hotels that I had just given him. I had nothing at all left.
    “Kate,” I said.
    “And does she always let you win?” He laughed, throwing the dice.
    “No, she does not!” I answered crossly, and I was glad to see him land on Shrewsbury Road (which is the Irish version of Oxford Street), which Mimi owned and had a hotel on.
    “Yes!” she cried, punching the air. She was the luckiest player I’ve ever seen. She owned about three-quarters of the board and had a big messy mountain of money in a heap in front of her.
    “Cough up the cash, loser,” she said. Conor sighed.
    It was clear that he was going to lose, but it was going to take a while yet. I wandered out into the garden. The rain had stopped and there was even a bit of blue sky opening up. Sally had come back. I had heard her having a shower. Sparkler was asleep in her basket in the kitchen. I walked down to the lake, where the boat was tied up.
    Paul said that he’d take us out fishing in the boat when the rain stopped. Well, the rain had stopped, but he wasn’t here. What was taking them so long anyway, I wondered.
    “They’ve probably gone off and got married,” I said out loud into the wind. Which was a really stupid thing to say, but I didn’t care.
    I climbed into the boat and sat in the middle seat. I wasn’t going to go anywhere – anyway, there were no oars. I just wanted to be on my own for a bit and be grouchy and I liked the way the boat bobbed gently up and down on the water. There was nobody about, so I could talk away out loud to myself.
    “How dare Conor say that Kate lets me win,” I told the lake. “What does he know, anyway? He’s not so good himself. Mimi is going to whup his ass!”
    I liked saying that. “Whup his ass.” I repeated it in my American accent that David says sounds like a drunk Eskimo. As if he knows what a drunk Eskimo sounds like. Anyway, Kalem says they are called Inuits now.
    “And another thing,” I told the sky, “Sally’s right – Kate is not her mother. She’s my mother. But if Kate and Paul want to get married, well, I don’t care. I can just go and live with Dad and Jo and the twins, can’t I?”
    “And Mimi can come and live with us if she likes,” I continued. The wind was strong and there was no one about to hear me. “Or maybe we can go back to China. Even if we have to dig all the way.” Which even though I was cross made me smile as I thought of us popping out of a hole in the middle of China all covered in dirt and all these Chinese people standing on their heads with their mouths dropping open.
    In fact, I wasn’t really as cross as I was trying to be, but it felt good to be complaining out loud.
    Maybe if I hadn’t been complaining so much, I would have noticed that the rope