Tao (5 page)

David went quiet for a minute, but then another hare-brained idea rushed into his head and he had to blurt it out. “Maybe she is just pretending to be your sister. She claims that she’s your sister … to get all your money. In your will! You’d better be careful, Tao. This Mimi could be a very clever con artist.”

David was very pleased with himself for working all this out, so it was disappointing for him when I said, “What money? I don’t have any money.”

Kalem just sneered at him and said David was watching too much rubbish on television and he should get his head examined.

I had to turn off the phone in school or else have it confiscated and I suppose that it was the same for Mimi because when I turned it back on after school there was only one text with a photo of a big bottom.

I wished I had been brave enough to photo my teacher Mrs Piggott’s bottom, but if I had been caught my phone would have been confiscated for a week.

“That’s one big bum!” said David when I showed him the pic.

“Even Mrs Piggott couldn’t compete with that,” I agreed and we both laughed.

My phone went again when I was walking home with Kalem and David.

Kalem and David stopped to look at the photo of Emma. Kalem looked at the photo for quite a long time, until David started teasing him saying that he fancied Emma. I was really glad that we had arrived outside The Happy Pear because I was getting sick of the two of them.

“See you tomorrow,” I called and ran in to find Kate. Kate usually stops work when I arrive after school and we walk the rest of the way home together.

Before we headed home, I sent Mimi pics of The Happy Pear and of Willie juggling oranges. Then my credit ran out, but Kate said she would buy me more as it was important to show Mimi a slice of my life.

Mimi must have had lots of credit because for the rest of the day texts with pics attached kept on coming. She sent me pics of her dog, Sparkler, her bedroom and her Aunt M (who looked very pregnant).

she wrote.

She sent a pic of her grandad’s car. She called it the jalopy. Her grandad was standing beside it. I don’t know who looked older – the jalopy or the grandad. Her grandmother was very fat but she looked jolly. There was someone called Nicholas on a motorbike but he was hard to see because of his helmet. And lots more that I can’t remember.

I sent her a pic of me holding Rodent but you could hardly see him because Kate took the pic and she stood miles away.

“Use the zoom,” I said, but Kate couldn’t work that out at all.

I texted her and pushed “send”.

Mimi texted back,

So I sent her another one of Rodent in his cage and a pic of my bedroom and my house and my garden and I texted her about Rachel and Roger and said that I would send her pics of them tomorrow when I saw them.

That night when I went to bed, Kate rang Mimi’s dad and they talked for a long time. I could only make out a few words here and there because it was so windy outside. I didn’t really care anyway. I was too tired and there were too many thoughts in my head. I texted Mimi,

and she texted me,

and suddenly I felt glad that Mimi was my sister, even though I hadn’t even met her.

“I think that you’re going to like her,” I told Rodent as I slipped him back into his cage. He made straight for his wheel. Night-time was clearly exercise time for my mouse, but I fell asleep straight away.

Kate and Mimi’s dad, Paul, made all the arrangements so that Mimi and I could finally meet up.

The plan was that Dad and I would fly over to Dublin together at Easter, which was only two weeks away, so that he could meet Mimi and her family. Dad would only stay a day because he had already arranged to go on a golfing trip to Scotland, which Kate said showed exactly where his priorities lay. We would stay in a hotel because Dad said that it would be too much too soon to stay in Mimi’s house, even though her dad said that it was perfectly all right by him. Kate said that we were being downright rude not staying with them. But Dad had made up his mind, so that was that.

Then I would stay for two nights on my own with Mimi’s family (which secretly really scared me), until Kate flew over to collect me and she would stay for the Easter weekend before we flew home again. Kate would stay in their house as well, because she had no intention of insulting the Roches by refusing their kind invitation. Willy would just have to manage The Happy Pear on his own!

“So are you very excited to be seeing Mimi at last?” Jo asked me a week before going.

She shouldn’t have said the Mimi word because Roger heard her and started shouting, “MIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMI…” like a machine gun and then Rachel joined in, “MIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMI…” and they both charged around the kitchen table with their arms out like aeroplanes.

“Because,” Jo shouted, with her hands over her ears, “if you are even half as excited about Mimi as these two … then you are overexcited!”

Actually I was more terrified than excited, but I wasn’t going to tell
her
that. What if Mimi didn’t like me … or I didn’t like her? Kate said that that wasn’t very likely because we were getting on so well by text, but text isn’t the same as real life and any time that we had actually talked on the telephone, it had been awkward and we hadn’t known what to say to each other. Kate said that that was just shyness and perfectly understandable.

“Twins have a special connection,” Jo continued even though I hadn’t said a word. “Just look at Rachel and Roger. They are like peas in a pod. Even when they are asleep they both curl up the same way and both suck their thumb on one hand and twist their hair with their little finger on the other hand. You’ve seen them, Tao, haven’t you?”

Of course I had seen them both asleep but I didn’t bother answering her, just pretended I was dead interested in the stupid show that was on the TV. She was right though – if you didn’t know the twins, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. But Mimi and I had been separated almost since birth and lived in different families and even in different countries.

“Well?” she said, because sometimes she just won’t give up.

“Kate says I talk gobbledygook in my sleep but I bet Mimi doesn’t,” I told Jo because sometimes I forget that I hate her.

She laughed at that.

I nearly told her that Mimi often talks gobbledygook when she’s awake, but I didn’t. Yesterday, she texted me that although Sally might look black, she is really green. That was complete gobbledygook to me.

It seemed that all anyone could talk about was Mimi this and Mimi that. When I worked in The Happy Pear on Saturday morning, even the customers knew about her.

“So, young man,” Mrs Crowe said as I weighed her broccoli, “Willy tells me that you have recently acquired a twin. A girl twin, no less! You must be a very excited young man indeed.” She pinched my chin and clucked like a hen. I hate it when adults do that but mostly I hate the way Willy can’t keep his big mouth shut.

“Willy, you are one big big-mouth,” I told him, “blabbing about my private life to everybody that steps inside the shop.”

“Ah, Tao,” he answered with a pretend sad face, “don’t be like that. The customers have a right to know, after all.”

“No, they don’t!” I said crossly, but he just laughed. He had even written another Willyism under the window especially for me.

In the cookie of life, a sister is the chocolate chip
.

“Where did you get that one from, Lionman?” I asked him when I had read it.

“Tao,” he drawled in his pretending-to-be-hurt voice, “big cats have big thoughts.”

“Copy cats, you mean?” I teased him.

Willy grabbed me and put my head in an armlock. He squashed a twenty-euro note into my mouth, so that I could buy him something nice in Ireland. Then he let me go.

“Don’t eat it, Mouse,” he said as I took the note out of my mouth and tried to flatten it. “That’s the money they use in Ireland.”

“It looks like Monopoly money,” I said, turning it over in my hand.

“Well, give back then!” said Willy, and tried to grab it but I was too quick for him this time.

David helped me prepare for the trip by talking in an Irish accent … all the time. He was driving me mad.

“Begob Tao, ye’ll be thanking me when ye go over der to de land of de leprechaun ’cos, begob boy, dey shure talk funny over der,” he told me.

“That’s a rubbish Irish accent,” I laughed. “Mimi doesn’t sound anything like that.”

“Well, boy,” he laughed, “dat’s ’cos de gurl is Chinese-Irish.”

Kalem sighed loudly and shook his head.

“In Ireland, they wouldn’t call you an idiot, David,” he said.

“What would they call me?” asked David suspiciously.

“They’d call you an eejit.”

Even the Head Honcho had something to say.

“Give my regards to U2 when you go to Ireland,” he told me, which really made no sense.

“Who to?” I said.

“U2. Bono. Adam. The Edge.”

I do wonder about the Head Honcho. Is he sane?

“OK,” I said, because sometimes it is safer to agree.

“And Father Ted if you see him,” he shouted after me and laughed loudly.

On Saturday, I took Rodent over to Jo’s house. She was going to mind him while I was in Ireland. I wasn’t too pleased about that, but Kalem couldn’t take him because his mum would have a fit if he brought a mouse into the house and David was going away for Easter too.

Before I took him over, I tried to explain to Rodent that it would only be for a few days.

“Robert and Rachel can be a bit hyper,” I told him and tickled his fat little tummy, “so just hide in your straw. But if Jo bothers you, bite her.”

The twins were very excited about having a mouse to stay over and I was afraid they would terrify poor Rodent, but Jo made them stand back from the cage when I put it on the table.

“May I hold him?” she asked me straight away, which surprised me so much I just nodded. She opened the cage door and put her hand straight in. Kate would have fainted. Jo left her hand very still in the cage with her palm up for a few minutes while Rodent sniffed about and then, I could hardly believe it, he climbed onto her hand!

“I used to have gerbils when I was your age,” she said as she lifted Rodent out of the cage. “He’s a friendly little fella, isn’t he?” she smiled.

“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t sure how happy I was that he went to her so easily. Robert had come over now and she was showing him how to pet Rodent very gently. Rachel still hung back, but she was very curious.

Dad had stepped into the kitchen. “Your mouse will be in good hands here,” he told me. “Jo has a way with animals. Don’t you, love?” he said to her.

“Kate is getting used to him,” I said.

“Yeah, well…” he muttered.

“Here. You take him,” Jo said then, and passed Rodent into my hands. “Rachel can help me fill up his food tray.”

Before I left with Dad on Sunday morning, Kate put ten herbal anti-stress drops on my tongue to keep me calm. She made me promise to ring her as soon as I had arrived and told me a hundred times that there was nothing for me to be nervous about. That everything was going to work out just fine.

“Now, don’t be silly about coats,” she told me. “It’s always raining in Ireland.”

“I won’t be silly about coats,” I told her.

“And if you are upset in any way, or feel sick, or maybe don’t like the food or there’s anything at all that doesn’t feel right, then you must tell Mimi’s father straight away … or ask to ring me. But that won’t happen, I’m sure.”

“I won’t get upset,” I told her.

“Of course you won’t,” she said. “I just know that you are going to have a great time … and that’s why I’m not one bit worried about you and anyway I’ll be there in just a few days’ time…” And then she hugged me again so tightly that I was nearly crushed.