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The Other Side of the Page: The Evening of the First Roll

The children's book, The Game Lan Always Won (ages 6-8), on Spark & Anvil

This is the same Sunday evening as "The Game Lan Always Won", the first book of "The Fair on the Green". Lan's mother was not at the fair.

She had been up since half past four.

The supermarket bakery started at five, and on Sundays it was her and one other person and the big ovens, and by the time the doors opened at ten the shelves had to be full of loaves and rolls and the cheap croissants people bought in fours. She liked the work, mostly. She liked the hour before anyone came in, when the ovens ticked and the whole back of the shop smelled of bread and it was just her and the radio. But by Sunday evening her feet hurt and her shoulders hurt and her patience had gone somewhere and not come back.

The fair was on the Green that weekend. She had heard it from the bus stop, the music from the hoopla and somebody shouting through a loudhailer. She knew Lan had gone with Inkling, the girl from the lake houses, because Lan had told her four times that she was going, and promised four times to be back by six.

She was back by six. Her mother heard the front door bang, and Lan's voice in the hall, high and quick, and then a gap, and then Tí, who was four, beginning to cry.

By the time she got to the front room, it was in full flow.

Tí was on the floor beside the race game, the cheap one with the cardboard track and the plastic pieces, and he was crying the way four-year-olds cry when they have decided the universe is unjust: completely, with his whole body, past the point of being able to say why. Lan was standing over him with her arms folded.

"I didn't do anything," said Lan. "We were just playing."

"She always wins," said Tí, between sobs. "She always, always wins."

Lan's mother knew this game. She had refereed it twenty times. Lan went first, because Lan always went first, and Lan rolled harder and moved faster and counted out loud so that nobody could argue, and Tí, who could barely count to six, lost, and cried, and someone had to sort it out.

She stood in the doorway for a moment, coat still on, and looked at them both. Lan was seven and fierce and quick, and she loved her brother, and she also loved winning more than almost anything in the world. Tí was four and adored his sister and followed her everywhere, and lost to her at everything, and kept coming back for more, which their mother thought was either the bravest or the most foolish thing about him. She had never been able to decide which.

She thought about her own sister, who was older, and who had beaten her at cards every Christmas for fifteen years until one year, quite suddenly, she hadn't. She had never known whether her sister had let her win that Christmas. She had never asked. She found, standing in the doorway, that she still wanted to know.

She opened her mouth. She had the sentence ready. She had used it before. Lan, you're older, you have to let him win sometimes. It was the fastest way to the end of the evening. It would stop the crying and start a different argument, a sulkier one, but a quieter one, and then she could sit down.

She got as far as "Lan, you're," and then she was simply too tired to finish.

So she sat down on the arm of the sofa instead, and said nothing at all.

For a minute nobody said anything. Tí cried a bit less. Lan looked at her mother, waiting for the rest of the sentence. It did not come.

And into that gap, Lan did something her mother had not seen before.

She knelt down on the carpet beside her brother. She picked up both plastic pieces and put them back at the start of the track, side by side. Then she looked at the die in her hand for a moment, and her mother saw her put it down in the middle of the board, exactly halfway between them.

"One die," said Lan. "For both of us. And the one who lost the last game rolls first." She pushed it towards Tí. "That's you. You lost. So you go first."

Tí stopped crying. He looked at the die with suspicion.

"I go first?"

"You go first," said Lan.

He rolled a five. He moved five, counting the squares with his finger and getting it slightly wrong, and Lan did not correct him. Lan rolled a two. Tí rolled a four. Lan rolled a six and went past him and Tí's lip began to wobble, and then he rolled another five and caught her up, and then, two rolls later, he got to the end of the track by a single square and shouted so loudly that the neighbour's dog started barking.

"Again!" said Tí.

"You lost," said Lan to herself, not unhappily. "So I go first."

They played four games. Tí won two and Lan won two, and every game was close, and Tí laughed so much during the last one that he got hiccups. At half past seven his mother carried him to bed, still hiccupping, still talking about the square he had won by.

When she came back down, Lan was putting the game away.

"Where did that come from?" said her mother. "The rule. Whoever lost goes first."

Lan shrugged. She had the closed, slightly secretive look she sometimes wore when she had done something she was proud of and did not want to be asked about it too closely. One hand was in her pocket, holding something.

"A fair," said Lan.

Her mother waited. Lan did not say which part of the fair, or who had taught her, or why, and her mother did not ask. She had the feeling, unexpectedly strong, that there was a whole story under the word "fair" that was Lan's to keep. She had been about to give Lan a rule. Lan had brought one home of her own, and it was better.

She sat for a while in the quiet front room after that, with her feet up on the box of the race game, and thought about the sentence she had nearly said. You have to let him win. It would have worked, in a way. It would have stopped the crying. But Tí would have known, sooner or later, because children always know. And Lan would have learned that being fair meant pretending, and she had just shown her mother, on the front-room carpet, that she knew a better way.

After Lan had gone up, her mother found a felt pen and turned the game box over. On the lid, under the price sticker, she wrote: whoever lost goes first. Then she put the box on the shelf where both of them could reach it.

The question for your own table

When did you last start to settle an argument between children and not finish? What happened in the gap?

Something to do

Next time a game at home ends in tears, wait one whole minute before you say anything. If a child offers a fix, play it. If it works, write it on the box.

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