by Aliya Whiteley

I opened the lid of The Rainbow Race and set out the board. Then I put the coloured pieces on the starting square, in order, just as the girl in the magic shop said, you know, treating them with reverence, with care. Stevo and I sat around, not even daring to sip our black vodka for fear of ruining the moment.

Nothing happened.

I was expecting Jumanji. I wanted elephants and floating riddles. Instead I got the realisation that I'd paid five hundred pounds for a souped up version of Monopoly, and I've always hated Monopoly, ever since I beat Cherry at it during our engagement. She smashed her fist down on the board, hard, scattering pieces, houses and cards flying and I never did find that top hat again; you know, it was a sign. Since then I've believed not only in signs but in board games, and so it seemed only right to celebrate the separation by asking my one still-single mate over and playing a game, a special game, a life-changing game.

Except now I looked a bit crap.

'Five hundred quid?' Stevo said.

He had a point. I could have bought a cheap sofa with that, or a rug, so at least we could have spared our bums the indignity of the freezing floorboards. Or maybe a TV. Something good was probably on right now, something about people being single and happy and not having wives who took the entire contents of the house in order to shack up with someone who looked a bit like somebody famous. Matt Damon with a big nose, you know, women love that kind of thing.

My mate stared into his vodka and I stared at the board. It was square, with a thin plastic cover, upon which there was a series of circles that meandered along in a wiggly line. The final circle, at the top left corner of the board, bore the climactic words The End.

The plastic cover on that final circle was peeling; I lifted it a little and it came away in a sheet, ripping into jags to reveal a familiar sight underneath.

It was a Monopoly board.

"Five hundred quid?" Stevo repeated.

At that point, a long chain of events took place that started with me leaving a sarcastic message on the answer machine of the Magic Shop - very disappointed, money back, aunt who works for Watchdog, that kind of thing - and went on to me packing away the excuse for a board game, pouring myself an extra large black vodka, and toasting to Cherry's eternal damnation with a smile that hurt my cheeks. It concluded with the sound of the doorbell.

"Red," said the woman who stood on my step, accompanied by the sudden noise of the street and a dusting of rain through the open door. "Code red."

She had red hair too; Guards Red, you know, the colour Porsches come in, strident, an announcement, as loud as a roaring engine. I knew that hair.

"You're the girl from the Magic Shop."

"Got it in one. Got your complaint. Got a mission to put it right," she said. She leaned against the doorframe. "What's your prob?"

I asked her in, introduced her to Stevo, and unpacked the board game once more. She crouched over it, and her orange skirt - as orange as tartrazine in the cheap fizzy pop I used to get excited about when I was ten, Panda Pops, Corona - flared around her ankles to brush the floor. I got caught up in the swirl of material and momentarily forgot what I was complaining about.

"Five hundred quid," Stevo prompted.

"Oh yeah, I paid a lot of money for this and it's a Monopoly board covered in sticky-backed plastic."

"And . . .?" she said.

"And it's not magic, is it? You said stuff about it. You said it would mark this as a special evening - a turning point in my life."

"And . . . ?"

"And . . . it hasn't."

She straightened up and stepped close to me, close enough to smell her perfume, like honey, you know, and make me lose my train of thought all over again. "But you haven't played it yet." Her smile reminded me of a field of daffodils that had been visible from the kitchen window of a Cornwall holiday cottage Cherry and I had honeymooned in. I had wanted us to get naked and run through it, but she had pulled her gold cardigan across her breasts and pointed out it was a chilly April. "Whassa matter? Afraid to play? Scaredy-cat? Little yellow belly?"

"Yellow? Moi?" I said, trying to sound sophisticated. She was having that effect on me.

"Then let's play." She sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and rolled the dice. "Six. Flying start. Get drinks. Biggies."

Thirty minutes' later, the game was over, she was the winner, and I was drunk.

"Five hundred quid," Stevo said with an unsteady shake of his head. He'd come in last. "Oy, Rich, you look a bit . . . "

"Green," the girl finished, with a kind of ecstatic sigh that I'd heard Cherry make only once, on our second anniversary, when we'd gone out to the best restaurant York had to offer, Meltons, you know, and the dessert trolley had arrived. The image of a mint-bedecked Pistachio Fool sprang to mind and a large quantity of vodka erupted out of my stomach.

"Now, you see, that kind of puts a full stop on the whole outstanding issue of where we stand in regards to our returns policy," she said. "Cos the board, right, stinky now. Stinkier than sprouts."

A new load of upchuck followed the first, and I couldn't catch my breath; I gasped and inhaled a mouthful of spew that lodged in my windpipe. I coughed, I gagged, I choked.
I pounded my hands on the floor and the pieces on the board scattered, clinking against the glasses and rolling into the girl's skirt.

"He's turning blue," she said.

Stevo stared at me. I stared back with my watering eyes. His face was breaking up into little pieces, rather like he was a reflection in a lagoon that had just been disturbed by the patter of raindrops. A comforting image, and one I was getting ready to accept as my last until the girl got up from the floorboards, pulled me to my feet, and drove her fist into my stomach, once, twice, three times.