by Paul Collins
Milo thanked the man and put the card in his pocket. Importing/exporting sounded really boring but he was too polite to say so. Soon afterwards, Mr Morano fell asleep.
The next day Milo was taken to the same room he’d visited before. He looked up at the same magistrate who, just as before, stared down the length of his very long nose at Milo. After hearing the evidence, the magistrate shook his head.
‘Given the case already pending against this lad, I see no alternative but to remand Toby Chrysler into custody,’ said the magistrate. ‘Bail denied. You will be taken to Strathmount and held there until the time of your hearing.’
‘But that’s a detention centre for dangerous juveniles!’ Milo’s dad exclaimed.
‘Mr Chrysler, your son is involved in what may turn out to be a case of premeditated murder. It’s my job to make sure the community is protected from the likes of boys like him!’
Milo stared hard at the magistrate, wondering if he was right. Was he dangerous? Milo had recognised several neighbours on the way to the courtroom, all with pursed lips and flinty eyes that seemed to say, ‘Always knew he was bad’ and, ‘Oh, yes, he was never what you’d call normal’.
He tried to imagine the newspaper headlines:
Young Hannibal Lecter strikes in peaceful neighbourhood!
Milo gulped. Where was Ginger? Why hadn’t she come forward and cleared him?
As he was taken to the holding cells of the courthouse, Milo thought he heard someone else call his name but in the growing buzz of voices he couldn’t be sure.
With plenty of time on his hands what began as a faint worry, the kind of thing you’d normally shrug off with a laugh, grew into a suspicion, and then a very nasty conviction.
Maybe it had begun when he had stepped in the blood at Ginger’s house. And later, thinking about how she had forgotten her insulin . . .
But now he knew for certain.
Ginger had set him up. And she had done it right from the beginning, from the moment he had knocked on her door. All that stuff about calling him Toby and thinking about him differently was just rubbish. She thought he was a weirdo, just like all the others.
And weirdos don’t count for anything.
He started to cry then. He’d actually thought she was his friend but she just wanted to do something so spectacular that her dad would have to come home. Obviously, being kidnapped wasn’t enough. Still crying, but exhausted now, he fell asleep. And woke to a feather-light touch on his face. He looked up blearily, rubbing his eyes. His mother gazed back down at him.
‘There’s no telephone here,’ he said.
She smiled, blinking back her own tears. ‘No, Milo, there isn’t.’ She leaned down and kissed him and he smelled her shampoo, the soap she liked, and all of a sudden he was crying again and hugging her, and he didn’t stop for a long time.
When finally he did, his mum said, ‘You’re in a lot of trouble, Milo.’
‘I didn’t hurt Ginger!’
‘I know you didn’t,’ she said, but didn’t explain how she knew it.
‘She’s in the cellar,’ Milo said. ‘We pretended the whole thing so you and her dad would come home.’
‘It’s all right,’ his mum said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right, Milo. Trust me.’
‘You left me.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry, Milo. But you need to wake up now.’
Milo blinked, and sat up suddenly. The holding cell was empty. His mother wasn’t there. Never had been. He slumped back on the mattress. He’d never felt so desolate in all his life.
There was an informal ‘hearing’ the next morning. No one would tell him what it was about.
Milo was led in and told to sit on a wooden chair.
His heart leapt as he looked around the room. His mum was there. She smiled at him, and mouthed the words, ‘I love you, Milo’. She was crying and trying to smile at the same time. Milo’s dad was nearby, sitting oddly apart, and there was a man in a suit as well. Was that Milo’s lawyer? He felt his stomach quiver.
Also there, sitting near – but not next to – Mrs Petersham, was Ginger’s father, the ‘bloody postman’. He was seated beside Milo’s mum. Everybody looked pale and drawn. Except the lawyer. He had a nice tan.
The hearing was presided over by the same magistrate who had arraigned Milo the day before.
‘Okay,’ said the magistrate, ‘let’s get this show underway. I called you all here because I think there’s some things we should discuss. The evidence in this case is puzzling, to say the least, and stories to the effect that young Mr Chrysler here threatened Ginger Petersham at school with a knife yesterday, appear to be somewhat – exaggerated.’
Here he gave Mrs Petersham a stern look. And Mrs Petersham, the Iron Dragon herself, quailed and looked down at her feet. Milo was more stunned by this than anything.
The magistrate turned to Mr Petersham. ‘Now, I believe you’re the boy’s father?’
Milo blinked. How dumb was that? Especially as his dad was sitting right there.
Milo opened his mouth to correct the magistrate but then Mr Petersham did a very strange thing.
He nodded.
Milo closed his mouth. Everything seemed to slow down. Had the world gone topsy-turvy since they had locked him up? Did nods now mean the same as shakes?
Mr Petersham nodded a second time, and cleared his throat. ‘Your Honour . . . Actually –’ ‘I’m the boy’s father,’ said Mr Chrysler harshly. He gave Milo’s mum a seething look. Milo had no idea what that meant.
Obviously puzzled, the judge looked at his notes again.
Milo’s mum spoke for the first time. Her voice was slightly nervous at first then became firmer. ‘Mr Chrysler, my husband, is Milo’s stepfather. But Mr Petersham is his biological dad. We were married many years ago, then divorced.’
Milo’s eyes grew bigger and bigger. He stared at his mum but she was avoiding his gaze. He stared at Mr Petersham and he was looking right back at Milo with an uncertain smile.
Milo’s head began to spin.
When it eventually stopped, he realised he was outside the meeting room and on the way back to the holding cells. A middle-aged policeman was talking non-stop, oblivious to the fact that Milo couldn’t understand a thing he was saying.
My biological father . . .
They passed the door to a large empty courtroom. The door at the other end was open and through this Milo saw sunlight and a street with cars passing.
Then he was running.
All that glitters is not sold
Behind him, the cop was shouting but Milo raced through the empty courtroom, across a hallway, and burst out into glorious sunshine. And he didn’t stop there. He veered between parked cars and bolted across the street, not even bothering to check for oncoming traffic. There was a screech of brakes. A truck honked.
Minutes later, Milo was crashing through the gate in the back laneway. Then he was climbing through the bathroom window at the back, the one his dad said was too small for any self-respecting burglar. He hurtled through the house and into the kitchen, flinging up the trapdoor – the carpet was gone – and leapt down the stairs.
Milo came to a complete stop, gasping.
The place was empty.
No sleeping bag, no scraps of food, no Ginger.
The only thing left to show she’d been here was the jigsaw puzzle, though it had been spread out on the actual floor, as if she’d decided she needed a lot more room.
He stared at it, puzzled by something.
There was another piece missing.
Milo ran back up the cellar steps. He took several deep breaths then searched the house. He looked in the back garden, saw the dug up earth where Ginger had weeded. This stopped him cold. For an awful moment his memory went funny on him, and he almost thought he had killed her and buried her here in the garden near the petunias. Along with Dorothy, Henrietta, Sybil and Agnes.
He stood above the chook graveyard, turning slowly in a circle
, completely lost. Now what should he do? He knew the police would be here at any moment. Maybe he should bury himself in the back garden. Maybe then nobody would be mad at him.
But he didn’t want to die. He wanted to see his mum again.
He sat down on the weed pile and hot tears leaked down his cheeks. Why did everything in his life always go bad? He never tried to do bad things, they just happened.
He thumped the weeds he was sitting on and something bright and glittery tumbled out. It was the other two vials of Ginger’s insulin.
Milo stared at them, as if a piece of a jigsaw from the wrong box had found its way into the puzzle he was trying to solve. It simply didn’t belong.
And then he went cold.
Ginger didn’t have her insulin. Without her insulin, she would die.
‘Oh, no,’ he whispered. He leapt to his feet and raced back into the laneway.
‘Hey! There he is!’ someone shouted.
Milo ran up the street, round the corner, skirted down a cycle track, and kept going for four blocks. He rushed past a lady watering her garden and up to Ginger’s front door, and pounded on it.
‘Ginger! Ginger, it’s me, Milo! Open the door!’
There was no answer. Milo raced around the back, not noticing that the neighbour was no longer watering her garden, and that her hose was now swishing back and forth across her lawn, gushing water: Nor did he feel the Rottweiler’s hot breath as the dog strained on its leash to reach him.
The back door was locked but Milo broke a window and crawled through, gashing himself badly on the thigh. He didn’t care. He could think only of one thing: that Ginger might die . . .
Police sirens sounded in the distance as Milo tore through the house, searching. He even checked the kitchen floor to make sure there was no trapdoor. Then he ran upstairs and looked in all the rooms. Ginger’s room was easy to spot: posters of Australian Idol hopefuls on the walls and swimming trophies piled on a shelf. A bed strewn with Winnie-the-Poohs and pillows. A dozen multi-coloured frogs.
Milo checked the closets, the small balcony . . . Nothing.
From the window he saw police cars pulling up outside and the lady neighbour pointing at the house. Moments later a policeman was banging on the front door. The thuds were echoed seconds later by more pounding on the back door.
They had him surrounded. He tried to squash the panicky feeling in his stomach.
He ran out into the upstairs hallway.
‘GINGER!’ he shouted. ‘GINGER! IT’S ME, MILO!’
No sound other than heavy boots in the house, fanning out, and frantic barking.
Milo looked around frantically.
The tramp of boots reached the stairs, headed up them. Milo started to panic. He had to find
Ginger. Where on earth would she go?
Suddenly, he saw in his mind the fourth missing piece of the jigsaw. It was the one of the little red-haired girl lying in her bed.
Milo raced back to Ginger’s room, dug under the pile of blankets on the bed. Nothing. He dropped to his stomach and squirmed under the bed just as the door burst open. The boots he’d heard prowled around the room, went to the closet, the open balcony window, then hurried out again. ‘He’s gone over the balcony!’
Milo crawled further back under the bed. A pile of blankets was jammed up against the wall. He swallowed, then reached out and pulled part of the blankets away. A pale ghostly face stared out at him.
Milo screamed and scrabbled back. Rough hands seized him, pulled him out from under the bed. Milo was blubbering, pointing at the bed. Another policeman peeked underneath and swore an oath then squeezed under and came out, cradling a shapeless lump of blankets.
As he lifted the lump into his arms, an arm flopped lifelessly into view.
‘Ginger!’ Milo cried as they dragged him away.
Milo’s mind shut down for a while.
People had stopped calling him a murderer, which was nice; they’d also dropped the cannibal-devil’s-spawn-Satanic-cult-killer stuff. Now, oddly enough, they were calling him a hero, an Aussie kid come good, and even ‘that boy Milo’ – said with a proud grin and a curious shake of the head, as if there was still something puzzling about it.
If puzzlement was a virtue, then Milo really must be a hero.
His mother was waiting for him when he was released from the police station. She swept him into her arms and hugged him as if she never wanted to let go. For a long time she rocked him back and forth, whispering over and over that she was sorry, so really, really sorry, and all the time soaking his T-shirt with her tears. She said she’d missed him terribly but at least he’d kept her up-to-date whenever she called. He looked at her then, and she looked back, and they both burst into a new round of sobs.
When they had finally recovered, Milo’s mother said, ‘There’s something I want you to see.’ He followed her gaze, and let out a whoop of pure joy. His mother was wearing both red sparkly shoes. They were together again!
‘But how –?’
Mrs Chrysler shushed him gently. ‘Fluke found it in your backpack. And he said . . . he said . . . “All that glitters isn’t sold”.’ She dissolved into another crying fit.
Meanwhile, there was even more hugging.
Mr Chrysler hugged him, of course. And Mr Petersham went to hug him, thought better of it, shook his hand instead, grinned through sudden tears and hugged him anyway. Which made Milo think that Mr Petersham really must be his father, since he seemed too bewildered to be anybody else.
Soon after that, they took him to see Ginger.
She was sitting up in a hospital bed regaling the nurses with the whole affair. She stopped when Milo came in and insisted on hugging him, too.
She promptly continued the story: how she’d found her insulin was gone and was getting woozy, explaining how she’d lost it in the garden, bored silly sitting in the cellar. So she’d sneaked home, then her mother had dashed in and she’d hidden under the bed. And that was all she remembered.
A doctor, who was checking on her, nodded. To Milo, he said, ‘If you hadn’t found her, young man, she’d have been dead within the hour. It was a very near thing.’
Milo said nothing.
Ginger finally ran dry and looked at him. ‘What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?’
A smile had started to grow on Milo’s face. It got bigger and bigger. It was so infectious that Ginger grinned back. She threw a pillow at him, laughing. ‘What is it with you?’
Milo stepped forward and awkwardly ruffled her hair. ‘Hi, sis,’ he said.
Ginger stared at him then she too burst into tears.
What happened afterwards
There was much sorting out to do afterwards but Milo didn’t care. He felt sad for his dad but in the end Milo spent half of each week with Mr Chrysler and the other half with his mum and Mr Petersham, who moved into a house just two blocks away. He learned that Mr Petersham had had a relationship a long time ago with Mrs Petersham (who was Miss Baker then). Mrs Petersham had become pregnant with Ginger and Milo’s mum, when she found out about the affair nearly two years later, had kicked Mr Petersham out and divorced him. She then met and married Jack Chrysler, who adopted Milo and raised him as his own son. But it seemed that deep down his mum had never quite gotten over Mr Petersham . . .
It was all very confusing, but also sort of comforting, as if he not only had more family, but more – history . . .
Milo, Ginger and Fluke were sitting on a school bench, eating lunch. A boy two years ahead of Milo walked past, gave Milo a grin, and said, ‘Hey there, Milo!’ and walked on.
A moment later two girls strolled past. They also said, ‘Hi, Milo.’
Ginger scowled. ‘Well, who’s Mr Popular now?’
‘Are you jealous?’ Milo asked, taking a bite out of his sandwich. Nobody had ever been jealous of him before.
‘What if I am? I’m the one who sprayed the blood, I’m the one who nearly died. They’re
even talking about making you School Captain next year!’ She stuck a finger down her throat and made gagging noises. ‘Pur-lease. Fetch me a bucket!’
But Milo could tell she was kidding. ‘I’m glad it’s all over.’
‘Yeah, well, you can say that again!’
‘Why, are you deaf?’
Ginger rolled her eyes.
Fluke said, ‘As a wise man once said, all’s well that ends better.’
For once he got it right. Nearly.
Proverbs, words and quotes mangled in this book:
A penny for your thoughts
All good souls go to Heaven
All’s well that ends well
All that glitters is not gold
Always make the best out of a bad situation
Anger can be an expensive luxury
A rumour goes in one ear and out many mouths
Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder
Beggars can’t be choosers
Better to have tried than not
Cadaver
Change your attitude
Charity begins at home
Chickens come home to roost
Decaffeinated
Drop their guard
Every nook and cranny
Extrasensory perception
Fact is stranger than fiction – fiction has to make sense
False sense of security
For all intents and purposes
Goody-goody two-shoes
Haste makes waste
If looks could kill
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again
Just going through a phase
Keep out of harm’s way
Leave no stone unturned
Life is a numbers game
Loose bowels
Lot in life
Miscarriage
Monogamy
Nothing ventured, nothing gained
On second thought
Once bitten, twice shy
Rules are made to be broken
Rumours go forward, not backward