Virginia Macgregor was brought up in Germany, France and England by a mother who never stopped telling stories. From the moment she was old enough to hold a pen, Virginia set about writing her own, often late into the night – or behind her maths textbook at school. Virginia was named after two great women, Virginia Wade and Virginia Woolf, in the hope she would be a writer and a tennis star. Her early years were those of a scribbling, rain-loving child who prayed for lightning to strike her tennis coach. After studying at Oxford, Virginia started writing regularly while working as an English teacher and housemistress. Virginia lives in Berkshire with her husband, Hugh, and their baby daughter.
COPYRIGHT
Published by Sphere
978-0-7515-5426-7
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Virginia Macgregor 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
SPHERE
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
What Milo Saw
Table of Contents
About the Author
COPYRIGHT
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1: Milo
2: Lou
3: Milo
4: Milo
5: Tripi
6: Milo
7: Milo
8: Milo
9: Sandy
10: Milo
11: Tripi
12: Lou
13: Milo
14: Tripi
15: Sandy
16: Milo
17: Milo
18: Sandy
19: Tripi
20: Lou
21: Milo
22: Lou
23: Tripi
24: Milo
25: Milo
26: Milo
27: Tripi
28: Milo
29: Sandy
30: Milo
31: Lou
32: Sandy
33: Milo
34: Tripi
35: Lou
36: Milo
37: Milo
38: Sandy
39: Milo
40: Milo
41: Tripi
42: Lou
43: Milo
44: Milo
45: Tripi
46: Milo
47: Sandy
48: Lou
49: Milo
50: Lou
51: Milo
52: Sandy
53: Tripi
54: Milo
55: Milo
56: Lou
57: Milo
58: Tripi
59: Sandy
60: Lou
61: Tripi
62: Milo
63: Milo
64: Tripi
65: Milo
66: Sandy
67: Milo
68: Sandy
69: Tripi
70: Milo
For the two people who have loved me into being a writer:
Mama and my darling husband, Hugh.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
At 00:17 on the 2nd of October 2012 an exceptionally talented young woman changed my life: my wonderful agent, Bryony Woods. Bryony understands the heart of my writing better than anyone, has an exceptional eye for detail, a fantastic business brain and is more efficient than Mary Poppins – thank you for everything, Bryony.
‘Team Milo’ at Little, Brown have worked their magic to bring a special little boy to the world: thank you to Manpreet Grewal, my exceptional editor; Sophie Burdess who designed the striking cover; Thalia Proctor whose eagle eye helped me make Milo sparkle; Kirsteen Astor and Emma Williams, the stunning publicity and marketing duo who got out their megaphones and made Milo’s voice heard above the din, and the rights team who packed Milo on a plane, took him on a round the world trip and taught him some exciting new languages.
On a personal note, thank you to the lovely young men and women in my creative writing group at Wellington College: your encouragement means so much. Keep scribbling! Thank you to Helen Dahlke, Liz Martinez, Joanna Seldon and Jane Cooper: my writing buddies. To Mama, who believed in me as a writer from the moment I held a pen. To Anne Holtz and Tata Suzanne for loving me and for being my family. To Windmill for keeping me going. To Viola and Sebastian, my white, feline friends who have kept me warm, loved and entertained during long days spent at my desk. And finally, thank you to my beloved husband, soul mate and first reader, Hugh: one day the world will see how brilliant you are.
1
MILO
Milo sat at the computer on the landing listening to the shush-shushing of the firemen’s hose on the drive. The firemen had only just let them back into the house.
‘I want a list of nursing homes,’ said Mum.
‘Can’t Gran stay till Christmas?’
Gran was Dad’s gran and Milo’s great-gran but everyone just called her Gran.
Milo turned his head to look at the fairy lights he’d wound round the banisters leading up to Gran’s room. He’d had the idea when he saw her struggling to find the light switch.
Mum guided Milo’s head back to look at her and said ‘No.’
‘But…’
‘Don’t insist,’ said Mum and then pinched shut her mouth. Don’t insist was Mum’s favourite phrase of all time.
‘But Mum – the fire was my fault, I should have gone down to check.’
And it was true. Every morning when Gran padded down the stairs from her room under the roof all the way to the kitchen and made her cup of sweet, milky tea, it was Milo’s job to make sure she was okay. He’d lie in bed and listen for the clues:
1.
The clink of Gran’s tartan mug as she pulled it off the mug tree.
2.
The suck and pop of the jar with the tea bags.
3.
The rattle of the cutlery drawer as she took out her favourite teaspoon, the one made of real silver with a kink in its handle.
4.
The kettle filling up (though usually Milo tried to remember to fill it up the night before because Gran’s wrists were weak and she struggled to hold the weight of so much water).
5.
The click of the switch on the kettle.
6.
A pause.
7.
And then the water heating, steam pushing at the lid, bubbles rolling over each other like a hot sea, and then another click when it was done.
8.
Sometimes, after step 3, Gran forgot they had a kettle and she’d open the saucepan drawer and fill a pan up and light the stove. That was the cue for Milo to swing his legs out of bed and come downstairs. They had a gas hob and Gran wasn’t allowed to use it.
Milo didn’t know why he missed the sound of the saucepan drawer that day. He must have been sleepy or maybe Gran was extra quiet, but by the time he felt the flutter in his chest which told him that Gran needed him, and by the time Hamlet was squealing his head off in the garage because he’d swallowed too much smoke, it was too late, the kitchen was on fire.
‘It’s not your responsibility to check on your gran,’ said Mum.
She leant in and kissed Milo’s hair. She was always doing that: telling him off a
nd then kissing him. She smelt of burnt things and sticky perfume and sleep.
‘When all this is over, I’ll let Hamlet stay in the house,’ she said.
Milo leant under the desk and gave Hamlet a rub between his ears. The only reason he was allowed up here now was because the fire had scared him. Milo hated the fact that Hamlet had to live in the garage all by himself: the garage was cold and damp and didn’t have any windows. No one should live like that. But if Milo had to choose between Hamlet coming out of the garage or Gran getting to stay with them, he’d have to pick Gran. Hamlet would understand.
Mum looked over Milo’s shoulder at the computer screen. ‘We don’t want anywhere fancy, Milo, Gran wouldn’t like that.’
So Milo tried typing not fancy nursing homes into Google but Google didn’t get it and wrote back: did you mean fancy nursing homes?
Once Milo had stationed Gran safely on the drive and once he’d yanked open the main door to the garage and got Hamlet out of his cage and given him to Gran to look after, he’d come back inside and screamed: Fire! Fire! Mum! There’s a fire!
Mum had come tearing down the stairs and out of the house, her non-make-up face all pale and puffy. When she saw Gran she didn’t ask how she was and she didn’t say she was relieved that Hamlet was safely out of the garage and she didn’t tell Milo well done for having saved everyone. She just yelled the same words over and over:
This is the last straw. This is the last bloody straw.
Milo and Gran both knew what the last bloody straw meant: it meant that Gran was going to a nursing home.
Mum jabbed a chipped pink nail at the computer screen. ‘Those rooms are far too big,’ she said. ‘Gran will feel lost.’
So Milo did a search for nursing homes with small rooms. But then he thought about all the stuff Gran had upstairs, like Great-Gramps’s bagpipes and his uniform and the boxes of letters he’d written her and her map of Inverary and the picture of her fishing boat and her small radio and how she’d want to take it all with her.
‘It’s not coming up with anything.’ If Milo made Mum feel it was a hassle, maybe she’d back down.
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Milo.’ Mum looked up the stairs to Gran’s room and scratched a red bit on her throat. Then she leant in and whispered, ‘Just find somewhere cheap.’
Mum wrote the word CHEAP on the back of an envelope and placed it right in front of Milo so it wasn’t lost in the fuzzy bit of his vision. He ran his fingers over the word; she’d pressed so hard on the pencil that the letters felt bumpy.
‘I’ve got to make the firemen some tea.’
Still in her nightie (the frilly one that looked like the kitchen curtains, or how they looked before they caught fire and turned into black moths on the linoleum floor), Mum rushed back downstairs. Milo heard the cupboard door open and the rustle of the Hobnobs packet. The plastic kettle had melted, so Milo didn’t know how Mum was going to boil water for the tea.
Milo wasn’t going to let Mum stick Gran in a nursing home. He’d pretend to go along with it and then Mum would calm down and realise that Gran belonged right here in the small room Dad had converted for her under the roof, and that Milo was the best person to look after her. Then they’d have a proper Christmas, the four of them: Milo, Gran, Hamlet and Mum.
Milo scanned down the list of homes on the screen. They all had garden centre names like Acorn Cottage and Birdgrove and Beechcroft Hill and Bird Poo View. He made up the last one.
Milo typed: not cheap nursing homes into Google and waited for a new page to load.
‘Found anything yet?’ Mum called up the stairs.
The burnt smell had crept into the carpet and curtains and walls and was making the back of Milo’s throat tickle.
He coughed and called back: ‘Nearly!’
‘Well, when you have, give me the phone numbers and I’ll organise some visits.’
Milo didn’t answer.
Above him, the floorboards creaked and then water juddered through the pipes. He hoped Gran would remember to turn off the tap. As soon as he’d finished making this stupid list, he’d go up and tell Gran that there was no way he was going to let Mum kick her out. He’d work out a plan that guaranteed she could stay, and not just for Christmas.
2
LOU
Lou closed her eyes. She felt Milo hold his breath, heard the buzz of his thoughts, saw him narrow his eyes at the screen. Ever since he’d been diagnosed she’d trained herself to see the world as he did: through a pinhole. Funny how, when so much was slipping in her own mind, what Milo saw drew closer and sharper.
Then the tap, tap, tapping of his small fingers on the keyboard. So that’s all it took, a few taps to find her a new home.
She felt the rhythm of his heart, heavy this morning. She should have prepared him better, should have helped him see that it was time for her to go.
Lou opened her eyes, stood up and went to look through her bedroom window. She watched Sandy standing on the drive, her knickers cutting into the thick rolls of her backside and pushing up against her nightie. Men in heavy boots and yellow hats thudded and pulled and kept looking over at Sandy’s blue dimpled thighs.
Mr Overend from across the road twitched his bedroom curtains. Always sleeping, that man, sleeping or spying or whistling. Lou had listened to him for five years and still she couldn’t work out the tune.
And then Sandy’s mules on the kitchen tiles, clippety-clop, like she was tap dancing. Always showing off, that girl, and now hollering up the stairs to Milo, getting the little boy to do the things that Andrew should have been here to do.
Lou breathed in. It was surprising how far it had crept up, the smell of damp smoke, of burnt chipboard, of melting plastic. She looked down at her hands and turned them over: streaks of ash traced her lifeline.
She rubbed her hands together and imagined Milo teasing her: You wouldn’t make a very good criminal, Gran. You leave too much evidence.
She hoped that, for once, Milo hadn’t noticed what she’d done.
But it had been the right thing to do, hadn’t it? A definitive act, something big, to persuade Sandy that she had to go. And it was right for Milo, too – he spent too much time looking after her already.
It had taken a while to find the matches. And it hadn’t been easy to get the angle of the strike just right. Her silly, clumsy fingers. But then the flame had leapt out of her hands like a bird. It had caught the loose edge of the kitchen roll, a white bird, then a black bird with paper wings, then grey feathers of ash falling around her.
And then Milo’s hand in hers, soft as dough, guiding her out of the house.
It’s okay, Gran, everything’s okay.
Lou walked over to the bathroom and stood at the sink. She turned the tap and watched as the water fell through her fingers, ash washing down the drain.
Her eyes stung. A tear fell onto the back of her hand.
Dear, dear Milo.
What Milo Saw Page 1