Sandy stared at the bill. £100 deposit, £150 if it wasn’t paid by the end of the week. That nurse had forgotten to mention a fine for late payments.
She bit into a milk chocolate Hobnob and brushed the crumbs off the letter.
Forget Me Not Homes: We’re Here to Serve You.
Only because we pay you to, thought Sandy. A red rash crept up her throat. She switched on the TV.
St Lucia is a beautiful island paradise…
She sat down on a stool and watched the dusty screen. Maybe Milo would come with her. Maybe if they were somewhere hot and beautiful, things would be better between them.
Here, under the swaying palm trees, your troubles will melt away…
Closing her eyes, Sandy felt the smooth, sweet chocolate coat the roof of her mouth.
Then the phone rang.
She opened her eyes and reached for the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi.’
She put on her beauty salon voice. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’
‘Al McCloud.’ A deep Scottish accent.
The name that had been scrawled on the message pad for months. One of Andy’s relatives who had moved down south and was looking for a place to stay. He’d called out of the blue, a month after Andy left. He’d pay rent, he said. She hadn’t told him that Andy no longer lived here, she couldn’t bear thinking of the gossip from his family back home in Scotland. Knew she was bad news, a girl from the south, that’s what they’d say. But she’d kept his name and his number. Maybe she’d already known back then that Gran would have to move out.
‘You left a message on my phone. Said you had a room to rent.’
That Scottish accent. As they lay in each other’s arms, drifting off to sleep, Sandy would ask Andy to ‘speak Scottish’ to her: Guid night an sweit dreams, he’d whisper. Hearing him speak in that voice made him feel closer, like she was the only one who knew both who he was now and where he’d come from. Maybe if they’d gone back to Scotland to live in the small town by the sea where he grew up, they could have made it work. Maybe Andy’s family would have forgiven him for leaving. Maybe Milo would have been happier there.
You can go scuba diving in the crystal clear waters… The presenter stood on the beach in a skimpy red bikini. Or just lie in the sun…
‘I need somewhere for the end of the week,’ Al said.
She looked back at the TV, pointy green mountains and long stretches of white coastline. It was a joke, considering her name, that she’d never felt the warm sand between her toes. She imagined Andy and Angela walking hand in hand along the beach in Abu Dhabi.
‘Are you still on the line, Mrs Moon?’
‘Sandy; please call me Sandy,’ she said.
She looked round the kitchen. She hoped he wouldn’t mind the soot, the mess. Or the planes that flew overhead. Or that pig snuffling around in the garage. Or Milo walking around, so angry at her.
She felt her chest go tight. She wasn’t ready to have a stranger living here, peering into her life.
‘I’ll pay you two months’ rent in advance,’ he said.
‘Well…’
‘In cash.’
Sandy looked at the letter from Forget Me Not sitting on the kitchen counter.
She took a breath. ‘Well, perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement.’
16
MILO
Milo brought his watch up to his eyes and stared at the big black hands, hoping Mrs Harris would get the hint.
‘Milo, are you listening?’ She leaned over him to find his gaze but he now looked at the floor. It was one of the good things about having Retinitis Pigmentosa: you could block people out when they annoyed you.
It was Friday and Mrs Harris had kept him back after school to have a chat about what went wrong in the exams.
If she did any more chatting, he’d miss visiting time at Forget Me Not.
‘Like I said the other day, if I don’t hear from your mum by the end of this week I’ll have to drop by the house.’
Milo imagined Mrs Harris in her grey suit with her bobbed hair coming into their stinky black kitchen with Mum in her tracksuit bottoms eating Hobnobs and watching Honeymoon Hideaways. At least Mrs Harris smelt of smoke – not smoking was one thing Mum would have over her.
His form teacher stood up and fiddled with a bit of her fringe that had gone wonky on her forehead.
‘You’ll be doing a speaking and listening task soon and if you work hard, you can balance out your written English mark.’ Her voice sounded like Gran’s bagpipes when they were cold and hadn’t been played for ages. Squeaky. Annoying. ‘I think you’ll like the topic.’
Milo hated talking in front of people.
‘You’ll be giving a talk on your favourite pet.’
With the phone Dad had given him, Milo had taken pictures of Hamlet, printed them out on the colour printer at school and stuck them all over his files and books. The girls in the class went mental.
‘Such an original animal,’ said Mrs Harris.
Milo zoomed in on one of her crooked yellow teeth. Whenever she spoke it looked like it was going to twist out. That’s something else Mum had over Mrs Harris: nice teeth. She did bleachings for people in her shed so she got to do them on herself for free.
‘I’m sure you’ll have lots to say. You’ll have to inform, explain and describe to your audience how you look after your pig and how to ensure that it’s kept in the best possible conditions for its wellbeing. You’ll find that easier than writing.’
In a recent test, Milo had drawn a lunar eclipse rather than writing about one because he thought it was a better way of addressing the topic: Describe An Amazing Experience. Not that he’d had a real, live experience of a lunar eclipse, but he’d seen them on YouTube and Dad promised that one day they’d go to Australia together to see one because they happened more often over there.
It was speaking in front of people that made Milo’s tongue go swollen like there wasn’t enough room for it in his mouth and his palms go sweaty and his legs go wobbly. When he spoke he heard kids sniggering at him from the fuzzy bit beyond the pinhole because they knew they could get away with it, like the class did to Mrs Harris when she turned her back to write on the board. And anyway, compared to Gran, he did plenty of talking already. If she didn’t have to speak at all, Milo didn’t see why he should have to give a talk in front of the whole class.
Milo couldn’t think of an excuse for maths, except that his eyes hurt when he stared at the numbers for too long.
‘Can’t I do the written exam again?’ asked Milo.
‘You have to do both, Milo. Your marks in English and maths have raised quite some concern. We’re going to have to consider…’ And then she went quiet. ‘I really must speak to your mum.’
As he turned into Crescent Way, he heard Mr Overend’s whistling, louder than usual. Although he stood for hours at his open window in nothing more than his PJs, Mr Overend never seemed to get cold. Today he leant out of the window looking at a motorbike parked outside Milo’s house. When he saw Milo, Mr Overend shook his head and kept whistling. What a loon. If anyone should be in a home, it was him.
Milo looked at the motorbike and hoped it meant a new client for mum. Men sometimes came to have their chests or their bums waxed. Mrs Hairy’s flat red Mercedes was there too. Her real name was Gina but Mum called her Mrs Hairy because hair sprouted all over her body, even above her top lip. Milo asked why she didn’t just shave, like Dad, but Mum said that it would make the hairs come back thicker and blacker and that there’d be more of them than before. Maybe Mum had two clients, that would make her happy.
Milo dumped his school bag in the kitchen and looked around for Hamlet. Hamlet being in the house was part of his deal with Mum. As long as Gran was in Forget Me Not, Hamlet got to stay in the kitchen.
But Hamlet wasn’t in the kitchen. Or in the hallway or under the stairs or in the downstairs loo. Hamlet couldn’t do stairs yet, so there was no w
ay he could have got to Milo’s room.
She promised, Milo said under his breath.
He looked out into the garden and saw a candle flickering in the shed window.
One of these days I’m going to tell the lady in the RSPCA shop about Mum, Milo muttered as he walked into the garage.
And sure enough, Hamlet was there, crouched in a corner of his cage waiting for Milo to come and rescue him. Then Milo saw something else. Stacked up in a corner stood a pile of cardboard boxes with Gran’s bagpipes poking out of the top.
Milo’s eyes burned.
He grabbed Hamlet out of his cage and climbed up on the chest freezer and reached for the bagpipes. Then he stormed out of the garage, into the kitchen, out through the back door and across the wet grass to the shed.
He pushed open the door.
‘Milo!’ Mum glared at him, her hand clamped across a wax strip on Mrs Hairy’s brown thigh. Mrs Hairy was Jamaican and had skin like the milk chocolate bits of Mum’s Hobnobs. ‘When I’m with someone, you knock.’ Her face kept switching from screwed up and cross at Milo and trying to smile at Mrs Hairy.
‘You packed up Gran’s things,’ Milo shouted, holding up the bagpipes. ‘And you shut Hamlet away in the garage.’
Hamlet squeaked like a hear, hear to what Milo had just said.
Mrs Hairy drew a blanket up over her thighs and Mum stood up from her swivelly stool.
‘Milo,’ she said, her voice low and calm. ‘I want you apologise to Mrs Downe and then turn round and go to your room. We’ll discuss this later.’
‘I’m sorry —’ Milo wanted to say Mrs Hairy, but Mum couldn’t afford to lose another customer. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Downe.’ And then he looked up at Mum, waited for his eyes to focus on hers so that she knew he was really looking at her. ‘But I’m not saying sorry to you.’
Hamlet squirmed under his arm. Milo turned round and slammed the shed door, even though it was only a thin plank of wood and didn’t slam properly.
He went straight up the stairs to Gran’s room. He was going to put all Gran’s things back where they belonged.
When he got the landing Milo saw that Mum had taken the fairy lights off the banister.
Hamlet sneezed. There was a funny smell, like deodorant mingled with dirty socks and mouldy cardboard. Milo missed Gran’s apricot smell, the perfume she ordered from Paris because it was the one Great-Gramps bought her for her seventeenth birthday.
Milo closed his eyes to focus on the sounds: music and voices, louder than the planes.
He dashed up the last few stairs, pushed open the door and stood there, shifting his head in small jolts to take everything in.
A massive plasma screen stood in the corner. The news blared out of the telly, someone droning on about a war, loads of poor people crowded behind him with tents and rucksacks and plastic bags and donkeys.
The music came from a stereo that sat on the windowsill – clashy, shouty music that didn’t sound nearly as nice as Gran’s bagpipes.
Milo shifted his head again and saw a guy lying on Gran’s bed with his boots on and a black leather jacket zipped up to his chin. He had a stubbly face and spiky black hair.
Milo stood frozen to the spot.
Hamlet snuffled under his arm.
The bagpipes gave out a low whine.
‘I was going to explain…’ Mum came up behind him, breathless. ‘But you were late home from school.’
The guy sat up on the edge of the bare mattress and looked sleepily from Milo to Hamlet to the bagpipes to Mum, who was still clutching the furry wax strip she’d just ripped off Mrs Hairy’s thigh.
‘We need the money, my love,’ she said, reaching out to stroke Milo’s hair.
Milo shook off Mum’s hand and pounded back down the stairs.
‘Milo, where are you going?’ Mum ran after him.
When he got to the front door, Milo turned round and said, ‘You got rid of Dad and you got rid of Gran. I’ll save you the bother of getting rid of me.’ He slammed the door behind him. A proper slam this time.
17
MILO
Milo put down the bagpipes and banged on the front door of Forget Me Not until his wrist hurt. Hamlet let out a small squeal.
‘Shhh!’ Milo whispered. ‘You’re going to have to be really quiet or we won’t be let in.’ He squeezed Hamlet down further under his jacket.
At last he heard Nurse Thornhill’s squeaky steps coming to the door.
She opened the door and looked down at Milo.
‘If no one answers, it means we’re closed,’ she said.
Closed? She made it sound like she was running a shop, not a nursing home.
Milo straightened up. ‘I’ve come to see my gran.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. You’d better come back tomorrow.’ Nurse Thornhill began to close the door.
Milo put his foot in the way. ‘She’ll want to see me.’
Hamlet squealed.
Nurse Thornhill opened the door again.
‘What was that noise?’
Milo coughed. ‘I’ve got a wheeze,’ he said, pointing to his chest. ‘Asthma.’ He took a breath. ‘Please can I come in and see my gran?’
Nurse Thornhill pasted one of those stretched smiles on her face that she’d used on the day they first visited Forget Me Not. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that there are times when our clients need some rest.’ She paused. ‘Even from their loved ones.’
Milo focused his eyes. Down the pinhole all he could see was a long, dark corridor. It was only just gone four and already the place seemed to be shut down for the night.
‘Like I said, you’re welcome to come back in the morning.’
Milo could see she wasn’t going to let him through, so he gave her back a fake smile and walked back down the steps.
Who cared what Nurse Thornhill said. She didn’t have the right to keep him away from Gran, not when Gran was the last person he had left. Not when Gran needed him.
He waited until she’d closed the door behind her and then picked up Gramps’s bagpipes and walked around the back of Forget Me Not. There had to be another way in, a door that had been left open, a fire exit or even a window.
By the time Milo got to the back door to the kitchen, his hair was dripping and his clothes were drenched. His feet squelched in his school shoes.
He heard Tripi singing, the same song he sang on that first day when they came to look around Forget Me Not. Milo pushed at the door and felt his chest relax. Tripi had his back to him and was scraping soggy dumplings and stringy bits of beef and lumpy mashed potato into one of the bins. Milo darted through the kitchen. If Tripi didn’t see him, he wouldn’t get in trouble for letting Milo in against Nurse Thornhill’s orders.
The fancy visitors’ room was locked up as usual but the corridors were dark too and so was the lounge where the old people ate and watched TV.
‘Milo?’
Milo jumped. Nurse Heidi floated towards him in her white uniform like a fairy. He liked her better than he liked Nurse Thornhill.
‘Why’s everything closed down?’
Heidi looked around her nervously. ‘We’re having an early night.’
‘But it’s not night time.’
Nurse Heidi lowered her voice. ‘Nurse Thornhill is upset.’
‘About what?’
Nurse Heidi shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this.’ And then she did a double take. ‘How did you get in?’ She peered closer. ‘And what do you have under your coat?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Tell me why Nurse Thornhill’s upset and why everything’s dark and where everyone’s gone?’
‘They’re in their rooms, sleeping.’
The home was eerily quiet.
‘It’s not bedtime,’ Milo said.
‘They didn’t like the food.’
Milo thought about the slimy dumplings he’d just seen Tripi plopping into the bin. He wouldn’t eat those either.
‘Mrs Moseley start
ed a protest.’
‘Are you sure? Mrs Moseley wouldn’t know how to start a protest.’
Nurse Heidi shrugged. ‘It’s what Nurse Thornhill said. That Mrs Mosely was the instigator.’
None of this made any sense.
He started down the corridor towards Gran’s room.
‘You’re not meant to be here – I’ll get in trouble.’ Nurse Heidi whispered after him. ‘Come back!’ She was trying to whisper but her voice came out as a loud, raw hiss.
What Milo Saw Page 7