Milo picked up a stone. ‘You’re going to have to smash open the back door,’ he said, handing Tripi the stone.
‘Why me?’
‘Because it’s your house now.’
Tripi had never once broken into a house. Before buying false papers to get out of Syria, he had never broken the law.
The papers stated that he and Ayishah had an English uncle waiting for them in London.
Yes, he is our mother’s brother, they said to everyone they met.
Yes, we are half-English.
Their father’s genes were stronger, of course, that accounted for the darkness of their skin. But yes, they assured everyone who cared to ask, we have English blood running through our veins.
What choice did they have? They were being bombed out of their home, and anyway, Tripi did not believe in borders, in marking out where people were allowed to live and walk, where others should be kept out. For Tripi, the world belonged to everyone; it was when people built walls and erected fences and locked doors that the problems began.
Maybe the same was true of houses, thought Tripi. Perhaps, as long as some people had nowhere to sleep at night, houses should be considered shared property.
He lifted the stone and threw it hard.
The house was as cold inside as out. A few bits of broken furniture sat in corners, a damp carpet that smelt of mould, cracked walls, a draught blowing through the single-paned windows.
‘You see,’ said Milo. ‘No one’s been here for ages.’
Tripi put down his and Ayishah’s backpacks and spread out his sleeping bag in the hope that it might dry out a bit. And then he walked over to the mantelpiece and his eyes lit up. That was all a house needed: a fireplace. Now he could keep warm.
Hamlet scuttled around the living room, sniffing at the corners of the walls. Milo propped the bagpipes against an old chair; as they settled, they let out a wheeze, like an old man sitting on a stool in the souk.
‘Do you have a spare sleeping bag?’ Milo asked Tripi. ‘I have one at home but I don’t really want to go back there…’
‘You want to stay here?’ Tripi looked at the little boy.
‘Yes. I’m living here with you until that stupid lodger moves out.’
‘Stupid lodger?’
‘Mum’s put someone in Gran’s room to make money and he’s messed everything up.’
Tripi shook his head. ‘You need to go back to your mother, Milo. She will be worried.’
Milo kicked at a ruck in the carpet. ‘I’m the one who found this place. I should get to stay.’
Tripi edged closer to the boy. ‘I have a plan.’
Milo shifted his head and fixed his blue eyes on Tripi.
Tripi continued. ‘Go home for tonight and try to explain to your mother about the lodger and how it makes you upset. I will stay here with the bagpipes and the pig.’
‘Hamlet – he responds to his name.’
‘With Hamlet. If things aren’t better by tomorrow evening, you can come back and I will let you stay.’
This was the tactic Tripi used with Ayishah when she was in one of her stubborn moods.
‘I’m not sure.’
Tripi picked up the small pig and held him up. ‘What do you think, Hamlet?’ He held the pig to his ear and nodded his head. Hamlet touched his wet snout to Tripi’s nose. ‘Yes… yes… I quite agree.’ Tripi turned back to Milo. ‘Hamlet is of my opinion, he thinks you should go home and come back tomorrow.’
‘I’m not a kid, you know,’ said Milo, standing up.
‘Of course not. That’s why you’re going to do the adult thing and go home – you are going to go the extra mile.’
‘The extra mile?’
‘Make an effort.’
Milo nodded but stared at the floor.
‘And if I’m still not happy tomorrow, I can come back?’
‘It is a promise.’
Tripi watched the boy walk out through the back door and across the garden. Then he placed Hamlet on the carpet, wiped his hands on his trousers and looked around the house. This was not the home he and Ayishah had imagined when they dreamt of England, certainly not a castle, but it was a start.
He took out the blue piece of paper that Nurse Thornhill had given him and filled in the address. He hoped that she did not know that this house belonged to MailOrderBrideMan in Thailand and the wife he had ordered through the post.
20
LOU
That fog again. Milo coming in and out, fiddling with things, shaking her. Telling her not to take the pills.
Why was she so tired these days? And why did everything feel so far away?
And could it be Alasdair, her great-nephew from Inverary, sitting there in front of her smelling of leather and engine oil, a thick shadow of stubble on his chin, the roughness as he kissed her cheek? Could he be the little boy who’d swum with her in the sea at Inverary? Or was her mind slipping again, shifting discs of time like those big plates moving under the earth?
And then she’d opened her eyes briefly and looked out of the window and seen Sandy. She’d wanted to tell Milo that his mother was there, standing on the pavement in the rain, squeezing herself into that green waterproof. Getting bigger every day, like Hamlet. Poor Sandy, she couldn’t help it. Eating to fill up that gaping hole that Andy had left. Eating to numb the coldness she felt from her little boy.
She loves you, you know, she’d written on her pad, but he’d screwed shut his eyes and shaken his head.
If she loved me, you’d still be at home, Gran.
She must tell him to be kinder, to try to see things from her point of view.
And then Milo had left. And Sandy had walked away in the rain. Maybe they would meet on the way home, Lou thought.
The smell of boiled potatoes hung in the air. White cubes bobbed up and down in the toilet bowl. It was a last resort. She’d tried the bin, layering it with newspaper, damp seeping through yesterday’s headlines, but Nurse Thornhill had found out and grabbed her wrists and made her clear them out.
Everything smelt here. The walls and the carpets. The old people. Their skin, their hair, their involuntary farts. The stale smell of sleep that came from Mrs Zimmer as she sat, her mouth hanging open, in the lounge.
She walked to the bathroom, her limbs slow, and sprayed some perfume on her neck. A present from Milo last Christmas, a big, thick glass bottle from the market.
Does it smell like the one Gramps gave you? He’d asked. Like apricots?
She’d nodded and sprayed it on her old neck and tried not to breathe in. Dear boy.
Footsteps in the corridor, light on his feet for a man of eighty. He’d told her how he danced with his wife every Saturday night in Patitiri, the harbour town of Alonissos.
He’s a bit young, Gran, Milo had said. He’d found Petros in her room last time he came to visit.
A bit young for what? she’d written on her pad.
Milo had blushed.
I mean, if he’s bothering you, Gran…
Always looking out for her, dear Milo.
‘Louisa?’ A whisper at the door.
Petros crept in, a screwdriver and some masking tape in his creased hands. At first, as she’d watched him hammering at the table leg in the lounge, she’d thought he was the handyman. Always fixing things, like Milo.
‘We mustn’t let the rain in,’ he said.
He went over to the window, his bald patch shining under the moon.
21
MILO
When Milo got home that evening he shook the rain out of his hair. Mum’s trainers were missing from the hallway. Good, it would be easier without her in the house.
This was Milo’s plan: he was going to tell the guy living in Gran’s room that he had to move out, that with his dad gone, Milo got to make the decisions in the house, and that this was one of them. Mum had made a mistake. She’d forgotten that the room was already taken, or would be soon. He’d saved up enough of the pocket money Gran gave him to refund
any rent that had been paid. Whatever happened, the guy had to leave. Preferably tonight.
Milo felt his way along the dark bit from the landing to Gran’s room and then stood by the door and listened. Loud voices and explosions boomed out from the telly. The door stood ajar so he gave it a small push and looked through the crack. He couldn’t see much, except that the guy wasn’t lying on the bed like he had been when Milo walked in a few hours earlier.
He pushed the door a little further.
‘Hello…’
No answer.
Milo swung open the door and moved his body round 360 degrees so he could scan every bit of Gran’s room. Newspapers lay spread out on the floor and the telly was still set on that 24-hour news channel. A reporter in a bulletproof vest stood at the front of the screen, white flashes shooting through the sky behind the guy as he ducked his head and said: There’s been no let-up in the fighting on the streets of Damascus…
Files and books lined Gran’s shelves and on the windowsills stood one of Mum’s saucers, full of stubbed-out cigarettes. Milo made a mental note of that. Mum hated smoking, she gave her clients lectures about how it dehydrated their skin and gave them wrinkles and made their teeth yellow like Mrs Harris’s. She also told Milo that it would kill them, like it would kill him if he ever dared try one. At Slipton Primary some of the boys smoked in the woods, but they’d never invited Milo to join them, so maybe he would live for a bit longer.
Milo looked round for more evidence.
He was surprised to find Gran’s bathroom empty. No toothbrush or razor or shower gel. When he went back into the room and opened Gran’s wardrobe all he found was a pair of faded black jeans and a grey hoodie. No pants or socks. And the bed didn’t have a duvet on it or sheets or blankets, just the bare mattress.
The room looked more like an office than a bedroom.
Milo picked up a book lying on the guy’s sleeping bag. The cover had a picture of a biker wearing a leather jacket with Hell’s Angels, North Cal written on the back. The writer’s name was in orange: Hunter S. Thompson. Mum said that people who rode motorbikes were thugs, so why was she letting this guy stay under their roof? Milo flipped through the pages of the book: notes in the margin, and then a thick bit wedged between two pages. A small pile of photographs.
Milo looked through them, squinting to make sure that what he saw was really there and not his imagination filling in the blanks like it sometimes did when his eyes got tired. He brought the photos up closer to his eyes and felt his cheeks heating up.
He definitely wasn’t imagining things.
Yes! Milo hissed under his breath. If Mum saw these, she wouldn’t let the guy stay here, not in a million years.
Milo stuffed the photos under his school jumper.
The front door slammed.
He heard Mum kicking off her trainers, slipping into her clogs and clippety-clopping across the kitchen tiles. Milo took a deep breath and went downstairs.
Mum stood in the kitchen making a puddle on the linoleum floor that still looked grey and dirty from the fire.
‘Oh Milo, thank God!’ She ran up to him, threw her soggy arms around him and squeezed him so tight he thought she might push all the air out of him. The photos pressed against his tummy.
And she smelt of smoke. Mum never smelt of smoke.
When she stood back her face was blotchy and her eyes looked wobbly and there was wet on her cheeks, which could have been the rain, but Milo suspected it was something else. Her face had looked like that for weeks after Dad left.
He stepped back. ‘What are you wearing?’
Mum looked down at the lime green waterproof, the same colour as Mrs Harris’s bogey car. For some reason the waterproof looked familiar but Milo couldn’t quite place it.
‘Oh, this? It’s nothing.’ She peeled it off and hung it over a kitchen chair.
There were wet patches on Mum’s boobs where the rain had soaked through to her work uniform.
‘And why do you smell of smoke?’
The rash on Mum’s throat went a deeper shade of pink.
‘Oh, I do?’ She sniffed at her sleeve. ‘Probably one of the clients.’
Except Mum had a big red no-smoking sign up in the shed.
Milo took the photographs out from under his jumper. Now was a good time to tell her, while she was still feeling guilty.
Mum sat down at the table and rubbed her neck and then she saw a piece of paper and her eyes went even wobblier than before.
‘No. Please, no.’
Milo came and stood behind her and read the note from Mrs Hairy, her writing big and loopy:
I waited for you to come back. A whole hour, Sandy. I’m afraid I’ll be taking my custom elsewhere. Gina.
Mrs Hairy was the only client Mum had left.
‘Let someone else wax her hairy bum,’ said Mum and then she smacked her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, Milo.’
Tears plopped out of Mum’s eyes, definitely not rain this time. And then she dropped her head into her hands and sank her fingers into her hair that had gone fuzzy from the rain.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bills, Milo,’ she said, wiping her cheeks.
‘She’ll come back, Mum, no one else will want to pluck out all those hairs.’
Milo remembered a time when he’d walked into the shed and Mrs Hairy was lying with her big thighs all exposed on Mum’s massage bed. Later, Mum explained it was because Mrs Hairy was going on holiday to Jamaica, which is where her mum and dad came from, and she’d have to wear a bikini and couldn’t have tufts of black hair sticking out. Remembering that made Milo think about the photos he’d found in Gran’s room. He shoved them back under his jumper; he’d tell Mum about them when her face wasn’t wet and blotchy.
A motorbike roared down the road, stopped outside their door and a few seconds later the doorbell rang.
Milo didn’t admit it to Mum or Gran or anyone else, but whenever the doorbell rang, he hoped it might be Dad coming home because he was sick of his Tart. Or, since a week ago, Gran. Not that she’d be able to walk back by herself.
‘Don’t have any keys yet.’ The lodger guy stood on the doorstep, his helmet under his arm. He had a Scottish accent, like Gran’s voice sounded in Milo’s head.
Mum sniffed, slipped off the kitchen stool and came to the front door.
‘I’m so sorry, I’ll have some cut tomorrow. Milo, go and get your keys, Mr McCloud can have those in the meantime.’
‘I need my keys,’ said Milo.
Mum stared at Milo. He felt the photographs under his jumper again.
‘I’ve got the rent. This month, and next month too, a thank you for taking me in at such short notice,’ said the man. ‘In cash.’ He winked.
Mum took the envelope and a big sigh came out of her like she’d been holding her breath for ages.
‘He smokes,’ said Milo.
‘What?’ asked Mum.
‘Mr McCloud smokes.’
‘Al, please call me Al. We’re family after all.’
Milo blinked. Family? What was he going on about? He kept talking.
‘He smokes and he leaves dirty cigarette stubs in your best saucers.’
‘I’m sorry about that, it’s all I could find.’
As the guy smiled, Mum blushed a bit.
‘If you’d rather I smoked outside.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Mum.
Which was just about the most unfair thing Milo had ever heard. What about smoking giving you wrinkles and yellow teeth and killing you in the end?
‘Thank you for the payment, it’s much appreciated,’ she said, smiling back at him.
‘And he left the telly on,’ said Milo.
‘Sorry, bad habits.’ The guy shrugged. ‘I’d better leave you to it, early night for me.’ And he walked up the stairs. He hadn’t taken his boots off either and he left dirty soggy patches on the carpet, but Mum didn’t seem to notice.
‘Milo, go and get your keys and br
ing them upstairs to Mr McCloud – to Al.’
As Milo clumped up the stairs to his room, he thought of his new friend, Tripi, and the pink house and how he’d much rather be living with him.
22
LOU
What Milo Saw Page 9