What Milo Saw

by Virginia MacGregor

  PC Stubbs held up his hands like he had in class when they’d cheered for the video. Milo gulped to get his breath back and fell silent.

  ‘Miranda, I think I can take it from here.’ There it was again, that low, slow calm voice.

  Miranda blushed and nodded. ‘I was only trying to help,’ she mumbled.

  ‘And I’m grateful for that, thank you. I’ll come and bring you a coffee when I’m done here with —’

  ‘Milo – Milo Moon,’ Milo chipped in, his chest relaxing. PC Stubbs was on his side. He was going to listen to him.

  When Miranda had left, PC Stubbs turned to Milo and said:

  ‘It’s good to see you, Milo.’ He leant in. ‘And who’s this?’ He gave Hamlet a rub on the head.

  ‘His name’s Hamlet.’

  Milo suddenly felt a bit foolish for having blurted everything out in one go without planning it out in his head first. He promised himself to be calmer now to make up for it. PC Stubbs was listening to him, that was all that mattered. And when he found out what Milo had uncovered he’d be really impressed and everyone else would be proud of him too like Gran and even Mum might think he’d done something right for once. And best of all, Mum would understand that it was time for Gran to come home again.

  PC Stubbs cleared his throat. ‘How long has your gran been at Forget Me Not, Milo?’

  ‘A week and a bit… I don’t know…’

  Milo didn’t understand why PC Stubbs was starting his questioning here. He had to steer him to the important bits.

  ‘But that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter if she’s been there for days or weeks or years. And it’s not just her, it’s all the old people – Nurse Thornhill’s taken away everyone’s money and —’

  Milo gulped. He could feel himself getting carried away again.

  ‘And she used to live with you, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  PC Stubbs paused. ‘You must miss her, Milo.’

  Milo felt where this was going. His stomach tightened.

  ‘This isn’t about missing my gran.’ His words came out in small stuttery bursts.

  PC Stubbs paused and took a breath and made his voice go soft.

  ‘Why don’t you come and take a seat, Milo.’ He pointed to couple of plastic seats across the corridor. ‘And I could get you a drink from the machine.’

  Milo shook his head.

  PC Stubbs sighed and looped his fingers into his belt.

  ‘You know, Milo, there are some things that don’t make sense to us when we’re growing up. We look at them head on and we think we understand what’s going on, but there’s a bigger picture.’

  Milo clenched his fists; he felt his nails digging into the palms of his hands. This wasn’t about seeing the bigger picture. This was about seeing what was right under your big fat nose and knowing it was wrong and doing something to put it right. That’s what the police got paid to do.

  ‘Nurse Thornhill’s a pillar of the community. She gives a great deal to the old people of Forget Me Not.’

  More like she steals a great deal.

  ‘And you know what, Milo, I’m sure there’s a very good explanation. She’s probably put their money in a safe and is looking after it for them so that they don’t lose it or so that someone doesn’t walk off the street and take it from them. If you ask me, she’s done the sensible thing.’

  A pillar of the community? What was he going on about? Milo didn’t want to listen any more. PC Stubbs was just as bad as all the other grown-ups. Coming here was pointless. Milo turned and walked down the corridor.

  ‘We’ll put your complaint on file, Milo,’ PC Stubbs called after him.

  Milo thought of that big grey metal filing cabinet that Miranda rifled through. Hundreds of bits of paper that no one would ever bother to dig out.

  ‘Come and see us any time. And keep those eyes and ears open.’

  Milo’s heavy footsteps on the thick linoleum floor swallowed PC Stubbs’s voice. If there was one thing he’d worked out in the last hour it was that whatever he ended up being when he was older, it wasn’t going to be a policeman.

  26

  MILO

  Milo wasn’t meant to run because he could trip over or miss things coming towards him, like that truck the night of the Christmas party, so he’d taught himself to walk really fast, faster than any of the kids at school. But this time he didn’t care, he just wanted to get out of that stupid police station as fast as he could. His eyes heavy and tired and filled with grey fuzz, his heart knocking against his chest, he dashed out into the road.

  A loud screech.

  Milo dropped Hamlet, who darted across the road, squealing his head off.

  A swerve somewhere close to Milo’s body.

  The crunch of metal.

  Swearing.

  And flowers, hundreds of yellow petals, falling from the sky over the tarmac.

  ‘Bloody idiot. Why don’t you look where you’re going.’

  Someone walking towards him. The thud of heavy boots.

  Milo stood frozen in the middle of the road.

  ‘Milo?’

  Milo looked up and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Christ, Milo, you nearly got yourself killed.’ That Scottish accent.

  ‘Hamlet – where’s Hamlet?’ Milo looked around frantically. His eyes wouldn’t focus.

  He felt the man moving away from him and then heard a squeal.

  ‘Here.’ The man placed Hamlet in Milo’s arms.

  Milo looked down into Hamlet’s small, scared face. He had yellow petals on his head.

  Milo shifted his head. A motorbike lay on the side of the road, a dent in its body.

  ‘I… I’m sorry.’

  Milo looked down through his pinhole at the man’s hands: they were trembling, like Gran’s. Then he looked up into his face. It was Al, the guy living upstairs.

  ‘Are you okay, Milo?’ Al asked.

  Milo shook his head. He felt tears pricking the back of his eyes. ‘They wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘I meant are you okay after nearly being run over.’

  Milo kept going. ‘They never listen to kids. They pretend they do, but when it comes down to it, when you try to tell them something important, grown-ups are all the same.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense, Milo. Come on, let’s get you and Hamlet out of the road.’

  Al took Milo by the elbow and guided him to the bench outside the police station and then went to get his bike and wheeled it over.

  ‘I’m sorry about your bike,’ Milo said, looking at the concave dent over the Harley bit of Harley Davidson.

  ‘It’ll live,’ said Al, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his leather jacket.

  Milo noticed that Al’s hands were still shaking. Al lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply and puffed the smoke up into the dark sky. With every puff, Al’s face relaxed a bit more, and his hands too. Maybe cigarettes weren’t as bad as all that, thought Milo.

  ‘Why are there yellow petals everywhere?’ Milo asked.

  ‘I was taking roses to Gran.’

  Milo felt a jolt. ‘To my gran?’

  ‘She’s everyone’s gran, Milo. Or she was back home.’

  So it was true. Al was a relative of some kind. And he knew that Gran’s favourite flowers were yellow roses.

  ‘I’m her great-nephew,’ said Al. ‘One of the tribe from Inverary.’ He dragged on his cigarette some more. ‘Let me finish this and I’ll take you home. Then you can explain to me what you were doing standing in the middle of the road outside a police station.’

  Milo wasn’t sure he wanted to tell anyone anything any more, not after what had just happened with PC Stubbs. And he wasn’t sure he could trust Al, not yet. And he didn’t want to go home, not if Mum was there. She’d give him a lecture about missing school. He had to talk to her when she was calm, get her in a good mood, so he could explain about Gran. Mum knew when things were unfair – if he could get her to believe what he’d seen,
maybe she’d do something about it. He picked up his school bag and swung it over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got to go to school,’ he said.

  ‘If you’re sure you’re okay.’

  Milo nodded.

  Al lifted the seat of his bike, pulled out a spare helmet and held it out. ‘For you,’ he said.

  Milo widened his eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’re safer on the bike than your feet, don’t you?’ Al laughed.

  ‘But…’

  ‘I’ll drop you off, it’s on my way.’

  ‘You’re still going to see Gran?’

  ‘Of course. Though I’ll have to apologise for coming empty handed.’ He looked at the roses scattered over the street.

  ‘Will you…’ Milo started and then hesitated. He took a breath. ‘Will you let me know if you see anything… I mean, if you see anything that you don’t think is quite right?’

  Al shrugged. ‘Sure thing, Milo.’

  As Milo looked at Al’s bike, he thought of his classmates at school and all those boys who could do things like play football and ride skateboards and play tag because their eyes were right. He’d be willing to bet that none of them had ever been on the back of a motorbike, not even Stan.

  Milo nodded.

  ‘Good.’ Al strapped on Milo’s helmet, lifted him by the armpits and settled him onto the back of the bike. Then he put on his own helmet and his gloves and sat in front of him. ‘Grip me around the waist, Milo, and follow my movements.’

  Milo passed his hands around Al’s big leather jacket. It smelt like his skin and the attic room and like all the places he must have been to.

  He still didn’t like the thought of Al living in Gran’s room and cluttering it up with his things and making it all smelly and smoking in it. And he knew that there was something wrong with those photographs he’d found, but for those few minutes, as they roared through Slipton, Hamlet squashed between them, tucked into Milo’s school jumper, Milo forgot about everything: about Dad and Mum and Gran and Al and his photos and nasty Nurse Thornhill. He even forgot about his eyes. He just squeezed Hamlet in tight, closed his eyes, let the wind whip past him and imagined, for a second, that he was flying.

  27

  TRIPI

  Tripi stood in front of the television in the lounge at Forget Me Not and watched the snow fall on Syria. He and Ayishah had left in T-shirts and sandals; they were going to buy warm things when they got to England. She’d packed a blue cotton jumper for when the nights got cold, but the day they left Damascus the temperature climbed to forty degrees, so she kept the jumper in her backpack.

  A man from an organisation called Save The Children stood in the television talking about one of the camps Tripi and Ayishah had seen as they neared the border. With a sad voice, the man asked for donations; the winter was cold, he said, the children hungry.

  Every time Tripi looked at the news, he searched for Ayishah’s face: the wispy curls around her forehead, how her cheeks went pink and chubby when she laughed.

  Tripi looked from the screen to the old women sitting in the lounge. It was cold in here too and the porridge in front of them didn’t look much better than the grey clumps of rice they served up to the children in the camp on the television. He watched Heidi, the young nurse, rub at an old potato stain on the front of Mrs Turner’s dress. And then Nurse Heidi noticed that Mrs Turner had dribbled some porridge onto the front pocket of her dress.

  ‘Silly thing,’ said Nurse Heidi.

  Mrs Turner smiled like it was a compliment.

  ‘If you keep doing this, I’m the one who’ll get it in the neck. Nurse Thornhill likes her clients to be clean.’

  ‘Got ’em!’ shouted Mrs Sharp from her armchair in the corner, tilting her iPad to one side.

  ‘Be quiet, Mrs Sharp, you’re disturbing everyone,’ said Nurse Heidi.

  Nurse Heidi did not look like a bad person, but she worked long hours so she was tired and that made her cross. And she had to please Nurse Thornhill to pass her diploma and pleasing Nurse Thornhill was hard work.

  I’ll never bring Ayishah to Forget Me Not, thought Tripi. He didn’t want her to know that some bits of England were worse than Syria. Worse because there wasn’t a war or a shortage of food and yet still they did not know how to be kind to each other.

  Mrs Wong walked past Tripi clutching a piece of paper. A photocopy, a picture of Ayishah.

  He’d told Milo to be discreet.

  ‘What is that you have there, Mrs Wong?’ Tripi asked, easing the piece of paper out of her hands.

  ‘Milo told us to look for his friend.’

  ‘His friend?’

  Mrs Wong nodded. ‘She is lost in that terrible country.’

  So that is what people thought of his homeland now. A terrible country. And for some reason they believed that a twelve-year-old girl from Damascus was friends with a little boy in Slipton.

  Tripi felt Nurse Thornhill come up behind him. ‘You should be in the kitchen, Tahir, you’re not paid to watch television.’

  He handed the piece of paper back to Mrs Wong.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled and gathered some breakfast bowls to look useful.

  ‘I received your address,’ she said.

  Tripi’s heart thumped.

  ‘So, you live on the high street now, do you?’

  Tripi balanced the bowls and watched Nurse Thornhill’s thin eyebrows shoot up into points like paper hats stuck to her forehead.

  He nodded. ‘I’m staying with a friend.’

  ‘A generous friend, it seems.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good morning, Nurse Thornhill.’ Petros came into the lounge.

  The hats on Nurse Thornhill’s eyebrows softened and she smiled with her white teeth. ‘Good morning, Petros.’

  Petros went to inspect one of the legs on the coffee table.

  Tripi did not understand why Petros got smiles from Nurse Thornhill or why she told Tripi to put more meat than potatoes on Petros’s tray at dinner. Though he was glad that the old man got some food. He did not have supplies in his room like the old ladies who had biscuits and chocolates brought in by their families.

  ‘Now chop, chop, Tahir, to work. There are people queuing up for your job.’

  Not for the pay you give me, thought Tripi. Although she had insisted on his address, Nurse Thornhill had forgotten the other boxes on the form. He suspected that although she did not want a homeless man working in her kitchen, she was not too worried about him being an illegal immigrant without a National Insurance Number, not if it meant she could save some money.

  ‘Heidi, come over here, I need you to help me get the front room in order,’ said Nurse Thornhill. ‘We’ve got a family visiting this afternoon.’

  The young nurse nodded, got up and followed Nurse Thornhill with small, rapid steps. Tripi tried to catch her eye as she went past, but Heidi kept her head bowed.

  He looked back at the television. For Donations or more information, Call 020 70126400. Maybe he could call the man in the television and ask him whether he had seen Ayishah.

  ‘You shouldn’t watch that stuff.’ Petros went up to the television and flipped the channel to a cookery programme. ‘It will only depress you.’

  Watching nice food being made when all you got to eat were potatoes could be just as depressing for the old people, thought Tripi. And anyway, they had to keep the news on, they were looking for Milo’s friend.

  ‘Are you happy here, Mr Spiteri?’ Tripi asked.

  Petros shrugged. ‘I try to be grateful.’ He laughed but it was one of those laughs you release when you cannot think of anything else to say.

  ‘Are you treated well? You and…’ Tripi looked round the lounge. ‘The other patients here?’

  ‘Nurse Thornhill looks after me, yes. And the ladies? They are okay.’ He took off his cap and twisted it between his fingers. ‘It isn’t for me to rock the boat. If I am not here, where will I go? Like you with your job, no?’

/>   ‘Yes. I see,’ said Tripi. But sometimes, when you saw things that did not feel right, it was your duty to rock the boat, wasn’t it? That’s what Ayishah would say.