What Milo Saw

by Virginia MacGregor

  ‘It sounds like you don’t know how to mind your own business.’ Sandy’s skin burned. She opened the front door and held out Mrs Harris’s coat.

  33

  MILO

  The bogey car reversed out the drive. Milo watched one of Hamlet’s droppings slide off the roof and down the back windscreen.

  He held Hamlet up to the window so he could see.

  ‘Serves her right for turning up to our house like that,’ Milo whispered into Hamlet’s black ear. He’d picked up the droppings in a poop-a-scoop bag when they were in the park. Hamlet’s licence hadn’t arrived yet, so Milo didn’t want to leave any evidence.

  He’d known that Mum would be too busy to listen. There was always something.

  ‘You’ll see Gran tomorrow,’ he said as Hamlet burrowed his snout into Milo’s arm. ‘Tripi will take you. And you’ll have to help us find out what’s going on at Forget Me Not and then we’ll get Gran out of there and we’ll be together again.’

  The loud voices from the telly started up again above Milo’s head, and that heavy metal music too. How could someone listen to the telly and music at the same time?

  Milo looked up at the ceiling and thought about Al and how he’d let him and Hamlet ride on the back of his motorbike. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, but then there were still the photos to explain. Before he could trust him he had to get to the bottom of those.

  He put Hamlet down, took the photos out of his school bag and went upstairs.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! He thumped on Gran’s door.

  No answer.

  He tightened his fist and whacked harder. Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The door flew open.

  ‘Hi there.’ Al smiled at Milo, which Milo hadn’t expected after all his banging.

  ‘I’m trying to do my homework, I can’t concentrate.’ Milo looked into the room at the big flashing television. Did Al watch anything apart from the news?

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, mate, I’ll turn it down.’ Al walked over, held a remote up to the telly and pressed until the voices went quiet and then he got another remote and did the same thing to his stereo.

  ‘So you okay – after this morning, I mean?’ Al asked.

  ‘Kind of.’

  Al’s eyes flickered over Milo’s hands. ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

  Milo felt his fingers get hot and sticky around the photos. Was taking someone’s stuff when he was in your home the same as stealing in the outside world?

  Al kept smiling.

  Milo made his eyes focus on Al’s face. His dark hair and his big nose and his stubbly skin blurred in and out of focus. He drew up all the energy he had left and said, ‘Mum wouldn’t want this kind of stuff in her house.’ He held out the photographs.

  Al looked at Milo for a second and then laughed. Milo smelt smoke on his breath.

  ‘Why don’t you come in so we can have a chat?’

  Milo put the photos down on the bedside table, but he missed the edge and they scattered over the floor. Bits of boob and puffy lips and bulging thighs swam in front of him. His face burned up, like Mum’s rash.

  Milo worried that one day, when he had a girlfriend and had to look at her naked, she’d come too close and he’d only see bits of her at a time and she’d get angry, because it’s rude to stare at people’s private parts.

  ‘What do you think of them?’ Al opened the window and lit a cigarette.

  ‘They’re… They’re…’ Milo took a breath. ‘You shouldn’t have them. It’s wrong.’

  ‘I agree, Milo —’ Al took a drag on his cigarette and let out the smoke through a corner of his mouth as he spoke, ‘— can I call you Milo?’

  Milo nodded and then regretted it, he didn’t want this guy calling him anything.

  ‘Well, as you know, my name’s Alasdair McCloud, but you can call me Clouds, like my mates do.’

  Mates? Milo wasn’t sure he wanted to be mates with someone who’d taken over his Gran’s room and filled it with naked women and noise and smoke.

  Al drew again on his cigarette, crouched down and picked up the photos.

  ‘I was wondering where these had got to – can’t do much without my evidence.’ He blew hoops of smoke to the ceiling, which Milo thought was cool until he remembered he wasn’t meant to like him smoking in Gran’s room.

  ‘Why have you written numbers on the back?’

  ‘It’s for the documentary.’

  Milo’s eyes went wide. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Al sat down on the bed and patted the bare mattress.

  Milo shook his head.

  ‘Fair enough.’ He laughed again. ‘You know what a journalist is, Milo?’

  Milo turned his head and looked at the television with the quiet voices. ‘Of course I know what a journalist is.’

  ‘Okay, so that’s what I’m training to be.’

  Milo didn’t know where this was going or what it had to do with pictures of naked women.

  ‘A special kind of journalist.’

  ‘One who takes bad photos?’ Milo felt proud of his comeback.

  ‘Yes.’ Al sucked on his cigarette. ‘One who takes bad photos.’

  ‘Mum wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I dare say she wouldn’t.’

  Milo lifted his head. He was getting somewhere at last.

  ‘You have to take bad photos if you want to catch bad people, Milo.’

  ‘What bad people?’

  ‘People who take advantage of girls like this. Who are involved in sex-trafficking.’

  Milo didn’t understand what sex had to do with traffic.

  ‘Bad people who make them be naked?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Al stacked up the photos and put them back in the book where Milo had found them with the orange writing that said Hell’s Angels, a book Milo was sure Mum wouldn’t like either. ‘You know what an undercover reporter is?’

  Milo nodded but he didn’t, not really.

  ‘It’s someone who digs up the dirt, who goes to places and looks at things everyone else ignores, so that the people doing bad things get caught.’

  ‘Isn’t that what the police are meant to do?’

  Al shrugged. ‘Yeah, but they’re sometimes a bit slow. We speed things up and we’re willing to expose things in a way the cops aren’t allowed to. We put the evidence on TV, on the internet.’ Al looked up at Milo and smiled. ‘You know what? I think you’d be quite good at it. Breaking in, snooping around —’

  ‘I’m… I… I didn’t —.’

  ‘It’s all right, mate, I’m impressed. You thought I was the bad guy, so you came to find evidence – that’s what I do.’

  Milo came and sat on the end of the bed, leaving a good gap between him and Al. He thought about PC Stubbs and how he refused to do anything about Nurse Thornhill stealing all that money from the old people. Al was right, they were slow. In fact, as Milo saw it at the moment, they were pretty useless.

  ‘So, how do you manage not to get caught? When you’re getting your evidence?’

  ‘That’s the undercover bit. I pretend I’m one of them.’

  ‘One of the bad guys?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Milo’s mind raced. Al was right, he’d be good at going undercover and finding stuff.

  ‘Are you going to catch them? The people who made those girls get naked?’

  ‘I hope so, Milo – we’re getting close.’ Al looked at Milo and blinked. Milo knew what was coming next – Al had given him the look everyone gave him when they realised there was something wrong. ‘Can I ask you a question, Milo?’

  Milo didn’t feel like talking about it, but he nodded. Al had answered his questions, so it was only fair.

  ‘You see things differently from other people, right?’

  Milo felt it coming, the whole pitying him because of his eyes.

  ‘It’s just the way you look at things, like you can see more than we can. Deeper, I mean.’

  Milo felt himself blushing. No one had ev
er made Retinitis Pigmentosa sound like a good thing, not unless you count Dr Nolan who went on about Milo’s unique condition, and that didn’t count because doctors were paid to find sick people interesting.

  Milo shook his head. ‘My eyes don’t work.’

  Al stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Well, they worked well enough to catch me out.’

  ‘I can’t see the whole picture.’

  Al laughed. ‘Lots of people can’t do that.’

  Milo didn’t understand. He curled his thumb and forefinger together to make a small hole, nudged up the bed until he was wedged next to Al, and held his fingers up to Al’s eyes. ‘Look through here.’

  Al leant into Milo’s hand, squinting with his other eye.

  ‘That’s what I see. Kind of, only worse.’

  ‘Wow, that must be amazing.’

  Milo shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘I mean, it makes you focus, doesn’t it? I bet you see all kinds of things that other people miss.’

  Milo had never thought of it like that.

  ‘Yeah, but I miss the other stuff, outside of the hole.’

  ‘The other stuff’s overrated, mate. If everyone gets to see it, it’s not very special. Now what you see, that’s something.’

  Milo thought about all the things he’d seen at Forget Me Not and how other people whose eyes were better than his didn’t seem to notice it. Maybe Al was right, maybe seeing everything through the pinhole was some kind of superpower. Or maybe Al was just saying it to make Milo feel good so he’d forget about showing Mum the photos.

  ‘So, once you see something that’s wrong, you take photos?’ asked Milo.

  ‘Photos, film. Any evidence that will make what you say sound true.’

  ‘And don’t you get in trouble? If you get caught?’

  ‘That’s part of the job, Milo. Fear of getting caught gets the adrenalin pumping, it’s what drives you.’

  Milo got up and went to the door. He put his fingers on the door handle and hesitated. A part of him wanted to turn round and tell Al about Gran and everything he’d seen at Forget Me not and to get him to help him gather evidence to catch Nurse Thornhill, but he wasn’t sure yet whether he liked him or whether he could trust him. Maybe he’d dismiss him just because he was a kid, like PC Stubbs had. No, he’d wait a bit longer and in the meantime, he’d find ways of gathering some evidence by himself.

  Milo turned round. ‘Did you get to see Gran?’

  Al nodded. ‘Strange place she’s in, that’s for sure.’

  Milo felt a little skip in his heart. So he wasn’t imagining it. Al saw it too. Maybe he would believe him if he told him all the things he saw.

  ‘So, have I passed the test?’ asked Al.

  Al lay back on the mattress. He still didn’t look right, taking up all this space in Gran’s room.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Milo, and he couldn’t help smiling a bit.

  ‘Well, if we’re going to be friends, you really should call me Clouds. It’s what everyone calls me back home.’

  ‘In Inverary?’ That was where Gran came from.

  Al nodded. ‘Aye, in Inverary.’

  Milo thought that ‘friends’ was maybe stretching it a bit, though he supposed that calling him Clouds couldn’t do any harm. He nodded and said. ‘Okay.’

  Later that night, as Milo drifted off to sleep, he heard Clouds’s biker boots clomping down the stairs and him talking to Mum by the front door. Even if what Clouds said made sense of the photos and why he watched the news all the time, none of that explained why he didn’t have any pants or socks or other clothes in Gran’s wardrobe or wash things in the bathroom. And why, most nights, Milo heard the roar of his motorbike pulling away and only heard it coming back first thing in the morning. He was right not to trust him yet.

  34

  TRIPI

  On Friday the fourteenth of December, Tripi plodded down the corridor with Hamlet snuggled under his chef’s whites and Milo’s mobile phone sticking out of his pocket.

  Milo had come by the house before school, breathless with excitement about this man called Al who’d given him an idea about how to find out whether there was anything suspicious going on at Forget Me Not. He’d given Tripi the pig (for Mrs Moon) and the phone (to collect evidence). Tripi still wasn’t sure about this, but helping the little boy couldn’t hurt, could it?

  He’d taken footage of the pills that Nurse Thornhill gave the patients – Milo said that was important – and although he had felt a knot in his stomach as he did so, he let Mrs Moseley show him the bruises that ran along her arm where Nurse Thornhill had gripped her and pushed her under a cold shower.

  Mrs Swift walked past him and smiled. It was amazing how these old people managed to stay happy in a place like this.

  ‘You are looking very beautiful this morning, Mrs Swift,’ he said.

  ‘I could do yours too, you know.’ Mrs Swift held up her red lipstick. ‘I saw this show on the telly and they were saying that men wear make-up too now, they call them metrosexuals.’

  ‘I will think about it,’ said Tripi. ‘Thank you.’

  Mrs Swift went and knocked on Mrs Wong’s door. ‘Ready for your make-up?’ she asked.

  Every morning Mrs Wong let Mrs Swift give her what they called a make-over. And then Mrs Wong came to the kitchen to ask whether she could have some rice for lunch and he had to tell her that rice was not on the menu. Next Monday Nurse Thornhill was taking the day off, perhaps he would make Mrs Wong some rice then.

  Heidi stood staring at the noticeboard. Tripi liked her soft smile, though she reminded him too much of a mouse, always scuttling after Nurse Thornhill.

  ‘Looks like she got shortlisted.’ Heidi adjusted the basket of washing under her arm and pointed at a poster.

  The Greater London Nursing Home Awards. Underneath, a list of three shortlisted homes and home directors.

  First on the list: Forget Me Not Home, Slipton, Nurse Thornhill.

  Tripi shook his head. There was something wrong with this country, something more wrong than Syria.

  ‘How did she get chosen?’ he asked.

  ‘Votes. I voted for her, so did most of the patients. Petros organised it.’

  Heidi looked at the bulge under Tripi’s coat and frowned. Tripi breathed in and held Hamlet tighter.

  ‘You voted for Nurse Thornhill?’

  She really was a little mouse. And Petros? Tripi wanted to like the old man, especially as Mrs Moon was so fond of him. But he was always, what was that phrase Ayishah had learnt at school? Sucking up to Nurse Thornhill.

  ‘She said she’d give me a good write-up for my course.’ Heidi looked at the poster again. ‘She does work hard, you can give her that.’

  She works hard at making people unhappy, thought Tripi. There should be an award for that. Then he had an idea. He slipped a hand into his pocket and switched on the red button of the phone, like Milo had taught him.

  ‘So, Nurse Heidi,’ he said, his voice loud and clear.

  Heidi raised her eyebrows at Tripi’s change in tone, though he did not worry too much about that: being foreign meant that people expected you to sound strange. ‘Nurse Thornhill,’ he pronounced the name really clearly, trying to lean his mouth towards his pocket. ‘Nurse Thornhill told you to vote for her, did she?’

  Heidi wrinkled her brow but nodded.

  ‘Was that a yes?’

  ‘Keep your voice down, Tripi.’ Heidi looked up and down the corridor. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  He hoped the phone had picked her up, it would be good evidence for Milo. Hamlet shuffled. A teacup pig, wasn’t that what Milo had said? More like teapot pig.

  ‘What’s that?’ She nudged her chin at the bulge under Tripi’s chef whites.

  At that moment, Nurse Thornhill’s tall, white figure appeared at the end of the corridor.

  Heidi went pale. ‘I swear there are CCTV cameras in this place.’

  That was a good line for the recording, thought Tripi.

&
nbsp; Hamlet let out a squeal.

  Tripi looked at Heidi’s washing basket. It stank of sleep and urine. Nurse Thornhill sacked one of the cleaners for spending too much time talking to the old ladies so Heidi was having to do all the work the cleaner did plus her own nursing duties. Tripi lifted one of the dirty sheets, placed Hamlet into the basket, placed the sheet back on top and leant in towards Heidi. ‘Bring him to Mrs Moon and tell her to hide him.’