What Milo Saw

by Virginia MacGregor

  ‘I am?’ Sandy stared at Tripi.

  ‘You are both my friends.’

  The ringtone from Milo’s phone sounded. Sandy looked to Milo but when she worked out the noise wasn’t coming from him, she turned back to Tripi.

  ‘Why does Tripi have your phone?’ she asked.

  Tripi held up Milo’s phone. ‘It is your father, he has been calling you.’

  ‘Dad?’ Milo leapt forward and grabbed the phone.

  As he waited for an answer, he noticed Mum’s shoulders sink. Whenever he asked why Dad never called, she said it was because he was busy looking after the baby. He noticed the rash inching up her throat. This morning, he’d watched her spreading calamine lotion over it until her throat ended up looking like a body part for a Madame Tussauds statue.

  ‘He’s hung up,’ said Milo, staring down at the phone. He swiped his fingers over the screen. ‘And the number’s blocked.’

  ‘He will call again,’ said Tripi. ‘He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘You spoke to Dad?’

  ‘Only briefly. I explained I was your friend and looking after your phone, but I don’t think he understood.’

  ‘Of course he didn’t bloody understand. My son’s friend? How old are you? You shouldn’t be picking up young boys and taking them into your home. You could be arrested for that.’ The red rash spread into her cheeks.

  ‘Mum, Tripi’s not like that. Tripi’s —’

  ‘It is okay, Milo.’ Tripi stood up and cleared his throat. ‘I am twenty-four and I work at Forget Me Not and I know Mrs Moon – Old Mrs Moon, not you. Milo came to me. But if you do not want us to be friends, I understand. In my country it is the same: the mother always decides.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t get to decide.’ Milo rubbed his eyes; they felt raw and bloodshot. Red dots swam in front of him. ‘She made Dad go away and now she doesn’t even have a job and no one’s paying the bills, and I keep trying to tell her things about that horrible place where she put Gran, but she won’t listen. She never has time to listen. So she doesn’t get to decide anything.’

  Mum stepped backwards.

  Tripi stood staring at Milo.

  ‘I… I think I’ll go.’ Mum turned and walked back through the kitchen.

  ‘Stay and have some more baklava and some coffee,’ Tripi called after her. ‘We can talk, the three of us.’

  But Mum didn’t listen. She walked through the front door and a moment later she stepped out onto the pavement into the rain, the green waterproof sitting inside on the back of a kitchen chair.

  41

  TRIPI

  As the Lovely Sandy disappeared through the front door, Milo walked out through the back door. Tripi had upset both his new English friends, though he didn’t quite understand why.

  ‘Milo,’ he called after him. ‘Please stay.’

  When Milo reached the gap in the fence he stopped but did not turn round.

  ‘Do not be angry, Milo.’

  Tripi came and stood behind him. He wanted to touch his shoulder but then he thought about what the Lovely Sandy had said: about Tripi being too old to have a friend like Milo and how it had made Tripi feel sick in his stomach, like the smell of the potatoes at Forget Me Not.

  He had not once thought about their ages, that he was twenty-four and that Milo was nine and that their friendship could be seen as strange. You’re barking up the wrong tree, that’s what he wanted to say to Milo’s mother. But sometimes people did not like his phrases and she was already angry with him.

  ‘You went behind my back,’ said Milo, twisting a laurel leaf between his fingers until the green flesh was crumpled and bruised.

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘You’re just like Mrs Harris, you went and told my mum.’ Milo threw the leaf onto the grass. ‘I can’t trust anyone.’

  Tripi heard a wobble in Milo’s voice and, although it was in English, it was the same wobble he used to hear in Ayishah’s voice when she was upset about something.

  ‘Please, Milo, I did not know she was your mother.’

  Milo turned round. He fixed his eyes on Tripi, his little mouth set hard. ‘So you’re saying it’s a coincidence, that you were sitting having coffee with Mum in the house I found for you?’

  Tripi shrugged. ‘Allah works in mysterious ways.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like the sound of Allah.’

  Ayishah had once said that, too. When their parents explained that they had to leave, that Tripi would look after her until they were together again, they told her to trust Allah that all would be well. And she turned round and said: If Allah’s so great, you wouldn’t have to leave at all.

  Sometimes Tripi struggled with his faith, but Allah was the one good thing he had left to hang onto.

  ‘I saw your mother standing in the rain looking at the house, and we got talking and I asked her to come in.’ Tripi thought that telling Milo he had met her at Forget Me Not the other night would confuse things.

  ‘You didn’t know that she was my mum?’ Milo’s eyes and his mouth softened. ‘You really didn’t?’

  ‘I really did not know, Milo.’ Then a big smile spread across Tripi’s face. ‘Though if you had told me that you had such a beautiful mother…’ He allowed himself to ruffle Milo’s hair.

  Milo scratched his head.

  ‘Come on, let us go in and you can taste some of my baklava. Your mother liked them, maybe you can bring some home to her.’

  They walked back down through the garden and into the house.

  ‘I have some good evidence, it will make you happy.’

  ‘Recorded on the phone?’

  Tripi nodded.

  ‘I saw something today, Tripi, with Mrs Moseley and it was horrible. And I talked to Clouds and he’s going to teach us to be proper undercover reporters. Once we’re finished with her, Nurse Thornhill will be running away from Forget Me Not as fast as her legs will carry her.’

  ‘Nurse Thornhill has been shortlisted for The Greater London Nursing Home Awards and the inspectors are coming on Tuesday to help them with their decision.’

  Milo turned round and his face burst into life. ‘There are inspectors coming on Tuesday? To Forget Me Not?’

  Tripi nodded.

  ‘That’s perfect.’ He bounced on his feet. ‘We can show them what it’s really like, we can tell them about Nurse Thornhill and how horrible she is and get the patients to talk about how they are treated and she’ll be exposed and they’ll take her away. We have to start planning now.’

  ‘Planning?’

  ‘What you’re going to do to make sure that they find out about her.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I have to go to school, Tripi. I got into loads of trouble for not showing up the other day. I’ll help you with all the preparations but you have to be in charge on the day.’

  Tripi sat down on the couch and sipped at his coffee that had now gone cold.

  ‘These inspectors, Milo, are they like the police?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  Tripi stared at his big feet and shook his head. ‘Then I cannot help you.’

  ‘They’re not the real police. But they have the power to do things, like we have inspectors who come into school and if our teachers aren’t teaching us properly they can report to the Head and the school gets a warning and if it’s really bad it might even get closed down.’

  Tripi still didn’t like the sound of having to deal with these inspectors.

  ‘I am in a delicate situation, Milo, I need to keep my job. If you want me to take photos and make recordings, I will do that, but that is all. The police cannot find out about me…’ He had hoped not to have to tell Milo, he didn’t want his new friend to think of him as a criminal.

  ‘Find out about what, Tripi? You’re worried they’ll think you’re a terrorist, because of your backpacks?’

  An illegal immigrant was bad enough, but a terrorist? And, if Nurse Thornhill got her way, a mobile phone thief too.

&n
bsp; ‘I could explain that you’re a nice Muslim, that you pray for good things, for your sister and for Gran and for me, and that you’re not interested in blowing up the Americans.’

  Tripi suddenly felt very tired. Part of him wished that he had never met this Milo and the Lovely Sandy and Old Mrs Moon, and that he still lived in the park with his sleeping bag. Things were simpler then.

  ‘Milo, I must tell you a secret and you must promise me to keep it to yourself.’

  ‘Okay. Except if you are a terrorist, I’ll have to tell someone, otherwise I could go to jail for withholding information.’

  ‘I’m not a terrorist, Milo, I’m a refugee. I think I am allowed to be here because my country is at war, but I have not filled out the papers yet. I do not even have a work visa.’

  ‘But you work at Forget Me Not and you look after the old people and you’re a really good cook and you’re nice. Once they see what you’re like, they’ll let you stay.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is not so easy, Milo. If the police find out that I have not been following the rules, they might lock me up or send me back to Syria.’

  ‘The police in Slipton won’t do that. If you explain what happened, they’ll understand. Anyway, I don’t think they’d even notice, they’re too busy filling out forms for their filing cabinets.’

  ‘I don’t think the police in Slipton will have much of a choice. It is the big police in London, the police who decide who gets to stay in the UK and who has to leave.’

  Milo came and sat on the sofa and took Tripi’s hand in the way that he took Mrs Moon’s hand at Forget Me Not.

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure they don’t find out, then, won’t we?’

  Tripi looked at Milo’s hopeful face and knew he couldn’t say no.

  ‘Okay, Milo, you win. But we must be careful.’

  He thought about Ayishah and about how he hoped that maybe someone out there was helping her, like he was trying to help Milo. He believed in these things, that there were threads that connected all the good people in the world and that it was the good people’s job to make those threads stronger.

  ‘So did my Dad really call?’

  ‘Yes. Is that not usual?’

  ‘He hasn’t called since he left. Mum said he was busy and that we should give him some time.’

  Tripi remembered what Milo had told him about his father being in Abu Dhabi, not so far from Syria. It began to make sense now.

  ‘So your mother and father are no longer together?’

  Milo shook his head. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘I do not think that can be —’

  Milo interrupted. ‘I found Dad with someone else, and then I fell off my bike so everyone found about it and when my eyes got bad, Dad’s Tart got pregnant and then he left. If it weren’t for me, Dad would still be here.’

  Tripi found it difficult to follow, maybe it was the English.

  ‘Did he leave a number?’ asked Milo.

  Tripi thought about the Lovely Sandy and how she had not been happy when he mentioned the phone call from Mr Moon. He shook his head.

  Milo rubbed his eyes again and sniffed. Although Tripi did not like the idea of there being a Mr Moon, even if he was far away, he could see that Milo missed his father and that was something he understood.

  ‘Your father wanted to discuss Christmas.’

  ‘He did?’ Milo’s voice lifted.

  ‘Yes. “I need to talk to Milo about Christmas.” That’s what he said.’

  Milo flung his arms around Tripi and squeezed him so hard that Tripi had to loosen the grip of the little boy’s fingers so that he could breathe.

  ‘It’s all going to be okay,’ said Milo, picking up a piece of baklava. ‘This is going to be the best Christmas-Birthday ever.’

  42

  LOU

  Lou’s eyes fell on the advent calendar propped up on the windowsill. A present from Milo. To help you remember the dates, Gran, he’d said. It’s the same as mine. So you can open it here and I can open it at home and it’ll be like we’re together.

  So he had noticed that too, how the days were slipping out of her mind.

  Lou reached out. Her fingers fumbled at the cardboard window, trembling. Numb or shaking and nothing in between. The small battles fought inside her body.

  But not to have the strength to open a child’s advent calendar?

  She reached out again and the calendar fell – a clatter of plastic and cardboard against the thin carpet.

  Lou had been able to haul in nets twice her weight, to keep the fishing boat steady in the wind that swept off the Inverary coast.

  And now?

  She shook her hand, willing it to work. Her fingers trembled harder. Mocking me, are you? Both hands now, like a comedy duo; the jazz hands of an old woman.

  She hadn’t been able to concentrate on a thing since Milo left yesterday. His eyes so wide and sad. How could she tell him that the fondness she had for Petros was a world apart from the love she had for him, her little Milo, her brave soldier? Petros brightened her days, warmed up her cold room. He made her laugh. If Milo gave him a chance, he would like him too.

  Lou looked down at the seventeenth of December.

  Below her on the street, the front door slammed.

  Milo? Is that you?

  She willed her legs to go stiff, the blood so slow to move these days, and pushed herself up and leant out of the window.

  The white shadow had turned dark. A long black coat, a black hat pulled down low over her grey hair, a bunch of lilies in her black-gloved hands.

  ‘Mrs Moon?’ A knock on the door. ‘Mrs Moon?’

  Nurse Heidi stood at the door and then came over and stared out of the window.

  ‘I’ll be holding the fort today. Nurse Thornhill’s taken the day off, she’s escaping to London.’

  Lou reached for her pad.

  Where is she going? She nudged her head towards the window.

  Nurse Heidi hesitated. ‘She’s off to Harrods. She lost someone there – the 1983 bombings, I believe. There’s a photograph in her flat.’

  Lou nodded. She remembered reading that in the papers – news from London always made it to Inverary: thirty years ago today. She closed her eyes. Was it the article she was seeing now? Or was she confusing things again?

  Six people killed… she remembered that.

  ‘I think it was her fiancé,’ Nurse Heidi said.

  Yes, six people killed. And a young nurse on her lunch break coming to meet her fiancé the journalist, Philip May, twenty-four. She’d remembered the story because it had reminded her of David, how she too had lost the man she loved who’d been promised to her for life.

  Nurse Heidi leant further towards the window. ‘Looks a bit like a crow, doesn’t she? All that black?’ She laughed and took Lou’s elbow. ‘Anyway, enough of this gloom and doom. We’re going to have a nice day.’ She steered Lou towards the wardrobe. ‘Let’s find you something colourful to wear, something to put a smile on Mr Spiteri’s face.’

  43

  MILO

  After school on Monday, Milo went straight to Forget Me Not. At lunchtime, he’d called Tripi from the payphone outside the canteen to ask when Nurse Thornhill was due back from her trip to London, but no one seemed to know, not even Nurse Heidi, so they couldn’t risk waiting a minute. She could sweep back in at any moment and before that, Milo had to make sure everything was ready for the big day.

  It was already dark as Milo skipped down the high street. Looking up through the pinhole at the pale moon, nearly full now, he felt a buzz of excitement in his tummy. He was like William the Conqueror gathering his troops before battle. Clouds had taught Milo that he had to organise a briefing meeting: everyone has to know what their role is. He said that it was essential to the successful execution of a plan. And Milo was determined that his plan would be successful. By this time tomorrow the inspectors would be marching Nurse Thornhill out of Forget Me Not, never to return.

  ‘Y
ou’re sure this is the best place to meet?’ Milo asked Tripi as he looked around the cold, dark storeroom behind the kitchen.

  Tripi nodded. ‘She never comes in here. The van delivers the goods to the kitchen door and I load up the shelves.’

  Milo scanned the rows of dusty steel cans. Tinned lamb and tinned beef and tinned mushy peas and tinned carrots. No wonder all the food on the old people’s plates looked the same. The labels were black and white with an ECONOMY logo printed on the top next to a pound sign. They didn’t have any colour or any pictures of the food inside like the cheap ones Mum bought from the supermarket.