Sandy wondered whether Tripi was struggling to find the right word in English. ‘Catch her?’
‘He wants Forget Me Not Home to close down.’
‘He what?’ Sandy swayed on her feet. The diet pills were kicking in.
Upstairs, she heard Milo’s footsteps on the landing. She’d recognise the sound of his walk in a crowd of a thousand people. His deliberate steps as he avoided tripping over objects outside his line of vision.
‘Milo is a sensitive boy, he sees things. He sees things in here.’ Tripi pointed to his heart. ‘He is not happy with how they treat the old people at the home and I am not happy either. The inspectors came and I did not tell them, but I am going to help him now. Milo was right and I was wrong.’
None of this was making any sense.
‘We need to help him, Mrs Moon.’
‘He’s right, Mum.’
Milo stood at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Milo, if this is another one of your crazy ideas for getting Gran back home…’
‘It’s not.’ Milo came into the kitchen. ‘I mean, it is, a bit. Gran should be with us, I can look after her better than any stupid nursing home, but it’s more than that. The place is horrible. You haven’t seen what it’s really like, Mum. When we dropped Gran off Nurse Thornhill put on a show, like she always does for visitors.’
Sandy looked from Milo to Tripi. Her pulse raced from the caffeine in the pills. To be taken as part of a calorie controlled diet… 110 calories so far today, how was that for controlled?
‘Are you okay, Mum? You look a bit…’
White dots swam in front of her eyes. She should have gone to see Lou, but it was all too much.
‘Mum?’
Milo’s voice faded.
The burned linoleum shifted under her feet.
The house wasn’t falling; it was rising, coming up from the foundations like a tide. And Sandy hadn’t learnt to swim.
‘Mrs Moon…’ These were the last words she heard, far away. And then falling and a soft landing, softer than her body expected. And then nothing.
‘Mrs Moon?’
‘Mum?’
Someone was shaking her arm.
‘Sandy?’
Sandy looked up and blinked.
That Scottish accent. Al.
‘Here, have this.’ Tripi handed her a tumbler. ‘Tea with honey.’
‘I don’t understand —’
‘Low blood sugar, Mum, take it.’
She sat up and sipped the warm, sweet liquid.
‘In Syria, honey is like medicine,’ said Tripi.
‘You had us worried there, Sandy – didn’t she, mate?’ Al slapped Milo on the back.
‘You need to eat, Mum – proper stuff, not just shakes and pills.’
So she hadn’t even been able to keep those from him.
‘I will make you some real food,’ said Tripi.
‘Sounds good,’ said Al. ‘Some of the best food I ever had was in the Middle East.’
The red rash crept up Sandy’s throat. ‘I… I’m fine, thank you.’ She pulled down the black polyester skirt that had crept up her thighs and then realised that her fleece and her shirt had lifted up over her belly to reveal the black toner belt. She tugged them both down, got onto her feet and took a breath. ‘I’m fine now.’
‘Steady there,’ said Al, taking her arm as she swayed.
She took her arm out from under Al’s and walked to the kitchen. ‘I’m really fine, why don’t you all go back to whatever it is…’
‘If you’re okay now, can I walk back with Tripi?’ asked Milo. ‘We’ve got to discuss our plan.’
Fragments came back to her. Tripi on her doorstep, a problem about the nursing home. She was too tired to work it out. She looked out of the window and saw that it was already dark. ‘I’m not sure, Milo. You’re not so good in the dark.’
‘I’ll be fine, Mum.’
‘Well, at least wear your glasses.’
For months she’d let him go out without them. Simply forgotten. Wasn’t that unnatural, for a mother to forget the needs of her child?
Nocturnal vision is a real problem for Milo. It’s a surprise he’s coped so well, Dr Nolan had said, handing her the clear lenses Milo had to swap for the sunglasses as soon as it got dark. And then everything had blown up with Andy and Angela and the great announcement that the bloody Habibti would be joining them soon.
‘I forgot them at school. I’ll be okay though, Mum, I’m good without them.’
‘I’d better get back to my lair, work to do.’ Al gave Milo a wink and headed up the stairs.
Sandy saw Tripi look at Al with a sad, dazed expression. He didn’t think that she… and Al? Surely not?
‘Mum? Can I go, then?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘The fresh air will do me good.’ She swung back her head and finished the tea, waiting for the last bits of sticky honey to trickle down her throat.
48
LOU
‘I’m glad you were on your best behaviour for the inspectors,’ said Nurse Thornhill, pinching at a bit of Lou’s arm as she yanked the sheets around her body. ‘We can’t afford to have any problems, not before the awards ceremony.’ She stood up and looked towards the door. ‘What was that noise?’
Lou held her breath.
‘No wandering around the corridors after bedtime. How many times do I have to tell that woman.’ She stormed to the door, poked out her head and yelled: ‘Mrs Zimmer, I’ve told you before, no loitering after bedtime.’ She turned back to Lou. ‘If I catch her…’
Nurse Thornhill clicked the light off, leaving Lou in the dark, and squeaked away down the corridor.
Lou waited a few beats. And then she heard his footsteps, followed by his breath.
‘Louisa?’ Petros whispered her name into the dark room. ‘The coast is clear, she is in her flat.’
Lou knew when a man was afraid and when he was lonely. No money, no family, the same clothes day in day out.
He plodded to the window, took the pink rose from the vase, threw it out of the window, revealed a new one from behind his back, yellow this time, like Milo had taught him. He placed the rose between his dentures and walked to the bed. Then he spat it out and yowled. ‘Na pari i eychi! Damn it!’
Hamlet, who’d been asleep under the covers, woke up, got onto all fours, scrabbled his way out from under the sheets and squealed.
‘A thorn,’ said Petros, touching his bottom lip.
Silly man. Kind, silly man. Lou patted the bed beside her. How long since a man had sat on her bed, had lain at her side, his body cupped into hers?
She wasn’t ready, that was all. It takes time to let go, not so much of the memories, there weren’t many of those, but of the dreams of what could have been.
‘You are letting little salami sleep in your bed again?’
Lou nodded. Once he stopped calling Hamlet salami, Milo would grow to love him. Young enough to be a good grandfather, well enough to live at home in her small room under the roof. Petros shouldn’t be here.
Petros took off his shoes – the only patient who didn’t wear slippers – and squeezed in next to Lou.
‘Well, I suppose I should be glad not to have found Mrs Zimmer.’
In the last few days, Mrs Zimmer had taken to sleeping in Lou’s bed. She liked to come and see Lou and then as soon as she arrived she got tired and lay down for a nap.
Petros rubbed Hamlet behind his white ear. ‘You spoil him, Loiusa.’
And I spoil you, she thought. A man she barely knew who reminded her she was still alive.
Petros moved Hamlet down to the bottom of the mattress and propped up some pillows next to Lou, which gave Hamlet just enough time to plod back up to the top of the bed. Hamlet pressed his snout against Petros’s hand and settled his fat body down between them.
Lou leant over and touched the drop of blood on Petros’s lip. Dear, silly man. Forgetting that a rose had thorns.
She switched
off the bedside light and lay back, staring up at the ceiling. It was a good thing that she was so slight or the three of them would never fit in this narrow bed: an old woman, a fat pig and a Greek painter with a generous belly.
‘I will have to find a way to win Milo’s heart.’ Petros rested his hand on Hamlet’s head.
Lou stroked Petros’s hand. Could she ever have imagined that, at ninety-two, she would have to choose between her grandson and a lover?
All these impulses surging through her body like the beam from the Inverary lighthouse as it swept over the sea – the way she kissed his cheek the other day, and now, this longing for more. She leant over and took his face in her hands, her fingers still and strong, and pressed his lips to hers.
Their mouths were clumsy at first. And then she pulled away for a second and looked at his face, at the blood on his lip, at his closed eyes and she leant in again and got lost in him. As his mouth pressed against hers, his hand brushing her breast, parts of her body stirred that she thought had abandoned her long ago.
‘I love the smell of your skin,’ he said. ‘Like fruit…’
Apricots. The perfume Milo had given her last Christmas.
‘Hmm… warm and sweet.’ Petros held his cheek against hers.
Lou knew she had to act fast, before she lost her nerve. She leant over to her bedside table, grabbed her paper and pencil, wrote the words in the dark, and handed the pad to Petros.
‘What is this? A secret note from my Louisa?’ Petros held the pad close to his face and squinted in the dim room.
And then a silence so long Lou thought that her heart had stopped.
Petros lifted Hamlet off the bed, held him to his chest, kissed his head and then looked at Lou with the softest, kindest eyes she had ever seen.
‘You want to marry me, Louisa?’
She nodded.
‘Then you are mad. There is nothing I can give you.’
She wrote on the pad again: You give me everything.
Petros’s eyes shone in the dark room. ‘Are you sure, Louisa?’ His voice trembled.
She nodded again.
He closed his eyes like he was saying a prayer and then he opened them and looked right at her: ‘Yes, Louisa. I will marry you. Though I think we should ask Milo’s permission first, don’t you?’
Hamlet grunted softly; the corners of his mouth turned up.
It had been a long day, the inspectors in and out of the room, Petros running after Nurse Thornhill with that camera. Had she heard right? Had he said yes? Or was her mind slipping again?
Lou’s fingers began to tremble.
Stupid hands. Stupid body. How could she marry him? An old woman like her?
‘Are you all right, Louisa?’
Lou reached her hand to Petros’s face.
She nodded. For a second, her fingers went still and then Milo’s face appeared in front of her, those eyes of his, wide and focused and sad.
49
MILO
‘So we’re going to make this video and swap it with the one Petros is making and then, when she goes up and gets her prize, they’ll show it, and everyone will see what Forget Me Not is really like and that it’s all Nurse Thornhill’s fault. And Clouds and me were thinking that it would be really cool if all the old people came along too, maybe you could drive them, Mum, in a minibus, and then we’d burst into the ceremony, like a surprise, so that when everything goes tits up —’
‘Milo!’
‘That’s what Clouds said.’
Milo skipped ahead of Mum and Tripi on the dark pavement. He didn’t care about the grainy blur in front of his eyes because what he could see was much better: a stage full of the old ladies from Forget Me Not, smiling and cheering as Nurse Thornhill was carried away by the police. Everything was falling into place.
‘Well, you don’t need to copy everything he says,’ said Mum.
‘Clouds is cool.’
Tripi hunched his shoulders and sank his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘Anyway, when Nurse Thornhill gets kaboomed, we’ll all burst in and the local newspapers can take photos of all the old people and I’ll take a film on my phone and send it to Clouds who’ll put it on the internet, along with our film that he’ll have released already.’
At last Mum was listening; with her on board, they could really do this.
‘I still don’t understand why we can’t just call Slipton Council or whoever it is that oversees nursing homes around here. Go through the proper channels. If what you say is true, all it will take is a few complaints…’
‘No, it won’t, Mum. You should have seen Nurse Thornhill with the inspectors, she had them eating out of her hand. They think she’s like this superhero nurse. And Clouds said the local authorities wouldn’t want any negative publicity so they’ll hush it up. This way, we get maximum exposure. And Clouds said that it will trigger a wider discussion, which is the point of being an undercover reporter – you find one example of a bad thing and you prove it and then they have to look into all the other things too. There are probably horrible nursing homes all over the UK, Mum. Clouds said —’
‘Slow down, Milo.’
Tripi scratched his head and asked: ‘Can we trust him, this Clouds?’
‘Of course,’ said Milo.
‘There was a time when Milo didn’t like Al, isn’t that right, Milo?’
‘That was before, Mum.’
They reached the high street with its droopy Christmas lights.
‘Do you like him, Young Mrs Moon?’ asked Tripi.
‘Please, call me Sandy, like I said when I came to your house.’
This was a good sign, thought Milo. If Mum liked Tripi, that would help them work together.
‘Sandy, like on Honeymoon Hideaways, like the sand in Syria.’
Mum smiled. Milo didn’t know what Tripi was going on about.
‘Sandy,’ he said again, like he was learning it. ‘My question is: do you like this Al, or Clouds as Milo calls him?’
‘Milo’s pretty good at reading people,’ said Mum.
Although Milo was pleased by what Mum said, he didn’t think that Mum liking Clouds was the point. Why did grown-ups have to muddle things? They were a team now, Milo and Mum and Tripi and Clouds and the old ladies. Even Nurse Heidi was backing them. And once they realised what was happening, even Gran and Petros would join in.
Together, they’d close down Forget Me Not for ever.
They got to the end of the high street and stood outside Tripi’s house.
‘Did you leave all the lights on?’ asked Milo.
‘Looks like Big Mike’s back.’ Sandy pointed at the grey Ford Mondeo parked in the drive.
Tripi took in a sharp breath.
‘He’ll be pleased with how well you’ve looked after the place,’ said Sandy.
Milo glanced at Tripi. So that’s the story he’d given Mum.
Tripi cleared his throat. ‘Eh… yes. I do hope so. I hope he will be happy in his home.’
Milo saw that, despite the cold, small drops of sweat had sprouted up on Tripi’s forehead.
‘I wonder whether he’s brought Lalana with him,’ said Sandy. ‘He’s been trying to get her a visa for over a year now. I’ve only seen her in pictures, but she’s —’
‘I had better go inside,’ said Tripi. ‘I must talk to MailOrder – to Mr Mike. If you will excuse me.’
Milo wanted to tell Tripi it was okay. That if they told Mum that he didn’t have a home any more, she’d let him stay with them. ‘Mum, the thing is —’
Tripi shook his head and his eyes pleaded so hard it made Milo think of Hamlet when he was hungry.
‘Well, give Mike my best. Tell him if his wife needs some beauty treatments…’
‘I must go.’ Tripi’s voice sounded tired.
In the distance, Milo heard police sirens.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’ Milo said the words really slowly so that Tripi would know that they’d talk about Mike coming back and finding Tripi a ne
w home just as much as they’d talk about the Forget Me Not plan.
A police car swerved round the road. Milo recognised PC Stubbs sitting in the front.
‘I wonder what the police are doing in this neck of the woods,’ Mum said.
What Milo Saw Page 21