A yellow fuzz pulsed in front of his eyes from the contrast between the darkness over the audience and the spotlights at the front. Milo closed his eyes and opened them again and tried to focus.
Gran said Be brave, and Milo knew what that meant. Brave like Great-Gramps when he fought in Korea and won the Battle of Pakchon, even though his regiment was really small and didn’t have enough weapons. Even though it meant he had to die as part of the winning.
Medallion guy’s voice boomed on. ‘Nurse Thornhill’s work at Forget Me Not has been exemplary. She came a very close second and should be hugely proud of her achievements.’
The bald inspector guy sat on the front row, smiling. Milo reckoned he’d told all three nurses the same thing – about them being the horses that everyone was backing.
Milo climbed onto the platform and as he walked past the row of important people, he tripped over a microphone cable and grabbed the leg of a woman who wore the same black gown and medallions as the guy doing the talking. She gasped and pulled away and Milo fell down. Behind him, Milo heard mutterings from the audience and the medallion guy stopped talking and as Milo got back onto his feet and shifted his head, he caught sight of Nurse Thornhill, her red face bang in the middle of the pinhole.
‘Young man, you shouldn’t be up here,’ said someone who didn’t look important because he wasn’t wearing a suit or a gown with chains, but jeans and a faded black T-shirt.
Milo regained his balance and walked towards the microphone. He hoped that Mrs Harris would get to see this on the local news and that she’d have her mark book with her because one thing was for sure, he wasn’t doing this again in front of the class.
‘Could I borrow your microphone, please?’ Milo asked the medallion guy. ‘I have something I’d like to say about Nurse Thornhill and Forget Me Not Homes.’
‘Um…’ Medallion guy turned round to look at the other grown-ups sitting on the stage but none of them said anything.
‘It’s really important.’
Medallion guy stared at him and then someone called out from the back of the auditorium.
‘Milo! Milo! Listen to Milo!’
Mrs Hairy stood in her high heels next to Mrs Moseley, who started clapping and calling Milo’s name too.
And then Tripi joined in from the sound and lighting desk, and someone else too, and he sounded foreign, like Tripi, but a curlier kind of foreign and Milo realised that it was Petros and that he was lifting Hamlet in the air and Hamlet was squealing like mad, as if he wanted to join in.
All the old ladies from Forget Me Not streamed in through the Emergency Exit door and when they heard Mrs Hairy and Mrs Moseley and Petros, they joined in with the clapping and chanting. And then random people from the audience shouted Milo’s name too, and all of a sudden the whole room was yelling and there were flashes from the photographers in the front row and Milo noticed the TV cameras too and how they were zooming in close to his face.
Nurse Thornhill yanked medallion guy by his gown.
‘Get him off the stage,’ she said through her tight, stuck-on smile.
But medallion guy didn’t listen to her. Instead, he handed Milo the microphone and sat back down in his chair.
A shhhhhhh swept over the audience and people stopped calling Milo’s name and the flashes stopped too and then silence.
Milo stood on the big stage and took a breath. It wasn’t nearly as scary as he thought it would be because when he looked into the spotlights everything went blurry, the whole audience and everyone on stage so he could pretend he was up there alone, just talking to himself or to Gran.
‘I’ve got a pet pig called Hamlet.’
A few people laughed.
‘Dad gave him to me as a present, to cheer me up when I found out that I had Retinitis Pigmentosa – which means that my eyes don’t work properly and that one day I’ll be blind.’
There were some gasps.
‘And also because he wanted to say sorry for having sex with his Tart rather than with Mum and because his Tart was pregnant and they were moving to Abu Dhabi and I wouldn’t get to see him for a long time.’ He paused.
Several people in the audience started talking now. Mrs Harris said it was rude if people talked during someone’s speech so Milo waited for them to stop before he continued, which is what Mrs Harris did when she wanted the class’s attention.
‘Just let the kid talk!’ yelled a man from the back.
Milo leant into the microphone. ‘Hamlet’s the best pet you could have. He’s not hard to train like a dog and he doesn’t scratch you like cats. And he listens to what you’ve got to say, even when everyone else is too busy.’ He swallowed. ‘Plus, he’s really warm, so you don’t ever need a hot water bottle.’
Milo squinted to see whether he could spot Hamlet because he thought he’d quite like that hundreds of people were hearing about him.
‘But some of the time, when Hamlet lived with us, he wasn’t very happy.’ Milo felt bad about saying the next bit in front of all these people, but it was part of his speech, so he couldn’t leave it out. ‘He wasn’t very happy because Mum made him stay in the garage. And the garage gets really cold, especially in winter, and there isn’t much light and it smells of petrol fumes. Plus we don’t have much money so we can’t buy him the luxury food from the pet store, only economy food, which you can tell he doesn’t like very much but eats anyway when he realises he’s not getting anything else.’
Milo stopped to catch his breath. He was worried that he was doing what Mrs Harris called going off the topic and losing your audience, so he decided to get to the point he wanted to make.
‘The point is that I didn’t notice he was unhappy, not at first. But then, when I let him into the house and watched him snuggle up under the heater or on my duvet and when I gave him leftovers from my tea, his snout went all pink and wet, which the internet says means he’s healthy, and he smiled and I know you probably think that pigs can’t smile, but they can, because I’ve seen him do it. And he never smiles when he’s in the garage, he only ever smiles when he’s in the house, with me.’ Milo took a breath. ‘So what I’m saying is that Forget Me Not is like the garage and that Nurse Thornhill keeps it like that because it’s cheaper, even though it makes the old people sad and cold and hungry and then, when the inspectors come, she pretends that it’s really nice and they believe her because they don’t bother to look properly.’ He knew Mrs Harris would say that he’d taken too long to get to his point, but he’d get marks for structure – especially for putting the punchline at the end so that everyone would remember the important bit. ‘And I’ve seen her flat and it’s really posh, so I think she must take all the money from the old people and use it for herself.’
Nurse Thornhill stumbled backwards and her eyes darted around like how Gran described the fish that got caught in her fishing net in Inverary.
The flashes started again and this time the TV cameras pointed at her, not at Milo.
‘And now we’d like to show you an undercover film we’ve made so that you can see for yourself what it’s like, because that’s proper evidence and not just me giving my opinion.’ He stood up straighter and tried to make eye contact with his audience even though all he could see was one face at a time and even then it was blurry because his eyes were tired. ‘When you’ve seen the film and thought about what I’ve said, I hope you’ll understand why we think that Nurse Thornhill shouldn’t be given any prize at all and that she should be locked up and that all the old people from Forget Me Not should be allowed to go back to their families.’
He did the thumbs up sign to Tripi but the sound and lighting guy was already on the case. The screen behind Milo flickered to life.
The first shot was of Mrs Moseley, her lovely cheeks glowing and shiny and like chestnuts, clutching her tape recorder and dancing. For a moment Milo was worried that they were showing the wrong tape, the one of Forget Me Not like it looked on the posters. But then she turned round and the camera zoom
ed in on the back of her dress. On video the stain looked worse than ever, layers of yellowy-brown like she’d wet herself over and over and no one had ever bothered to clean her properly. Milo heard the audience gasp.
Then came a shot of the dark corridor where all the old people’s rooms were. The camera panned over the locks on the outside of the doors. You could hear Mrs Foxton’s voice behind her door calling for Nurse Thornhill. We need to call the police, we need to report the break-in… my conservatory… And in the shadows, a white figure, tall and skinny, gave the door a thump. She hissed, Be quiet! and walked on.
A cut to the lounge, to a row of plates heaped up with potatoes and gloopy stew and on each plate only a few tiny bits of grey-looking beef. A close-up of Mrs Turner’s toothless smile and then the lens zoomed into her pocket, which she held open for the camera: mushy peas covered in gravy all squished into the fabric of her dress.
Milo looked through the pinhole at the audience. Their eyes were fixed on the screen. Some of them held their hands to their mouths. There wasn’t a rustle or a cough, just the whirring of the projector and the sounds from the old ladies on the film.
Get up! Get up! Nurse Thornhill’s voice boomed onto the screen. The camera wobbled. Mrs Wong, who always went on about being an Olympic gymnast, doing one of her exercises, holding out a hand because she’d got stuck in a squat. A few members of the audience laughed, because it was funny, despite Nurse Thornhill’s shouting, but they soon fell quiet when they saw how she grabbed Mrs Wong by the armpits and heaved her up, not even giving her the time to find her balance. Nurse Thornhill pulled so hard on Mrs Wong’s arms that Milo was worried that they might pop out of their sockets.
At the back of the room, Milo saw someone in a black leather jacket push through the swing doors. Clouds. He’d come! Milo wanted to tell him what a good job he’d done of editing Tripi’s film, how without him they’d never have been able to show everything that was going on at Forget Me Not.
The room gasped again and Milo flicked his eyes back onto the screen.
Another trip down the corridor. A zoom over the radiator dials, set at zero. Frost on the inside of the windows. The posh visitors’ lounge locked up and dark. Mrs Sharp standing in the corridor with her iPad, shouting Got ’em! and then the white shadow sweeping past again, grabbing the iPad and then a second later, a picture of the KEEP OUT drawer with all the empty purses and the iPad shoved in too. On the handle of the drawer Milo spotted Nurse Heidi’s delicate fingers. She must have helped Tripi with the film.
A few more shots of the old ladies. Mrs Zimmer asleep in her armchair in the lounge, a pile of green and white dozy pills in a paper cup beside her. Nurse Thornhill yanking a lipstick out of Mrs Swift’s hands. Mrs Moseley standing in the middle of her room with wet hair, shivering, saying, I don’t want a bath… I don’t want a bath… and then a cut away to Gran’s room.
Milo looked over to Mum. She was standing up, her hand gripping her throat. This time he felt glad that Tripi was there, standing beside her, holding her shoulders. Mum scratched at her throat; Milo knew that she felt what was coming next, just like he did. He thought of those times when he’d tried to see Gran and Forget Me Not was all locked up and when he’d found Gran in her room with bruises on her wrists.
The screen flickered.
Gran sitting in her armchair by the window, a tray of food on her lap. She hadn’t touched her plate. A moment later, Nurse Thornhill’s voice filled the screen. Come on, Nurse Heidi, if her ladyship isn’t going to eat, we’re going to have to give her a helping hand. The camera phone must have been on Nurse Heidi because it didn’t look like there was anyone else in the room and the only people on screen were Gran and Nurse Thornhill. Gran shook her head. No arguing! shouted Nurse Thornhill. Milo couldn’t breathe. He wished he’d never left Gran alone, not for a second. Gran scrabbled around, looking for her pad, but Nurse Thornhill grabbed it and threw it across the room. Then she went and stood over Gran. She pushed a fork into Gran’s fingers, gripped her tiny wrist, levered some food onto the fork and yanked it up to Gran’s mouth. Gran kept her mouth closed. You’re going to eat! Nurse Thornhill yelled.
The audience gasped. Milo’s heart beat so fast he thought his chest was going to explode. So that’s where Gran had got all her bruises from. Nurse Thornhill grabbed Gran’s wrist and tried again. This time she flicked the food at Gran’s mouth, but Gran kept her mouth closed. The food dribbled down her chin and onto the front of her dress. And then the screen went black.
Milo swayed on his feet, feeling the silence press in on him. Then, as the audience kept quiet, he worried that maybe he’d said something wrong in his speech, or hadn’t explained properly, or maybe he’d gone off the topic so that no one understood what he was talking about. Or maybe they didn’t get the film and why they’d made it.
But then he felt someone standing up behind him and when he looked round he saw it was the lady with the gown and the medallions whose leg he’d grabbed when he tripped over the cable. She was clapping.
‘Got ’em, the buggers!’ shouted Mrs Sharp from the back of the room. And people laughed, because they remembered her voice from the film. And then everyone else on stage joined in with the medallion woman’s clapping and soon the whole room was on its feet, cheering and clapping and stomping and it was so loud Milo kind of wished it would stop because his head hurt, but he was kind of glad too because when people were brave, they got clapped and Gran had wanted him to be brave. Maybe Great-Gramps would be proud of him too.
But then, as Milo narrowed his eyes and made the pinhole come into focus, he noticed someone walking in the opposite direction to everyone else. Someone who wasn’t clapping or looking at him: Nurse Thornhill, striding towards the Emergency Exit.
‘Look!’ Milo shouted. ‘She’s getting away!’
A hundred heads turned and followed the line of Milo’s outstretched arm.
Mrs Moseley hobbled over from where she was standing with Mrs Hairy, then she stepped past Mum, Mrs Zimmer, Mrs Turner, Mrs Swift, Mrs Sharp, Mrs Foxton, Mrs Wong, Petros and Gran and held her cane across the Emergency Exit. Nurse Thornhill tried to push through but someone from the audience grabbed her from behind and after that she got swallowed up by the crowd and Milo couldn’t see her any more. But he didn’t mind because he knew that they wouldn’t let her go.
64
TRIPI
The old people clambered out of the minibus, buzzing. Petros chanted a Greek song from his hometown in Patitiri and Mrs Moseley led the old ladies in her version of one of the Bob Marley songs she liked called ‘I Shot the Sheriff’, which Tripi guessed must be her way of celebrating getting rid of Nurse Thornhill.
Nurse Heidi stood at the front door, her cheeks glowing.
‘You did it!’ She stretched out her arms to the old people.
‘You’re in charge now,’ cried Petros.
The officials had asked whether there were nurses back at the home who could look after the old people and they had explained that Nurse Heidi was waiting for them and that she was more than capable of holding the fort until morning. The fort: Tripi liked that, the idea of a home as somewhere strong and safe. Tomorrow someone would come over from Slipton Town Council to decide what should happen to Forget Me Not and its residents.
Mrs Hairy parked her red Mercedes outside the front of Forget Me Not and stepped out of her car carrying a huge cake box with golden swirly letters on the top.
‘Sandy told me about the party,’ she said, smiling. ‘And there’s always spare cake hanging around the kitchens where I work.’
Tripi watched Mrs Moseley hobble towards her daughter with her cane. They had the same straight nose, flared at the nostrils. You can’t hide family, thought Tripi.
As they walked up the steps to the front door, Lovely Sandy hugged Milo to her, ruffling his hair and kissing his cheeks over and over.
And between their feet, fatter than ever, grunting and snuffling, Hamlet ran around in circles.
He helped the old ladies down from the minibus. They took his hand and stepped lightly onto the pavement. Carried on this wave of release, knowing that Nurse Thornhill was never coming back, it was as though they had forgotten they were old.
He felt a little proud that perhaps he had helped to make this possible. And sad too: he would miss his new friends. But tonight he was still here and there was baklava in the kitchen and a cake and an engagement party. Petros said that he wanted to get married before Christmas so that he could see in the New Year with Lou. He had looked up a place called Gretna Green that he had found on the internet. They could take the bus there and get married straight away. Tripi had smiled, listening to Petros speaking with the excitement of a young man.
What Milo Saw Page 29