‘Tripi?’ Mrs Zimmer placed a piece of paper into Tripi’s hand. One of Milo’s photocopies of Ayishah. ‘She has kind eyes,’ said Mrs Zimmer.
Tripi nodded, kind and mischievous. ‘I love this photo,’ Tripi said, smoothing over the crinkles.
‘No, not on the photo.’
Mrs Zimmer was always either falling asleep, asleep or waking up. Her thoughts were never very clear. ‘What do you mean, Mrs Zimmer?’
‘On the television.’
Tripi’s heart sped up. ‘You saw her on the television?’
Mrs Zimmer rubbed her eyes. ‘I… I… I don’t know. Milo told us to look, so I have been watching the news. Everyone thinks I sleep all the time but I usually have my eyes a little open.’
‘You saw her on the news?’ Tripi wanted to lift the old lady off her feet and spin her around. ‘When?’
‘This morning. But I’m not sure it was her, Tripi, my eyes aren’t that good any more and the picture flashed by so fast. She was in the background, I think. Maybe it wasn’t her… I just thought you could look into it, that it wouldn’t hurt.’ Mrs Zimmer took the photocopy out of Tripi’s hands and turned it over. ‘I made a note of the time when I saw the little girl on the screen.’
Tripi read Mrs Zimmer’s wobbly words written in pencil:
Tripi’s sister? BBC1. 8:03am.
His blood crashed in his ears. He could look on the internet and find a clip of the news programme. He could see for himself if it was Ayishah, if she was alive. Five months and not a single lead, and now this – a note scribbled by a tired old lady.
‘How did you know that the photo Milo gave you was of my sister?’
Mrs Zimmer smiled. ‘We are not so foolish, Tripi. A friend of Milo’s, in Syria?’
No, not foolish at all.
‘The little girl you saw, did she look okay?’
Mrs Zimmer hesitated. ‘A bit skinny. I don’t think they have enough potatoes in Syria.’
‘And the programme – did it say where the film was from, which camp?’
‘I didn’t catch that. Maybe you can look it up on a computer.’ She folded up the photocopy and gave it to Tripi. Then she squeezed his hand. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, I wasn’t sure whether to tell you… I might be wrong…’
But Tripi wasn’t listening. His mind raced. Al. Al would know how to find the bit of footage.
Tripi looked up at the dark sky, at the stars of Slipton. Yes, Ayishah, you were right, miracles do happen.
He watched Mrs Zimmer walking back into Forget Me Not, yawning. He had to believe that what she saw was a message from Allah, it would give him the courage to go back.
This time I won’t stop looking until I find you, Ayishah.
Tripi glanced one last time around the bus. And noticed a small dark figure in the back seat.
‘Old Mrs Moon?’ He walked down the aisle.
She opened her eyes. ‘I am a little tired,’ she said, her voice hardly there at all.
‘Let us get you inside, for your party.’
‘I told Petros to go ahead. I would like to sleep for a little while.’
‘To sleep? Here?’
Old Mrs Moon nodded. ‘Here, yes.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Come back for me later, Tripi.’
Tripi did not like to leave Old Mrs Moon on her own in the dark bus, but if there was one thing that the old ladies should be allowed to do now that Nurse Thornhill had left, it was to decide what they wanted and not be forced into things.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please go and enjoy the party.’
Tripi leant forward, kissed Old Mrs Moon’s cheek and whispered, ‘Sleep well.’
65
MILO
Milo walked back from Gran’s room with her bagpipes squashed under his left arm and the vase with Petros’s yellow rose clutched in his right hand.
Great-Gramps’s bagpipe song played over and over in his head like a victory march.
We did it, Great-Gramps, we did it.
And then Milo looked at the yellow rose, and for some reason he felt like he’d seen it before. Petros had listened to him about yellow roses being Gran’s favourites. And he’d found Hamlet. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
Petros is okay, Great-Gramps, Milo said. Not as good as you, but the way I see it, he’ll keep Gran happy until you’re back together again.
He stood for a moment at the door of the lounge and shifted his head to take in every bit of the room. Only a few hours ago, it would have been cold and quiet, the news buzzing in the corner, the air filled with the smell of wee and plasticky lemons and cold potatoes. But now it was alive.
Mrs Sharp was teaching Mrs Wong how to play Angry Birds. She’d worked out that having an opponent would be more fun than playing on her own.
Mrs Moseley twirled her cane like she was a lead in a West End musical, her tape player switched to max. He’d heard the tape so many times he recognised the song right off, ‘Could You Be Loved’, one of Mrs Moseley’s favourites.
Mrs Foxton, Mrs Turner and Mrs Swift jiggled along with her as though the middle of the lounge were a dance floor.
Even Mrs Zimmer tapped her foot to the beat as she sat in her armchair, her eyes closed. Poor Mrs Zimmer, she hadn’t got much sleep today.
Mrs Hairy stood at the dining table, arranging the cake she’d brought in.
By the window, Petros climbed onto a stool, held steady by Nurse Heidi, and fastened balloons to the curtain rail. Milo would give him the rose to present to Gran before he gave his engagement speech. Petros had practised it with Milo on the way back from London and it had sounded kind of cheesy (I love you more than all the raindrops in England, that sort of thing), but Milo thought Gran would like it.
Milo shifted his head again. Tripi arranged one of the small steel bins on the coffee table, dragged a massive hessian sack across to the other side of the room, put his hand in the bag, took out a potato and handed it to Mum. She laughed and blushed like it was a precious gift rather than a wrinkly brown potato, and then she lobbed it across the room. The potato landed with a clatter into the steel bin. Hole in one. The dancing old ladies turned round and clapped. Mum jumped in the air and threw her arms around Tripi.
Milo shifted his head again. The telly was still on, switched to mute, pictures of that place called Syria blinking out into the room. Ruined buildings, white flashes over a dark city.
Clouds had gone to collect his girlfriend, he was going to bring her to the party.
And Gran? Shouldn’t she be here by now? Tripi said she was tired and wanted to stay in the bus and that he’d go back for her in a bit. She sometimes did that at home too, sat in her room in the dark, looking out over Slipton.
Milo did another inch-by-inch scan of the lounge. She definitely wasn’t here.
Still carrying the bagpipes and the rose, Milo went out through the front door and stood at the top of the steps. Through the pinhole, he saw a car pulling up at the traffic lights at the end of the road. The car was a deeper richer red than Mrs Hairy’s Mercedes, and it was posher too, so posh it didn’t even have a number plate.
Milo went down the steps and walked up to the Slipton Primary minibus parked up on the kerb. For a second he looked up at the full moon.
‘Thank you, Moon,’ Milo whispered. One day he’d see an eclipse but for now a full moon was as good as he could hope for.
It was cold in the minibus, as cold as Forget Me Not when Nurse Thornhill was in charge. The air smelt of hairspray and Petros’s plasticky lemon aftershave and old people’s breathing. But most of all, it smelt of Gran’s apricot perfume. The orange streetlights turned the inside of the bus into a grainy darkness.
He walked down the central aisle, moving his head from side to side as he checked the seats. Then he heard a snuffle.
He sped up and got to the row of seats at the back.
In a corner, the shadow of a street lamp over her small body, sat Gran, sleeping. Hamlet lay warm and fidgety on her lap. Gran really
was shrinking; her feet didn’t even touch the floor.
When he saw Milo, Hamlet’s head shot up and their eyes locked.
Milo put down the bagpipes and the rose and sat next to Gran. He took her hand and stroked it like he always did when he wanted to wake her without giving her a start.
‘Gran,’ he whispered. ‘Gran.’
But she didn’t move.
Milo looked out of the minibus windows and through the pinhole he saw the lounge, lit up yellow, Petros’s balloons bobbing up and down against the curtain rails.
‘My brave Milo.’
Milo shifted his head back to Gran. Her eyes fluttered open, the fingers on her left hand trembled and she smiled. And then she closed her eyes again.
‘Gran…’ Milo squeezed her hand. ‘Gran, you’re awake.’
But her eyes stayed closed and her small body sunk deeper into the seat and then the tremor in her hand went still.
Outside, a motorbike roared up the road and came to a rattling halt by the side of the bus. Milo tore out of the minibus.
Clouds stood on the pavement, removing his helmet. Behind him, a girl dressed in leather trousers with the same leather jacket as Clouds climbed off the Harley.
‘Hey, Milo, what you doing out here?’ asked Clouds.
Milo couldn’t answer, the words stuck in his throat.
‘This is my girlfriend, Kasia.’
Kasia stepped forward. ‘I gather you’re quite the hero.’ She took off a leather glove and held out her hand to Milo.
So that’s where Clouds had been disappearing off to every night, why he never kept his pants or his toothbrush in Gran’s room.
Clouds grabbed Kasia by the waist and looked up the lounge window. ‘So, the party’s in full swing, eh?’
Milo couldn’t breathe.
‘You okay, mate? You look a bit shell-shocked.’
‘It’s Gran.’
‘Didn’t catch that?’
Milo cleared his throat. ‘Gran’s in the bus, she’s not breathing.’
Clouds’s face darkened. He let go of Kasia and leapt onto the bus.
‘In the back,’ Milo called out, following him.
Milo picked Hamlet off Gran’s lap and hugged him close. Clouds sat next to Gran, lifted her small wrist and felt her pulse. Then he bent forward and held his ear to her mouth. In the dim light of the bus, Milo saw thick watery drops gather in the corners of his eyes. ‘I’m here, Aunty Lou,’ he said, over and over. ‘I’m here.’
66
SANDY
Sandy watched Al carry Lou down the corridor, followed by Milo, Nurse Heidi and a woman who turned out to be Al’s girlfriend. Petros stayed in the lounge, staring out through the swing doors.
‘I have to go and talk to Petros,’ said Sandy.
Tripi gently pulled Sandy’s little finger from her mouth. ‘It will be okay, I am here with you.’
Sandy squeezed Tripi’s hand, took a breath and turned back to the lounge. They walked over to Petros who sat in one of the big armchairs staring at the yellow rose that Milo had just given him. Hamlet lay slumped at his feet eating a piece of Gina’s cake.
‘Petros?’ Sandy asked.
Petros twisted the yellow rose between his fingers.
‘We need to tell you something,’ said Tripi, kneeling down in front of the old man.
Petros still didn’t look up. He knew already, didn’t he?
Above Mrs Moseley’s music and the old ladies’ chattering, Sandy heard a sound that didn’t belong in a nursing home.
‘Did you hear that?’ Sandy asked Tripi.
There it was again, a cry.
Sandy ran to the door of the lounge.
Coming towards her down the corridor was Andy and a few steps behind him Angela holding the crying Habibti in her arms.
For months after he left her, bits of Andy floated like small ghosts on the air. The smell of the duvet as she pulled it out of the washing hamper. The sight of his broad, pink shoulders steaming from the shower. She’d look in the mirror and see his face, the spot that would blaze up on his temple when he was overworked. The feel of his thinning hair between her fingers as she snipped at it every month. She’d found a few strands on the kitchen tiles when she’d swept up after the fire.
And now? Tanned, his blue eyes lighter, blond hairs on his arms, a different cut to his jeans, a better fit.
She didn’t know him any more.
Andy marched up to her. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
His duty free shoes shone. Abu Dhabi, the new world.
‘We got this message on our phone from a guy called Tripi and then we heard Milo’s voice on the radio as we drove here from the airport.’
Sandy heard the doors of the lounge swish shut and then she felt Tripi moving in behind her.
Andy looked around. ‘So this is the place where you dumped Gran?’
The Habibti kept yelling. Why didn’t Angela take her out and wait in the car?
‘And what are you staring at?’ Andy looked at Tripi.
‘This is Tripi. He’s my…’ Sandy took a breath and looked at Tripi’s kind face. ‘He’s my partner. We’re together.’
‘You’re going out with him?’
She knew what Andy was thinking. She was going out with a younger man to get back at him. But she didn’t care what he thought any more. She grabbed Tripi’s hand. ‘Yes, I’m going out with him. He’s been here for Milo.’
Tripi gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his throat.
Andy threaded his fingers through his hair. Still thinning, thought Sandy, that hadn’t changed. Tripi had a good hairline: strong, reliable.
‘So where’s Gran, then?’
Petros took off his cap, stepped forward and held out a hand. His old blue eyes misted over.
There was a pause. The music from Mrs Moseley’s tape player dimmed behind the closed doors of the lounge; overhead, a faulty neon light flickered.
A small voice came from behind Sandy.
‘She’s gone, Dad.’
Milo stood in the corridor, his eyes wide.
67
MILO
At 3 a.m. Milo curled up on the bare mattress in Gran’s room under the roof. Hamlet nestled into the crook between Milo’s knees and his stomach; he’d thrown up Mrs Hairy’s cake in the back of the car on the way home and then had fallen asleep.
Milo leant over and whispered into Hamlet’s black ear. ‘Do you know that Gran’s gone?’ He stroked the tuft of fur on his head. ‘Did you know she was leaving, like you know when there’s going to be a thunderstorm?’ Hamlet twitched his nose in his sleep but his eyes stayed shut.
Springs from the mattress pushed up against Milo’s thigh. Why hadn’t Gran told him how uncomfortable it was? He could have bought her one of those soft memory foam ones from the ads on the telly.
I’m sorry, Gran, he thought, digging his nose into the mattress, breathing in the smell of Al’s cigarettes and behind it, the scent of apricots. I should have looked after you better.
A knock on the door.
‘Milo?’ Dad’s voice.
Milo didn’t answer.
In those hours after the party, when Nurse Heidi called the doctor, when the men from the ambulance carried Gran out of the bus, when Clouds went home with his girlfriend and Mum agreed to let Dad, The Tart and baby Arabella come home with them – through all of that, Dad had kept trying to strike up conversations with Milo, had reached out to stroke the back of Milo’s head, had asked him how he was doing. But every time Milo pulled away.
‘Can I come in?’
Dad pushed open the door and came to sit on the end of the bed, his face puffy and blotchy. He held Arabella in his arms.
‘I wanted you two to meet properly,’ he said, holding her towards Milo.
Arabella squirmed and screwed up her face and pushed a bubble of spit through her small pink lips.
Milo turned away to face the wall.
‘I’m sorry, Milo.’
Milo didn’t answer. Hamlet got up onto his legs and walked over to Dad and Arabella. He let out a squeak.
‘Looks like Arabella’s got a fan,’ said Dad, a smile in his voice.
What Milo Saw Page 30