Don’t cry, Gran, she heard him say.
Lou looked at her reflection in the mirror. She saw flames dancing around her head. How had it happened again?
An accident. Yes, it had been an accident, that’s what she’d told the firemen.
The gas hob. That’s right.
I forgot we had a kettle, she’d written on her pad, her voice still lost. Silly, silly me. And then the knob turned to the picture of the big flame, a sudden whoosh, a piece of kitchen paper left too close.
An accident, yes.
I’ll tell Mum it was me, said Milo, knowing how Sandy would respond. And then he’d placed the small white pill in the palm of her hand. He never forgot, even on a morning like this.
Hours of waiting on the cold drive.
The wail of the fire engine. The thud of heavy boots, an army drowning the house. And then let in again, thirty-two stairs to the top, up past Milo’s room, past the fairy lights he’d put up for her and then up, up up to her room under the roof, like Rapunzel.
3
MILO
A week later, Milo buckled Gran into the back seat of the car and climbed in beside her.
He placed her pad and her pencil on her lap in case she wanted to write anything while they were visiting the homes. Milo had never heard Gran talk out loud, but he still knew what her voice sounded like. Even when she wasn’t writing on her pad or sitting beside him, her words came into his head, soft and clear.
‘Not in the back, Milo,’ said Mum. ‘I need you up front to operate the machine.’ She waved her hand at the satnav clamped to the windscreen. Milo tried to exchange a look with Gran, but Gran wasn’t paying attention. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring out of the window.
She’d had that same empty look when Milo went up to her room earlier to help her get dressed. You’ll be back for Christmas, he’d promised as he pulled her pop socks over her calves. But she’d just gazed down at the lines in her palms.
When he went back downstairs he didn’t tell Mum that there was a wet patch on the carpet because Gran had left the tap running.
Milo didn’t tell Mum half the things he knew about Gran.
Like that she’d get up in the middle of the night and come into his room and say that she was going on her honeymoon to Greece and that Great-Gramps was waiting for her.
Or that sometimes she got the shakes so bad he was worried she’d keel over and bang her head on the corner of the dresser and knock herself out.
Gran had a sticky streak of jam on her chin. He should have wiped it off with her flannel before they left.
‘Let’s go to the best one first,’ said Mum, winking at Milo.
Milo typed in the postcode of the first nursing home on his list. Then he snuck his arm past the gear stick and the hand-brake and put his hand on Gran’s.
Her wrinkly fingers tremored under his.
Mum narrowly missed crashing into the old Volvo parked outside Mr Overend’s house. ‘That stupid car, taking up all that space and never getting used. Someone should take it to the scrap yard.’
As Milo looked up he saw a fuzzy shadow leaning into Mr Overend’s bedroom window. He wondered how long it had been since Mr Overend got behind the wheel of his car – in fact, he wondered how long it had been since Mr Overend had last left his house.
As Milo shifted his head and focused in on the images through the small ‘O’ of his vision, he felt kind of lucky that he didn’t have to see it all. At least he only got a bit of the grey sky and the grey pavements and the grey leafless trees. People who saw everything at once must feel drowned by the world. All Milo had to do was to move his head and focus on something else and pretend the bad bits weren’t there.
He remembered that day in January when he’d sat in Dr Nolan’s examination room. He’d liked the feel of the big chair with the tall headrest and all those machines that made his eyes go funny. The room was underground so it didn’t have any windows. There were posters all over the walls of what eyes looked like from the inside: as Dr Nolan explained what was wrong with Milo’s eyes, he’d pointed to the nerves and veins and muscles, like a map of the London Underground only messier. And then he’d shown Milo the picture of an orange moon and said that was what his retinas looked like, that the lighter bits of orange were the reason why he could only see part of the world, the bit through the pinhole. That’s when Mum had started crying, which meant Dr Nolan had to get some tissues from the loo, but Milo hadn’t been able to stop staring at that orange moon. It was beautiful.
Milo sat back and looked up into the trees. He couldn’t wait for summer. He would take Hamlet out for walks in the park, which along with Gran’s room under the roof was his favourite place in the whole world. He’d sent off for Hamlet’s licence to prove that he didn’t have any diseases like foot in mouth that would kill all the sheep and cows in nearby farms. Not that there were any sheep or cows or farms near Slipton.
As they drove past the big black gates to the park, Milo pressed his nose to the window. Behind the NO FOULING sign with the black dog in a red circle squatting over a pile of steaming poo, a man with ruffled hair and brown skin knelt on a sleeping bag.
He held his hands to his ears, and then bent forward and touched his forehead to the ground. He was doing the Downward Facing Dog from Mum’s yoga DVD. Because of his eyes, Milo didn’t get to do normal sports, so sometimes Mum made him do yoga with her. You don’t want to get love handles like your father, Mum said, pinching the soft bits at the side of Milo’s waist. Except they hadn’t done yoga in months, not since Dad left, and now Mum’s love handles were ten times bigger than Dad’s.
Milo turned round, gave Gran’s hand a squeeze and whispered Look, nudging his head towards the park.
When Gran spotted the man doing his exercises, her mouth tilted up at the sides.
‘Turn round and focus on the machine,’ snapped Mum. ‘I need to know when to turn off.’
Mum didn’t like the satnav woman’s voice. Dad used to call it sexy and said that it turned him on – like the power switch on the computer, thought Milo. So now Milo kept the satnav on mute and called out the directions himself.
‘Right turn ahead in 0.4 miles.’ He used the low announcement voice you heard in train stations, except no one heard how good it was because a plane flew overhead and drowned out his words. That was what living in Slipton was like: every few minutes you’d miss part of what was going on because a Boeing 747 tore through the sky. At peak times, it got worse.
‘What did you say?’ Mum yelled as she drove past the turning.
4
MILO
At lunchtime, they sat in the car outside Poundland, munching meal deal sandwiches, Gran dozing in the back. So far, Mum hadn’t liked any of the places on Milo’s list.
‘What about this place?’ Mum asked, jabbing her chipped red nail at the last home on Milo’s list: FORGET ME NOT HOMES.
Hoping that Mum might not notice it, Milo had written the name of the last home right at the end of the list using his smallest, tightest letters. It was the only old people’s home that he liked, so he thought he should add it: if Gran had to leave them, she should get to live somewhere nice. Though he was torn. If Mum liked it too, he’d never be able to persuade her to let Gran stay with them.
In the photo-gallery of Forget Me Not Homes, the old people smiled and they didn’t look too wrinkly and they didn’t all walk around with Zimmer frames. Everything looked clean and tidy and fresh and there were lots of pictures of this beautiful garden. Gran loved gardens. And when he’d phoned to make an appointment, this really nice nurse had answered and said that of course they could come and visit, that she’d show them round herself.
‘Mum, it’s too expensive —’ And then Milo looked back at Gran and remembered that she heard things, even when she was asleep.
‘I don’t think you’ll like it, Mum.’
But Mum had already started the engine. ‘Let’s go and see.’
And she did like it.
> She liked the nurse in the white uniform with the glowing white teeth and the scraped-back grey hair who ignored Milo and greeted Mum like she knew her already. And she liked the fact that, within five minutes of them walking through the door, Nurse Thornhill had told Mum about the Forget Me Not Payment Plan. None of the other nursing homes had payment plans.
‘You’ll be charged a small amount of interest, but it means you don’t have to pay everything up front. It eases the burden.’
Mum’s eyes lit up.
Gran and Milo walked a few paces behind.
The white nurse looked like a skeleton: tall and sharp and bony. He expected her to rattle as she moved. She didn’t look at all like she’d sounded on the phone.
Even though they were in a public place, Milo didn’t let go of Gran’s hand.
‘As Director of Forget Me Not, I live on the premises, so I’m available night and day.’
Everything looked squeaky white, like the nurse: the walls and the doors and the floor.
‘We’re a very friendly little community here.’
Mum kept looking back and saying, ‘Isn’t this nice?’ her eyes screwed up into twinkly slits, and ‘It’s so close, you can come and visit Gran whenever you want.’
Milo didn’t answer and Gran wasn’t listening.
Then a woman appeared at the end of the corridor carrying an old tape player under her arm with music blaring out of the speakers that sounded like the Bob Marley album Dad used to play in the car. The old woman tapped her cane to the reggae beat.
Gran’s head shot up.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Milo. She was the most interesting thing he’d seen so far.
‘Please excuse me.’ Nurse Thornhill charged down the corridor.
Because of his eyes, Milo’s hearing was extra sharp. As Nurse Thornhill squeaked away in her white plastic clogs, he heard her mutter, ‘Silly woman, she knows she’s not allowed out here.’
Milo looked through the pinhole: as Nurse Thornhill approached, the old woman turned round and started walking away. She had a lovely smiley face with chubby cheeks and skin as dark and shiny as a conker. But then, as he shifted his head, he noticed a wet patch on the back of the woman’s dress. Nurse Thornhill grabbed the woman’s elbow and steered her round the bend in the corridor.
‘Must require such commitment,’ said Mum, ‘looking after all these patients.’
Within a few minutes, Nurse Thornhill was back at Mum’s side.
‘Mrs Moseley – she likes to wander.’ She sighed. ‘Such a dear,’ she said through tight lips.
When they went past the kitchens, Gran let go of Milo’s hand and walked to the swing doors.
‘What is it, Gran?’ he called after her.
She reached onto her tiptoes and peered through the round window.
‘Gran?’ Milo went and stood beside her. He wondered whether, when people looked through these windows, they saw the world like he did.
A man with tanned skin and curly dark hair and dark eyes stood over a pan of bubbling water. He sang a song that came out fast and bumpy and made Milo think of how voices sound when you record them and play them back in fast-forward. But the words he sang weren’t English or any other language Milo had ever heard before.
Gran’s face went soft and it was the first time since the fire that she stopped doing her spaced-out staring thing. She came back down off her tiptoes, closed her eyes and stood there swaying, listening to the man’s singing.
‘Milo, what are you doing? Bring your gran over here!’ Mum called from the end of the corridor.
Milo didn’t think you were meant to raise your voice in places like this. He looked at the white nurse to see whether she was cross at Mum, but the nurse smiled, revealing a set of big white teeth. The smile reminded Milo of those stickers you get as a kid where you can mix up lips and eyebrows and moustaches to make freaky lopsided faces.
When Gran and Milo caught up with them, Mum said: ‘It’s all settled – Gran’s moving in on Monday.’
Monday? As in the day after tomorrow? Milo thought he’d have ages to come up with a plan to change Mum’s mind.
‘Aren’t there waiting lists?’ Milo asked the nurse. There’d been waiting lists on most of the nice places he’d found on the internet. ‘Or forms to fill out?’
The nurse shook her head. ‘At Forget Me Not Homes, we’re always open to new clients.’
‘Client’ was what the bank manager called Mum when she went in to ask for money, which she needed for the beauty salon she ran from the shed and to pay for the mortgage. Mum needed money because of Dad. Your dad’s buggered off to Abu Dhabi with His Tart, she told Milo when he came home from school one afternoon last June. And The Tart was pregnant, which made it worse, and Dad had emptied their joint bank account saying that the money belonged to him and that Sandy should get a job that earned money for a change. That made it worse than worse.
Come to think of it, The Tart had a voice a bit like the satnav. Maybe that’s why Dad preferred her to Mum.
‘What about Dad?’ asked Milo. ‘Shouldn’t we see what he thinks?’
Another plane rumbled overhead. The soundproofing in Forget Me Not was worse than at home.
Mum used the noise from the plane as an excuse not to hear.
Milo spoke louder. ‘We have to tell Dad, it’s his decision too.’
He knew he was Insisting and that Mum wouldn’t like it, but Gran was Dad’s Gran. She was the one who’d looked after him when he was little and his parents were busy with their jobs in Edinburgh, and he was the one who took her in when they said they were too old themselves to look after an old lady. Dad loved her and he understood how much she meant to Milo.
Milo knew it wasn’t right to feel this but sometimes he wished it was Mum who’d gone to Abu Dhabi and Dad who had stayed here in Slipton.
‘Your dad’s busy,’ snapped Mum.
Mum held out her hand to Nurse Thornhill and kept saying thank you, which Milo thought was pretty stupid as they were the ones paying for Gran to come here.
‘Do you allow pets?’ he asked.
The nurse looked down at Milo and her sticker smile fell off and dropped to the floor.
Mum yanked Milo’s arm.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Nurse Thornhill.
If Gran had to stay here until Milo found a way to get her out, he wanted her to have Hamlet.
Mum didn’t know, but Hamlet spent loads of time with Gran in her room under the roof. When Gran got cold, Hamlet felt it and snuggled in close and when she did weird things like putting shower gel on her toothbrush (which made her mouth foam for ages) or like taking the radio into the bath (which could have got her electrocuted), Hamlet would grunt and squeak until either she snapped out of it and realised what she was doing or until Milo heard and came upstairs to sort things out.
Hamlet was the one who picked up on the fire. His nose was more sensitive than a sniffer dog’s, so when he smelt the smoke he squealed his head off until Milo woke up and came downstairs and found Gran standing over the hob.
Plus, with Hamlet, Gran wouldn’t feel so alone living between these white walls with all these white people with their white teeth and their white uniforms and their squeaky white shoes.
‘I think we’ve found the perfect place for Gran, don’t you, Milo?’ Mum asked as they drove back home. ‘Did you know that they have Forget Me Not Homes all over the country?’
Milo shrugged. It sounded a bit suspicious, like it was a Pizza Hut rather than a place to live. He took Gran’s hand and squeezed it harder than he’d ever squeezed it before.
5
TRIPI
Stupid English food! thought Tripi as he lifted the pan of boiled potatoes off the stove.
He took the potatoes over to the sink and tipped them into the colander. Steam rushed at his face and scalded his eyes. He leapt back, sloshing water from the pan onto the floor.
‘For goodness sake, be careful!’ Nurse Thornhill made English words l
and like bricks. ‘I thought you were meant to be a trained chef?’
Tripi was a trained chef, he just wasn’t trained to peel and chop and boil potatoes twenty-four hours a day. Potatoes and meat that looked like old leather left out in the sun. Potatoes and runny, reheated stew from those tins she ordered. Potatoes and pre-cooked vegetables the colour of the uniforms worn by the rebels in Syria: a pale mossy green. He tried his best to make something of the ingredients, but there was a limit to his skills.
He thought back to Four Seasons in Damascus – the chandeliers, the restaurant buzzing with tourists, the head chef who taught Tripi how to make the perfect meringue. He’d written a letter of recommendation for Tripi to help him get a job when he reached England. One day I’ll come and eat in your restaurant, he’d said. They’d thought there’d be plenty of time to say a proper goodbye, but it turned out those were the chef’s last words to Tripi.
What Milo Saw Page 2
