What Milo Saw

by Virginia MacGregor

  ‘I’m sorry, darling – I mean, Sandy. I’m sorry, Sandy, I have to go – domestic duties.’

  Since when had Andy cared about domestic duties?

  ‘You know what, Sandy?’ He sighed. ‘I knew it would work out, you and me. That we’d build our lives up again.’

  He made it sound like they’d been caught up in some kind of tsunami, a great natural disaster beyond their control, and that now they should pat themselves on the back for having clung to the life raft. Why couldn’t he see that he was the one who’d landed a bomb in their lives? A big Tart-shaped bomb.

  ‘You’d better go, Andy, sounds like you’re needed.’

  A beat of silence. ‘You sure you don’t need anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I’m sure.’

  Sandy put down the phone. Then she grabbed the packet of Hobnobs, threw them against the wall, flung open the drawer and pulled out her bottle of diet pills.

  30

  MILO

  Milo had a few hours to kill before the end of school so he went to the park. He sat on the swings, cradling Hamlet, and watched a mum pushing her little boy on a bike with stabilisers.

  Getting a new bike, that’s how it had all started. A proper, grown-up one with the saddle all the way down so that Milo could grow into it. Dad hid it in the garage behind a dustsheet and he and Mum kept saying that they were buying Milo socks for Christmas and a vest for his birthday and they nudged each other and winked when they thought Milo wasn’t looking. But Milo had flipped to the picture in the catalogue so many times that he knew the shape of the bike by heart.

  Sometimes having your birthday on Christmas day was the worst thing, because it felt like you get half of one and half of the other and nothing proper. Other years, it felt like getting double of everything, a better Christmas and a better birthday than if they’d been apart.

  A year ago, Milo was sure that, with the new bike, this Christmas-Birthday would be doubly good.

  The bike was expensive: Milo saw the numbers under the picture. But it was okay, because at the beginning of December Dad came home with a bottle of champagne and announced that he was now Top Dog at Move-It, which meant he got more money and a secretary and that he was in charge of loads of people and got to tell them what to do rather anyone telling him what to do. Milo heard him say to Mum: It’s okay, Sandy, we can afford to splash out this year.

  Mum was so excited about Dad getting the promotion that she said they should hold his Christmas work party at their house and if Milo helped, he was allowed to stay up for it.

  On the day of the party, Mum cancelled her salon appointments so she could concentrate on making herself and the house beautiful and Dad came home early from work to move the furniture. Then he helped Mum and Milo make snacky sausages, which showed how happy Dad was because he never did anything in the kitchen. He wrapped the wrinkly brown sausages in bits of streaky bacon and called them Pigs in Blankets to annoy Milo because he knew that pigs were Milo’s favourite animals in the whole world. Mum even let Milo try a bit of the mulled wine she was making and it tasted like hot Ribena, except without the water added, and with spicy things that made Milo’s nose tickle and something else that caught the back of his throat and made his chest feel warm.

  Milo whizzed around collecting people’s coats and taking them up to his mum and dad’s bedroom and got people drinks and handed around the sausages. He’d never seen so many people in his house. Mum put the slushy Christmas music on and everyone crammed in closer and closer and started swaying and someone dropped some mulled wine on the carpet, which Milo was sure would make Mum flip but she didn’t, she just threw back her head and laughed and said she’d deal with it in the morning.

  The only thing that made Milo sad about that night was that Gran wasn’t at the party. She’d written on her pad that she’d rather stay upstairs and get an early night. Not that she’d be able to sleep with all the racket. It was from the night of the Christmas party that Gran started sleeping a lot: she’d fall asleep while she was having her lunch and during the Shipping Forecast, which was her favourite radio programme, and sometimes she even fell asleep while Milo was telling her a story or giving her a bath and washing her hair – and then he had to shake her awake because people had been known to drown in a bath, and when she woke up she stared at Milo, dazed, and said things like, want to come in and join me for a swim? The sea… it’s so warm…

  ‘Milo, go and get that stool from my salon,’ Mum yelled above the music. ‘We’ve run out of chairs.’

  Mum had a special swivelly stool made out of white leather with shiny silver feet on wheels so that she could zoom around the shed and pick up products without having to get up.

  Milo walked through the frosty grass, his head spinning from all the noise in the house. As he looked at the shed, it seemed to shrink in front of him. All the bits around the door were fuzzy. He rubbed his itchy eyes and re-focused. Now all he could see was the door with the padlock dangling off the metal clasp.

  Mum never left the shed open. There was too much expensive equipment like the Microabrasion Machine (she’d tried it on Milo’s nose and it had made it go pink and smooth and shiny) and the sunbed and the expensive creams with seaweed from the Red Sea in them. Plus the insurance wouldn’t pay out if something was stolen and they found out that she hadn’t locked it up properly.

  As he got to the door, he heard a squeaky metal noise and a high-pitched giggle like someone had swallowed helium. He felt wobbly now, maybe it was the mulled wine. When Mum wasn’t watching, he’d taken a few more sips from the ladle in the saucepan.

  Milo flicked the switch by the door and stepped towards the bit of the room where Mum kept her stool. For a moment the brightness of the light hurt his eyes so much he wanted to switch it off again. But then he noticed that there was someone else in the shed. And then he realised there wasn’t just someone, there were people. Two bodies tangled up on Mum’s massage bed, their feet pushed into the donut ring you put your head in. A man with his trousers pulled down and his dangly bit all red and stiff and up and at an angle, and a woman with her skirt hitched up. And they were staring at him but Milo’s eyes were so hot and scratchy that everything looked blurred and he couldn’t make out who the people were.

  ‘Milo? What are you doing here?’ Dad’s voice. And then Dad getting up and pulling his boxers up and the woman covering her boobs up with her arms. Milo saw the big bulge in Dad’s pants and thought about what he’d said when Milo got a bulge, that it was your body getting ready for when you met a girl you really liked. Like Mum, he’d said.

  Milo dropped the stool and heard it clatter to the floor as he ran out into the night.

  He didn’t go back into the house but ran round to the side gate and then through to the garage. He whipped the dustsheet off his Christmas-Birthday bike, wheeled it out onto the drive, climbed on and set off full tilt into the road.

  31

  LOU

  Lou lay in her bed at Forget Me Not drifting in and out of sleep. Somewhere deep in her mind, she heard a garage door whine open and the sound of pedalling on the drive. And that damned whistling, worse than the jingle all the way bleating from downstairs. Why couldn’t he just pipe down and go to sleep like a normal old man. And then, as if he’d heard her thoughts, Mr Overend fell silent.

  And after that a whine as loud as the foghorn across the sea at Inverary.

  And a smash.

  And the music snapping off mid jingle in the lounge.

  Her voice came back in a rush, soaring up her body like it had been waiting for the moment for sixty-two years.

  ‘Milo!’ she cried from her room under the roof. ‘Milo!’

  But no one heard her. No one except Mr Overend who stood leaning out of his window, looking down at the road.

  Milo had stayed in her room for days, handing her fragments of what he’d seen: his father and the woman whose love he’d exchanged for Sandy’s.

  She stroked his hair and listened and c
ursed Andrew. The child worshipped his father, and look what he’d done.

  Her eyes flickered open. Petros sitting on the chair by the bed, a gentle snore rolling off his breath. How could she explain to Milo these feelings she had for this old man who’d walked into her life?

  Her head bobbed back down and she thought again of that night last Christmas, everything jumbled.

  I saw him, Gran… I saw Dad with someone else…

  Lou opened her eyes and looked around. Petros was gone, the room empty again.

  Where was she?

  A damp patch pressed into the soft skin inside her thighs. Behaving like a frightened child.

  ‘Hello?’

  An old woman stood in the doorway, her white hair down to her waist like a ghost.

  ‘It’s me, Mrs Zimmer.’

  Lou had never heard her speak. She thought that Mrs Zimmer might have lost her words too.

  ‘I heard you tossing and turning as I walked by.’

  Mrs Zimmer came and lay beside Lou in the narrow bed.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? I was sleepwalking and you woke me… and I’m a little tired now.’ She yawned and curled up and mumbled, ‘I think I saw that girl, that little girl, though I can’t be sure…’ And then she fell asleep.

  Lou looked around at the white walls and the white bedding and the window looking out onto the grey roofs of Slipton.

  Forget Me Not, that’s where I am.

  The alarm clock on the bedside table clicked as it struck twelve. Lou must have drifted off mid-morning.

  That same dream, of the night Milo found his father and his secretary in Sandy’s shed. The night they realised Milo’s eyes were broken.

  She looked at Mrs Zimmer’s face, her mouth open, a light snore pushing off each breath.

  No, nothing had been right since that night.

  32

  SANDY

  ‘You should have come in to talk to us about all this, Mrs Moon.’ Mrs Harris sat in Sandy’s kitchen, sipping a cup of tea.

  She’s old enough to be my mother, Sandy thought. She’s certainly talking to me like she’s my mother, implying I can’t look after my own son.

  First there’d been the phone call from Gina: Milo had shown up at her house, and then this woman stood on their doorstep demanding to be let in.

  ‘I got a message that Milo’s dad had called, which is when I twigged that something must be wrong.’ Mrs Harris put down her mug. ‘I gather he’s moved abroad.’

  I gather. Making a piece of gossip sound like it was something clever she’d worked out. Sandy had never liked teachers, interfering busybodies.

  Mrs Harris cleared her throat. ‘So this eye condition. Ret… Retin…’

  ‘Retinitis Pigmentosa.’

  ‘Right. It would have been helpful for us to work together to help Milo. We’re doing all we can at school, but there needs to be some support from home.’ Sandy slipped one of her bare feet out of her clogs and looked down at her chipped toenails.

  ‘Mrs Moon?’

  ‘Andy was going to do that. Liaise with the school.’

  She was blaming Andy, but it was her fault, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like he was going to stay in touch with Slipton Primary all the way from Abu Dhabi.

  Sandy remembered how she’d sat in that dark underground room with all those lamps and machines and eye charts as Dr Nolan explained why Milo had fallen off his bike. Why he’d been getting those headaches, why he’d jump whenever she came up behind him without warning.

  You have to imagine looking at the world through a pinhole, Dr Nolan had said.

  And he’d explained how that pinhole got even smaller at night and when it rained. And how, one day, the pinhole would close up altogether and Milo’s world would go dark.

  Cures? No. Dr Nolan shook his head. But you can try Vitamin A, Omega 3, foods with antioxidants. There’s some research to suggest those things might help.

  When had she last reminded Milo to take his pills? To eat those green leafy vegetables that were meant to make his eyes sharper?

  Sandy wished she was the one with the bad eyes, she already knew what it felt like for the world to disappear.

  Milo had sat on the chair, swinging his legs. He remembered every word the doctor said that day. It’s like an orange moon, Milo explained to her in the car on the way home. He pointed at the picture of his retina that Dr Nolan gave him: the white shadows where the damage was, the network of nerves. My eyes are like a lunar eclipse, Mum. He’d been obsessed with seeing a bloody eclipse ever since.

  And then Andy had bought Milo a picture of an orange moon to put on his bedroom wall. You see, your eyes are special, he’d said. As if that helped.

  Sandy spotted a pile of mail on the counter: a note from the bank manager, a letter from the insurance company. She covered them up with a magazine. She’d move them to the shed later so that Milo wouldn’t find them.

  ‘It’s been having an impact on his work, Mrs Moon.’

  ‘Milo’s fine.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s not. He failed his recent maths and English exams – we put a breakdown in the post for you.’

  A weight plummeted through Sandy. ‘There must be a mistake. Milo’s very clever, we had him tested.’

  Mrs Harris examined a trail of ash on her fingertips and scrunched up her nose. There should be a policy against letting teachers turn up at people’s houses without any warning, that’s what Sandy thought.

  ‘All I’m saying, Mrs Moon, is that maybe this condition, this problem he has with his peripheral vision, is getting in the way of his learning. If we can obtain some more information, we could help him —’

  ‘He’s got special lenses.’ Sandy felt sick. Where were those damned glasses? ‘Anyway, the doctor said it would be years before it became a real problem. If it had got that bad, Milo would have told me.’

  Mrs Harris crossed her chubby knees. Sandy spotted some dark hairs poking up through the teacher’s flesh coloured tights.

  ‘Children don’t like to be different, Mrs Moon. They’ll often go to great lengths to disguise a disability.’ She paused. ‘We have a special unit at school, staff trained to cope with pupils who have learning difficulties.’

  Sandy felt the red rash prickling up her throat. She clawed at it, knowing she’d regret it later.

  Mrs Harris continued. ‘Maybe you should talk to him about how he’s finding things at school.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Sometimes it helps to sit down and —’

  ‘I heard what you said, I’m just wondering where the hell you get off —’

  ‘Your neck, Mrs Moon, you’re bleeding.’

  The front door clicked open and shut again. Milo came into the kitchen, his lips blue, his face as grey as the sky.

  Mrs Harris stood up.

  Sandy ran towards him. ‘Milo…’

  Milo stepped away from them both. He wrapped his arms around the padded shape that wriggled at the front of his duffel coat. That was Andy’s contribution to this situation. While Sandy spent last Christmas dragging Milo from one eye specialist to the next, Andy stepped in with a poster and a bloody pig. Oh, and he got Milo a baby sister too.

  ‘You seem to have recovered from your tonsillitis, Milo,’ said Mrs Harris.

  Sandy shot Mrs Harris a look. Weren’t teachers trained in child psychology? Accusing Milo as soon as he came through the door wasn’t going to help, was it?

  ‘Can we talk, Mum? It’s important.’

  Sandy strained a smile. ‘Of course, Milo. But why don’t you come in here and join us for a second, tell Mrs Harris all those clever things you’ve been doing on your computer.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you when she’s here.’

  ‘Darling…’

  ‘This is important, Mum. More important than anything I’ve ever told you.’

  ‘Well, just give me a bit of time with Mrs Harris…’

  Milo turned round and stomped upstairs. The bang of his bedroom door sent
a shudder through the house.

  Sandy spun round to face Mrs Harris, her eyes ablaze. ‘He’s too clever for your stupid tests, that’s all. He doesn’t need a special unit. You know where Milo should be? In an advanced class. Gifted and Talented – isn’t that what you people call it? You’d think teachers were trained to recognise when a kid was bored. He finds it too easy – no wonder he can’t be bothered to do any work.’ Sandy caught her breath.

  ‘We’re just trying to help, Mrs Moon. It sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate.’