‘Maybe PC Stubbs is right,’ Clouds said.
‘What?’ Milo felt that hot, angry flush rising up into his cheeks again. Up to now he’d thought Clouds was on his side.
‘It’s important to look at things from every angle, Milo. Maybe she’s keeping their money safe.’
Milo shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t do anything nice like that. And that doesn’t excuse all the other bad stuff she’s been doing.’
‘Okay. And so what did PC Stubbs say before you left?’
‘That he’d put it on file.’
Clouds laughed. ‘Yeah, I know that line well.’
Milo dropped his shoulders. ‘We have to stop her.’ Milo gulped. ‘Otherwise she’s going to get away with it.’
Clouds nodded and smiled. ‘You don’t miss a thing, do you, Milo?’
When Clouds said that, Milo felt a warm glow in his chest, but then he remembered that he’d felt the same glow when PC Stubbs complimented him on working out what was going on in the crime scene video, and look how that had turned out.
Clouds stubbed out his cigarette on the outside bit of the window ledge and dropped it in the bin.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a case, Milo.’
Milo’s heart skipped a beat. ‘I do?’ He felt a surge of confidence. ‘Well, I thought about what you said, Clouds, about the police being rubbish —’
‘Well, that’s not quite true, Milo. It’s just that they have to stick to lots of rules and procedures which slow everything down. And they have other things to be dealing with too, like speed cameras and road accidents and people getting drunk and having a punch-up on a Saturday night – so sometimes they get distracted from the important stuff. That’s why they need a helping hand.’
‘Okay, so maybe they do try to get things right. But the point is that right now they’re not helping us with what’s going on at Forget Me Not.’ He caught sight of the photographs of the women lying on Clouds’s bedside table. ‘Just like they’re not helping those women who are being treated badly, which is why you’re doing your own investigation. I thought that maybe we could do the same thing for the old people at Forget Me Not. I’ve already started gathering evidence with this really cool guy called Tripi, who I know you’ll like, but we don’t really know what we’re doing.’ Milo took a breath. He knew that how Clouds responded to the next bit of what he said would determine whether or not he could trust him. ‘You could teach us. You could help us catch her.’
‘One thing at a time, Milo. First of all, I’m not going to catch anyone – you are. Undercover reporters don’t walk on each other’s turf. And second, before you leap in and try to get Nurse Thornhill thrown into jail, you need to see if your theory matches up with the truth. You need to do some proper investigating.’
Milo looked at Clouds and any anger he’d felt at him being here and making Gran’s room smelly and cluttered lifted. Besides Tripi, this was the first time since he could remember that someone had actually listened to him and believed him and wanted to help.
Just as Milo was thinking that, Mr Overend started whistling across the road. For a second, it felt like the old days when Milo came up here to speak to Gran.
‘Now, he’d make a good undercover reporter,’ Clouds said, leaning out of the window and giving Mr Overend a wave.
‘He would?’
Clouds nodded. ‘Think about everything he must see looking out onto the street day after day. I bet nothing much gets past him.’
‘So will you teach me?’ Milo asked. ‘I mean, to be a proper undercover reporter, like you?’
Clouds smiled. ‘Sure thing, Milo. Sure thing.’
38
SANDY
Sandy stood in front of the Co-op, staring at the job application form. The Christmas lights swayed above her. Andy had managed to spoil that as well: her favourite time of year, the time she associated with the joy they shared ten years ago when Milo came to them. Like the doctor said, a miracle.
As the doors swished open and shut, Sandy looked in at the women wearing green nylon fleeces and black polyester shirts. She wasn’t sure she could bear it, that beep-beep-beeping all day long.
She took a breath and walked on. When she got to the corner of the high street, Sandy noticed that lights were on in the pink house. The front garden had been cleared of rubbish, the hedges trimmed back. The kitchen window was steamed up and a sweet, warm smell drifted out into the cold December air. And someone was singing a jumpy, energetic tune that sounded oddly familiar.
Perhaps Big Mike was back at last from Thailand with Lalana, the wife he couldn’t stop speaking about whenever he came to the salon to have his shoulders waxed. He’d waited and waited for her visa to come through and then, one day, he had enough: he resigned from his job, packed his bags and booked a one-way ticket to Thailand.
The front door clicked open.
‘It is me, Tripi. We met the other day.’
Tripi?
The young man lurched down the front steps. Sandy had never seen anyone with such, big, clumsy feet. When he reached her he looked her up and down and smiled.
‘I saw my green waterproof through the kitchen window, it suits you.’
‘I’m not sure.’ Sandy looked down at the green nylon that stretched over her bust and pinched at her waist. This man with the brown eyes and the thick eyelashes must be twice her height and half her weight.
‘The colour,’ said Tripi, ‘like pistachios. It goes with your eyes.’
‘Oh.’ Sandy hadn’t given a thought to her eyes in a long time. In some lights, the blue did look green, didn’t it? Like Milo’s.
‘The other day when we met, I did not catch your name.’
‘I’m Sandy,’ she said, holding out a rain-wet hand.
Tripi laughed and held up his palms. ‘Sorry, sticky fingers. I have been baking.’
A man who baked? Sandy looked up at the house. ‘So you live here?’
Tripi kicked at one of the front steps with his big feet. ‘For the time being.’
‘Your baking smells good.’
His face lit up. ‘Yes, come in, come in, you must try some.’
Sandy looked around her. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Just for a moment.’
It was strange. All of Mike’s things were still in his house: his pictures of Thailand, his golf equipment, a pile of mail stacked on the table in the hall.
‘You’re a friend of Mike’s?’ Sandy pointed at a photo of Mike with his pasty white arm draped around Lalana.
‘We are like friends,’ said Tripi, going over to the kitchen counter and taking a spatula out of the utensils pot. He eased the spatula under a sheet of sticky golden squares and prised one of them loose.
‘Well, you’re doing a good job looking after his house.’ Sandy glanced through the door that led into the lounge. She’d never seen the place so tidy. ‘It’s been empty for close to a year now, I was worried that squatters might move in.’
Tripi dropped the spatula onto the floor.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am clumsy.’
‘Me too.’ Sandy smiled.
He lifted one of the golden squares from the baking tray and held it up to Sandy’s mouth.
‘What is it?’ Sandy moved her head back a bit and felt herself blushing.
‘Baklava, our national sweet.’ He beamed. ‘I have used my first pay cheque to buy the ingredients. Pistachios are expensive in your country.’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘What do they say? “A rip off”.’
Sandy smelt honey and sugar and butter and warm pastry and looked at the scattering of crushed pistachio nuts on the top; they made her think of green jewels. She opened her lips and let Tripi place the parcel on her tongue. She closed her eyes, allowing the pastry to melt and the flavours to swim around in her mouth.
‘You like it?’
She nodded and wiped a pistachio crumb off her lip. ‘Everything should taste like this.’
‘So you agree?’ Tripi smiled. ‘Not like your potatoes
.’
‘Our potatoes?’
‘All you eat here are potatoes.’
Sandy laughed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
Tripi arranged some more of the pastries on a plate, poured black coffee into glass tumblers and put everything on a tray. He didn’t look clumsy at all, not when he was doing this.
‘Come.’ He held the tray above his head like a waiter. ‘You can dry off from the rain.’
Sandy hung the green waterproof on the back of a kitchen chair and regretted having worn her tracksuit bottoms out of the house. She noticed a smear of chocolate Hobnob on her sweatshirt.
‘Come through!’ called Tripi.
She sucked in her stomach and followed him into the lounge.
Sandy stared out into the garden and then she noticed a pink mat propped up against the back door.
‘Is that yours?’ She went over and picked up the yoga mat.
‘It was lent to me.’
‘Lent to you?’ She grabbed the mat, rolled it out onto the carpet and pointed at the initials in the corner. ‘SM. Sandy Moon. That’s me! What are you doing with my yoga mat?’
Tripi’s eyes darted around. ‘I… I… Like I said. It was given to me, a gift.’
‘Given to you?’
‘A little boy, Milo. He said I could have it, for my prayers.’
‘Your prayers?’
‘To Allah, my God. I am a Muslim. It was so that I did not have to pray on the sleeping bag.’
‘The sleeping bag?’ Sandy’s head spun. Her yoga mat? Milo?
39
MILO
As he walked down the high street, Milo’s eyes kept burning. Maybe they’d turn to ash like the kitchen back home. He blinked, wanting that picture of Mrs Moseley to go away.
Fairy lights and jingle bells and tinsel.
Why did everyone look so cheery? Couldn’t they see what was happening?
He caught a glimpse of the advert in the bus stop, Nurse Thornhill smiling with her white teeth. He didn’t care if she’d had ten fiancés and they’d all been blown to bits, no one was allowed to treat people like she did. Bad things happened to people all the time and they didn’t take it out on everyone else.
Now that he was a proper undercover reporter, he had to rally the troops, get people on board who’d support his cause. His first stop: The Hairy Mansion. As soon as Mrs Hairy found out what was happening to her mum, she’d put an end to it.
Only he didn’t have to walk that far.
When he got to the traffic lights outside Tony Greedy & Sons, he spotted Mrs Hairy zooming down the road in her red Mercedes.
‘Stop!’ He yelled, doing star jumps on the pavement to get her attention.
A bunch of carol singers walked out in front of him.
Away in a manger, no crib for his bed…
Who cares about Jesus’s stupid bed? With God on the case, Jesus was going to get one anyway, wasn’t he? What about Mrs Moseley and Gran and all the other old ladies at Forget Me Not?
The carol singers crossed the road. Mrs Hairy slowed down to let them pass.
‘Excuse me.’ Milo pushed through them.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay…
‘I need to get past.’ He elbowed someone in the ribs, but he didn’t care. He had to stop Mrs Hairy and tell her about Mrs Moseley.
‘Ow! Watch where you’re going.’
He found himself face to face with Jill, a woman who, before Dad left and everyone went off Mum, acted like Mum’s best friend and came to use the sunbed in the shed for free.
Milo ignored her and pushed on forward.
Mrs Hairy pulled away from the zebra crossing.
Milo lurched in front of her.
Her eyes bulged and she swerved to the right, crashing the flat nose of her shiny Mercedes into a bollard outside The Cup Half Full. Milo looked at the white brushstroke scraped along the front of the car and the number plate which swung down and clunked against the tarmac.
Mrs Hairy leapt out of her Mercedes.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Milo had underestimated how close he’d got to the car and that Mrs Hairy had already picked up some speed.
‘You trying to get yourself killed?’
‘It’s your mum. We have to get her out of Forget Me Not.’
Mrs Hairy’s ears went bright pink.
‘I’ve had just about enough of you.’ She leant over and looked at the white scratch along the front of her car. ‘I’ll be sending a bill to your mother.’
A bill? Mum couldn’t afford to pay the bills she had, let alone a new one for hundreds of pounds. But that wasn’t important, not compared to what Milo had to tell Mrs Hairy.
‘You have to listen to me.’
Clouds had said to go slowly, to be discreet, and Milo had planned to do that but somehow, bumping into Mrs Hairy like this in the middle of Slipton high street, everything had spun out of control.
The carol singers, who’d stopped singing when Milo nearly got run over, gathered around the car and started up again. Opportunists, that’s what Dad called people who tried to get money out of you the minute you had your defences down.
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care…
‘Just shut up, will you!’ yelled Mrs Hairy.
Milo nodded in agreement.
The carol singers went quiet, except an old man at the back who hadn’t heard. And take us to Heaven to live with Thee there, he croaked. Someone must have poked him because he stopped. They looked at each other and shuffled their feet and walked off down the pavement.
Milo followed Mrs Hairy as she got back into the driver’s seat.
‘I saw your mum – they were being horrible. You need to come and rescue her.’
Mrs Hairy continued to ignore Milo. She strapped herself in and lowered the window.
Then she let out a heavy sigh. ‘I know you miss your gran, but you can’t go around making these wild accusations.’ She leant forward and her face softened a bit. ‘Your grandma needs professional help now. Keeping her at home wasn’t good for any of you. It’s for the best, Milo.’
Mrs Hairy hadn’t got a clue. The only person who knew how to look after Gran was Milo and the only thing that would be for the best would be for Gran to come home.
‘Please come with me, I’ll show you, it won’t take long.’
‘I’m late.’ She started the engine.
What could be so important that she didn’t have time to check that her mum was okay?
‘I’m sure whoever it is can wait.’
Mrs Hairy let out a snort as though it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. ‘There are some people you can’t keep waiting, Milo.’
Mrs Hairy closed the car window and started the engine.
Milo banged on the glass. ‘Your mum’s more important than a stupid celebrity getting their tea.’ He banged again. ‘They’ll find someone to cover for you, you have to come with me —’
But Mrs Hairy didn’t hear Milo. She’d already pulled away from the bollard. Her number plate fell off the front of her car with a clunk.
40
MILO
At the end of the garden, Milo pushed through a gap in the fence.
‘Tripi!’ he called out.
He took long strides across the grass and walked straight into the lounge.
And then he noticed that there were two people standing in the lounge, staring at him. Through the pinhole he noticed a set of chipped pink nails.
‘Mum?’
‘You are his mother?’ Tripi looked from Milo to Mum and then sat down on the sofa and let out a long, slow breath.
What was Mum doing here and how did she know Tripi?
‘Of course I’m his mother. What on earth are you doing here, Milo?’
Milo’s felt his eyes go dark. He was tired of looking out onto the world and finding things he didn’t like. Sometimes he wished his eyes would hurry up and go blind altogether.
�
�Tripi’s my friend, you shouldn’t be here,’ he said.
‘Your friend? What are you talking about?’
Tripi stood up. ‘Your mother is my friend too, Milo.’
What Milo Saw Page 17
