Cloud white, p.3
Cloud White, page 3
CHAPTER 3
MILO
My number-one priority after purchasing my tiny house, and with the help of Mungo’s scrummy muscles, was to rip up and dispose of the hideous carpet in the hallway. You know the sort; from a different era and permanently stained, a little smelly and with a god-awful repetitive pattern that lodged in your brain, reminding you of its fucking ugliness every time you lay down and closed your eyes.
Not unlike my family, in fact. Except, unlike my family, I was able to roll up the offending carpet and drop it from a great height into one of those enormous bins at the refuse recycling centre. Then watched, as the huge metal teeth ground it up into constituent fibres until all that was left was a heap of dirty tattered wool, ready to be turned into something better.
When Mungo had been my housemate, my parents, sister, and her vile husband ceased plaguing me for months at a time. A burly, bearded guy letting himself in and out proved an excellent deterrent to thieves and spongers. Which became our private joke, because my big cuddly Mungo wouldn’t raise a fist to anyone, no matter the provocation. Wispy fem blonds like me, however, were easy pickings, especially after a run of three days defending the indefensible in court. My eyes ached, my head buzzed and, oh yeah, the love of my life was shacked up with perfect boyfriend material.
“What do you want?” I asked Debbie irritably. As if I didn’t know. Her banging had started not two minutes after I’d walked through the blooming door. Evidently, she’d been lying in wait, hopefully for several hours.
Debbie was my mum, although she’d lost the right to be called that long ago.
“I don’t want anything, my darlin’.” She gave a little laugh of astonishment, as fake as her cheap hair extensions. I wasn’t sure what grated the most; the laugh, the whiny tone, or the flirty little flutter of her mascara-clogged eyelashes. Or maybe the way she pretended my dad wasn’t the feckless wanker we all knew him to be. “Me and your dad were worried we hadn’t seen you for a few weeks. I was passing nearby and thought I’d pop by and check you were okay.”
For fuck's sake, I could write the script myself. A wave of tiredness enveloped me, like a murky shroud. This tawdry drama unfolding on my doorstep wasn’t my first rodeo. Which wasn't to say interactions with my toxic family left me unaffected. Far from it. A lifetime of hurt cowered behind my answering cool smile, not that she’d ever glimpse it. A lifetime trying to obliterate a memory from an unhappy childhood, except multiplying it tenfold, because unhappy childhood memories didn’t come in single packages.
I steeled myself to stay calm. Show a flicker of emotion, a chink of weakness, and they pounced like hyenas.
“Well, thanks for popping by. As you can see, Debbie, I’m absolutely tickety boo. Ciao ciao.”
She might be half-cut most of the day, but booze hadn’t blunted my mother’s reflexes. Before I could get the damn door closed, a Crocs-clad foot wedged itself in the way.
“Don’t be like that, Miley, darlin’. You know how much me and your dad miss you.”
Whatever.
“Can we just clarify this is the same dad who told his faggoty son to take his faggoty arse and his faggoty broken nose to the other side of the world and jump right off?”
“Oh, Milo, darl, you’re not still harping on about that, are you?”
How did they divvy up the task of hauling themselves across town to beg for money? Draw straws? Play rock, paper, scissors? Or was it a case of whoever ran out of ciggies first? Or suffered the heaviest losses at the betting shop? "No winner, no dinner" was how Mungo used to phrase it. A comment much closer to the mark than he realised, growing up. Not that even Mungo was party to the whole shabby story.
Truth be told, if I had an ounce of patience left with my mother, I’d be more charitable. Despite scavenging every last penny from me, Debbie was only a symptom. She married the problem. Afterward, she found out he was already wedded to the bookmaker, and, as we all discovered to our cost, bookmakers were hungry, jealous wives. The adage show me a gambler and I’ll show you a loser told no lies. Except it should have been losers, plural, because the families of gamblers lost everything. Such as houses and cars, jobs and friends, dignity, trust. And although part of me had sympathy for my mother and her shit existence, my soft edges had been filed into battle-hardened spikes years ago.
The unmistakeable odour of fragrant vagrant wafted across the gap between us, and I took a step backwards, endeavouring to breathe through my mouth.
“He didn’t mean it, you know that,” she crooned. “You know how he likes to tease.”
Yep, I did. The smack on the nose had been a one-off loss of control. He rarely resorted to violence to get his message across. He used his nasty, clever little brain, metaphorically digging his bony knuckles into my tenderest parts. Twisting and needling and needling and twisting, until, frankly, he’d get a rise out of a lump of granite. A brain everyone claimed I’d inherited; believe me, that was not the flex they imagined.
“Let’s save us both time and effort and cut the bullshit, Debbie.” Did I mention I’d had a heavy week? “How much do you want?”
My mother must have also felt under par, as she replied immediately. “Just fifty quid until we get next week’s money? Our Karen’s kid needs some new school shoes.”
You’d think, having grown up under the same roof, my sister Karen would have learned the type of man to best avoid. Nope. A chip off the maternal block, she had lumbered herself with the delightful Jason for a husband. Although, to give him his due, he’d never bet on a horse in his life. Mostly because his preferred poison came in little plastic bags, the contents of which he shoved up his nose every chance he got. Our dear Jason was dangerously unpredictable, fucking scary as hell, and too coked up to ever earn enough money to put on the gee-gees. Fortunately, I hadn’t seen him in a while.
The "school shoes" line was regularly trotted out. Honestly, they should make a proper list of plausible excuses and rotate them in turn. Or maybe they had stopped trying to sound sincere.
“Have you thought of seeking some professional help?” I asked, like I always did. “For your depression?”
I rotated my lines with regularity. Or the alcohol? Or for the painkiller addiction? For being a fucking verbal punchbag?
Mungo told me I was wasting my time. My whole family was wasting my time. I should call the police on them, get a restraining order, or several other eminently sensible and rational courses of action open to bullied, harassed, and intimidated honest citizens. Me and Mungo rarely exchanged cross words, but we invariably disagreed on this. He said I should build a fence between me and my family; I insisted on putting a gate in it. Lose where I’d come from, and I lost a part of me. But how could I expect Mungo, hailing from a lovely happy home in the Cotswolds, to understand?
And when all was said and done, my mother was a victim, just like I’d been and just like my sister was now. Because for every abused mother, there were abused children, even if the abuser himself never laid a finger on them, which my father rarely did. And every once in a while, when I asked the question about seeking help, I caught a look in my mother’s eye, giving me a glimmer of hope that one day, she might just say yes.
Today was not one of those days.
“The last doctor I saw was bloody useless. She said I had to come off the codeine if I wanted to get into one of those community programmes. I ain’t doing that.”
Not moving from the doorway—the woman would be tripping over my dead body before she ever stepped across the blooming threshold—I delved into my suit jacket inner pocket and produced my phone. A few swipes and it was done, my hard-earned dosh winging its way from my online banking to hers. The fifty quid would be gone before the bang of the starting pistol for the 2.30 at Newmarket.
Having won today’s mini battle, and pretty swiftly too, Debbie backed off, but not without a parting shot. “You still on your own, here, Miley? Your lovely Mungo still all cosied up with that other bloke, is he? Shame. I liked him. Not as much as you did, though, eh?”
Cold. Hearted. Bitch.
She left. I slammed and bolted the door, then slid down the inside of it, coming to rest on the chilled tiles. In the still calm, Debbie hollered something. Then came my dad’s responding guffaw. He’d been waiting around the corner all the fucking time. With the threat of Mungo gone, they’d all be queuing up.
As the thumping of my heart faded, treacherous self-pitying tears threatened to take over. God, I missed him. I missed me, too, the Milo I was when I took for granted that he’d always be a constant in my life. Mungo had shown me that, although my toxic family still had a bizarre hold on me, family didn’t always mean blood. He’d shown me that family was the wonderful man who celebrated with you when you finally scraped enough money together to escape the blood. Who helped you move in. Who fixed a decent lock on the front door despite not knowing one end of a drill from the other. Who hauled the bins outside for you even when it was pissing down with rain. Who talked you out of painting all the ceilings and walls peach satin, even though it was your favourite colour, but then surprised you when you returned home from work with strings of peach fairy lights twinkling around every doorway.
My tears were tears of shame too. Because in my heart lay a lurking suspicion I never had, and never would, escape. Me, a fucking lawyer, using family ties as an excuse for lacking the strength to stand up to them. To report them. To carry them through my adult life. That escape wasn’t possible, even if I had earned a bundle of certificates written in Latin, a wardrobe of smart suits, and surrounded myself with smart people. On the surface, and with a superficial glance, I passed as someone no different to Frankie and Tris, Maddie and Mungo and Cav. But lift up a corner, peel off the suit, scratch away the glitter, and Made in Tower Hamlets would forever be tattooed on my backside.
I wiped my eyes. The cool emptiness of my little house had nothing on the growing emptiness in my soul. Words to describe the swelling ache failed me—how funny was that? Me, clever Milo, with my vicious mouth, couldn’t put together a coherent string of vowels and consonants to do justice to the vacuum of nothingness heaving itself out of bed each morning.
But the fucking funniest thing of all? That wonderful man, Mungo White, didn’t walk away from me. I let him go. If I hadn’t been such a fucking idiot, he would still be here. Here now, with me, his arm slung around my shoulders, reminding me how far I’d come. Not cuddled up with Cav, with his long runner's limbs, his fancy accent, and his pissy way of staring at me like I was a tiresome piece of moondust in his boyfriend’s orbit he wished would just fuck off to another universe.
The fabulous Mungo White had wanted me. He’d laid out his heart, his body, his feelings. He’d mapped out the direction we could have travelled together—he’d as good as got down on one knee and begged me to be each other’s forever.
And five years ago, like a prize fool, I’d turned him down.
So what if it had been too soon? So what if I hadn’t been ready? Ready for what, exactly? What the fuck had I dreaded missing out on? Evenings nursing my sciatica in the Lizard Lounge? Puking up shots of vodka at midnight? Cheap fucks in the gents? The inexperienced fumbling of acned teenagers?
And now it was too late.
Eventually, I pulled myself up from the floor. I always did, seeing as it wasn’t like anyone else was going to magically appear and offer me a hand. Though my hungry belly protested, I skirted the kitchen because that’s where I kept the wine. One thing I had in common with my vile family was a taste for alcohol, and I’d climbed too bloody far to tumble down that slippery slope. Even though the view from the top wasn’t as wonderful as the brochure advertised.
Instead, I loosened my tie and flipped open my laptop. As a distraction from pretty much everything, I’d taken to stalking Tristan, one very dear third of the triplets, as he conquered the hearts of everyone he met in San Diego, much as he’d done when he’d lived in the UK. Of all the people I knew and adored, his happiness instilled in me not a shred of resentment. Moreover, his latest Instagram post had me chuckling for the first time today. His young American boyfriend, Dominic, was determined that, whatever challenges the world posed for Tristan, deafness and cerebral palsy wouldn’t be two of them.
My phone buzzed. Speak of the devil. Anyone else, I’d have let it ring.
“I saw you were online,” said Tristan from 5000 miles away. His voice had taken on the cutest hint of an American twang.
“Yes, flower. Wondering what Dom’s done to my grumpy friend.”
Tristan laughed easily. “Turned him into a baseball-cap toting, pop-tart loving, flag-waving, corn-dog eating, good old US of A cliché. How are you?”
Excellent question. “Oh, you know me, the usual happy-go-lucky ray of fucking sunshine.”
There was a brief pause. Sometimes Tristan didn’t catch everything I said, even with his hearing aids. I wouldn’t bother repeating myself. No need to kill everyone’s mood.
“You used to be, you know. When we used to hang out together. And when Mungo lived with you.”
“Yes.” And there was the fucking problem. “I’ve just had a busy week, that’s all. I’m fine, honestly. You’ve caught me at a bad moment. Nothing a long soak in the bath and the soundtrack to Les Mis won’t fix.”
“What’s he like, his new man?”
Clearly, I hadn’t fooled Tristan. How did one describe Cav? Tall, handsome, and posh? Assertive? Able to sensibly discuss politics, the environment, and the state of the country’s education system without a need to always take it down to the lowest common denominator? Everything I'm not?
“Short, stupid, and ugly. Obviously. And smelly too.” Jealousy was an underrated emotion. Indeed, I often found it perked me up.
“An ersatz version of you then?” wisecracked Tristan.
I forced out a laugh. “He’s fine. Just… fine. And I’m sure he makes Mungo very happy.” Although Mungo didn’t look very happy at brunch. And even less so when Cav dragged him away early to some tedious family thing.
“Does he know how you feel about him?”
“I don’t feel anything about him!” Except soul-sucking envy and misplaced hatred, seeing as he was being regularly fucked by the man I wanted to marry.
“Not Cav, you doofus. Mungo.”
I paused before answering. “No, he doesn’t. And he never will. I had my chance, and I blew it. And he’s happy with Cav now. Cav is clearly the sort of person that makes him happy. They’re happy together.”
So much fucking happiness.
Tristan sighed. I missed him too, every prickly, cute, and wise inch of him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Only he could get away with this probing. “Dom and I have been talking about flying back soon for a holiday. He’s planning on another period of work experience at the family firm anyhow. Just say the word and I’ll be there.”
I closed my eyes. God, that would be nice. Tears simmered behind my eyelids, and I sucked in a deep breath.
“I’m fine. Honestly.”
Seemed my front step was a popular locale. Venturing out later that evening to water my hanging baskets, I encountered a dozing teenager slumped against the doorframe, a grubby red rucksack clutched in his hands.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I gave him a none-too-gentle shove. “Get up. You’re making the place look untidy.”
“I wouldn’t be if you’d opened the bloody door. I’d be in the house.”
Danny required no explanation or apology as to why I hadn’t responded to his loud knock, particularly as it came only an hour after I’d got rid of my last unwelcome visitor. He waited in silence while I watered the plants, finishing the last hanging basket for me, seeing as I was so short, and he was so not short.
“You’ve killed some of these.” With a twist, he removed a dead head.
“I didn’t kill them. They just didn’t have what it takes to thrive in my fast-paced household.”
When we were done, he wordlessly sauntered behind me and inside, like his signature was on the blooming mortgage.
“Let’s try again. What the hell are you doing here at my house? Because, sunshine, surely even a chap as young as you comprehends the meaning of one-night stand. But just in case you’re confused, I’ll give you a clue. It’s the first two words.”
Danny nodded as if he was actually mulling it over. “Strictly speaking, it was a two-night stand, seeing as we did it again half an hour later.”
Christ, save me from spotty pedants, even slightly droll ones. I busied myself with washing a cup in the sink so he wouldn’t see my smile. “In my mind, Danny, I saw it more as a couple of auditions. Which you failed.”
“You liked it the second time. After I fucked you, you came in my mouth and said, ‘Danny, you must be some kind of wizard because you’ve sprinkled magic fairy dust on my cock.’”
Briskly, I sponged down the draining board. “You must be confusing me with someone else, flower.”
“I haven’t ever had sex with anyone else.”
That figured, although the lad had been a very quick learner.
“And then, when I yanked your hair, you moaned and yelled, pull harder, Daddy, make my cock sneeze again, Daddy.”
Honestly, for a boy who’d been three sheets to the wind, he had an awfully good memory. “Flower, I’ve been known to call my hairdresser daddy if I haven’t had sex for a month.”
“And then you said you’d like to scoop up the magic fairy dust and…”
“Good heavens! Is that the time? My beauty sleep beckons. Night night, Danny. Show yourself out.”
He didn’t budge. “I haven’t got anywhere to go.”
“What do you mean you haven’t got anywhere to go?” I frowned, casting my mind back. “What’s happened to the churchgoing parents and your Aunt Sandra? And that handsome big brother?”
