Wish You Were Here

Chapter 24



There was a letter on Milo’s doormat when he got home with Tiana one evening. A real white envelope without a cellophane window and with a handwritten address. It would have been a nice change from the usual bills and junk mail if only Milo hadn’t known who it was from. Georgio.

He waited until Tiana had skipped along the corridor to her bedroom before he opened it, glaring at the oversized handwriting which seemed to be shouting down at him.

Milo, it began abruptly. You never answer your phone. You refuse to discuss things with us when we visit and you make all sorts of excuses whenever we meet. You leave me no choice but to write to you.

Sonya and I have been talking…

Milo groaned. So they’d been talking again, had they?

…and we really think that Tiana would be better off with us here on the mainland. We’ve been worried about her for some time.

‘Oh, have you?’ Milo said. ‘Like the time she twisted her ankle skipping? Or the time I rushed her to the dentist with a roaring toothache?’

We think that it would be better for her if she was here with Sonya now that she is working from home. Sonya would be here for her constantly – a better choice than an unreliable babysitter.

Milo scoffed at the reference to his beloved and loyal Hanna.

Tiana is growing up fast, the letter went on, causing Milo to physically flinch. His brother’s tone seemed to suggest that Milo wasn’t aware of this fact but he was all too aware of it. Each and every day.

And we think it is selfish of you to keep her in a place that is doing her no favours. Just think of the school for a start.

Milo thought of the tiny school in the next village where the one classroom was half-empty because of the lack of children. He and his brothers had gone there and, he hoped, his own children would go there too. It was constantly threatened with closure but it had somehow struggled through to the twenty-first century and the small classroom size meant individual attention from the teacher. Tiana wouldn’t get that in a big school on the mainland, would she?

The letter went on.

She needs a better class of education and she needs to meet more children of her own age. It just isn’t good enough, Milo—

‘What’s that?’ Tiana asked, surprising Milo, having sneaked into the room. She placed a tiny hand on the letter but Milo quickly whipped it out of her way.

‘Nothing,’ he said in a manner that was far too hasty for Tiana to believe him. ‘It’s just a silly letter begging for money.’

‘Will you give them any?’

‘No,’ he said, scrunching the letter up into the tiniest, tightest ball imaginable, ‘not a single penny.’ He opened the bin and threw the letter inside and then tipped the remains of some soggy cereal from a breakfast bowl on top of it so there’d be no chance of Tiana reaching inside and discovering what it really said.

‘Come on, Tiana,’ he said.

‘But I’ve got to do my homework.’

‘Later – we’re going for a walk first.’

She looked at him as if he’d gone soft in the head but then did as she was told.

They left the house together a couple of minutes later. The air was soft and warm and the ground was dry and firm and already beginning to crack, leaving lizard-like patterns across the land.

Milo did his best thinking when he was outside and he really needed to think hard now. Since his brother’s last visit, he’d tried to put the issue out of his mind but he’d known that it would rear its ugly head again at some point and would have to be faced. He felt truly sad that Georgio and Sonya weren’t able to have children of their own – it must be the most heartbreaking of situations to face when one wanted a child so desperately – but that didn’t give them the right to force Milo’s hand and take Tiana away from him.

They followed the little track from their house towards an olive grove. It belonged to a farmer but he didn’t mind the locals walking amongst his trees. In fact, local legend had it that half of the population for miles around had been conceived in this very grove, which made Milo anxious on summer evenings when Tiana would declare that she was going to play there.

Milo loved the ancient olive trees with their thick, gnarled trunks and sinuous shapes and he had to admit to bringing two or three girlfriends there himself over the years. But now wasn’t a time to think about romantic trysts amongst the trees.

‘Tiana,’ he said at last as they reached a dip in the path, ‘I want you to be absolutely honest with me.’ They sat down in the grass. The earth was still warm after a full day of sunshine upon it.

Tiana looked at him. ‘Am I in trouble?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask?’

She shook her head.

‘Tiana?’

She pouted. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘What wasn’t your fault?’

‘That Costas fell over.’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ Milo said, wondering what on earth she’d done.

‘I only pushed him a little bit,’ Tiana confessed.

Milo frowned. He hadn’t been expecting this. ‘Why did you push Costas?’ he asked, thinking of the rotund little boy who, if truth be told, was a horrible bully.

‘Because he said I looked like a donkey,’ Tiana said, her eyes round and watery.

‘You look nothing like a donkey!’ Milo said with a laugh.

‘Well, that’s what I said!’ Tiana said, quickly blinking her tears away.

‘And that’s when you pushed him over?’

Tiana nodded. ‘He’s such a roly-poly, he wouldn’t have felt anything when he fell.’

Milo grinned. He was glad that his little sister could hold her own. He gazed out across the olive grove for a moment, his vision blurring with the silver-green of the trees.

‘Listen,’ he said after a moment, ‘I know we’ve talked a little about this before but I need to hear you say it again.’

‘Say what again?’

‘That you’re happy.’

‘At school?’ Tiana asked.

‘At school. At home. Here on Kethos.’

She nodded. ‘Of course I am. I tell you all the time!’

Milo laughed and picked up her little hand and kissed it. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just like to hear you say it.’

‘You’re funny,’ she said.

‘It’s just that I want to be sure – absolutely sure – that this is the right place for you because there are choices, you know.’

‘I know,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘And I won’t mind if you decide to go somewhere else.’

‘With Georgio?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You really wouldn’t mind?’

‘No,’ Milo lied. ‘I wouldn’t mind if that was what you wanted.’

‘You mean, you wouldn’t miss me?’

His dark eyes widened. ‘Of course I’d miss you!’

‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’

‘No!’ he said, aghast at the sad look on her face. ‘It’s just that some people might think it unfair that I keep you here.’

‘You mean that’s what Georgio thinks?’

‘Yes.’

‘He wants me to live with him, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, he does,’ Milo said. ‘Because he’s your brother too and he misses you.’

‘But I don’t know him,’ Tiana said and Milo’s heart sang with love at her honesty. Georgio was more like an uncle to Tiana because he’d left home years before she’d been born but perhaps that was the card he was playing – he was older and wiser. Mind you, Milo was old enough to be her uncle too only their relationship was totally different because he’d been around when Tiana had been born. He’d seen her take her first steps and heard her speak her first word. He’d been there for all the firsts, hadn’t he? Whilst Georgio dropped by twice a year for her birthday and for Christmas.

‘If you went to live with Georgio and his wife, life would be very different but it might not be a bad idea for you,’ Milo said, each word squeezed out of him most unwillingly. But he couldn’t put himself first here. He needed to think of Tiana. She would be a teenager before he knew it and then what would happen? Was he sure he’d be able to handle her then? And would she be happy being marooned on an island? He had to think about her. He couldn’t put himself into this equation – it wouldn’t be right or fair.

‘But I like it here,’ she said, plucking at the short grass.

‘But that’s only because it’s all you know,’ Milo said. ‘You could get to know another place just as well as here.’

‘Then why don’t you move?’

Milo flinched. She had an uncanny ability to strike at the very heart of things. ‘Because this is my home,’ he said.

‘And it’s my home too.’

He nodded at her sage statement. There was no arguing with that and he was so relieved to hear it. It was what he’d hoped for, of course, but he had to give his brother a chance because that was only fair, wasn’t it?

‘Good,’ he said, squeezing her hand.

‘Can we go now?’ she asked. ‘My bottom’s gone numb.’

Milo laughed. ‘Mine too,’ he said and they both stood up, brushing each other’s bottoms down.

They walked back through the olive grove together. The sun was beginning to set and the sky was streaked with peach and tangerine. A light wind brought the scent of the sea to them. Milo saw the gentle expression on Tiana’s face and knew that she loved it all as much as he did and that she’d never be able to live anywhere else and for that he was eternally grateful because he knew there was nothing that Georgio could do about that.