The Memory Collector: The emotional and uplifting new novel from the bestselling author of The Other Us

As a child, FIONA was constantly teased for two things: having her nose in a book and living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least she’s found a career that puts her runaway imagination to use.

Fiona’s first book was published in 2006 and she now has twenty-six published books under her belt. She started her career writing heartfelt but humorous romances for Mills & Boon, but now writes romantic comedies and feel-good women’s fiction for HQ, including The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams, which was a Kindle bestseller in 2015. She is a previous winner of the Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Award, has had five books shortlisted for a RoNA Award and won the ‘Best Short Romance’ at the Festival of Romance for three consecutive years.

Fiona lives in London with her husband and two daughters (oh, the drama in her house!), and she loves good books, good films and anything cinnamon-flavoured. She also can’t help herself if a good tune comes on and she’s near a dance floor – you have been warned!

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Fiona Harper 2018

Fiona Harper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008216962

For Siân and Rose

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

CHAPTER SIXTY

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

RED COAT

The coat isn’t the orangey-red of postboxes, but the crimson of a film star’s lipstick. It has boxy shoulders and it nips in at the waist then flares out again, ending just above a pair of shapely calves. Even after all these years, every time I go to the seaside I look for a red coat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one like it.

THEN

The lady in the red coat is laughing. She smiles down at the little girl standing beside her. It’s windy today and hardly anyone is at the beach but neither of them cares. They race each other along the pier, and their shrieks of mirth blow over the railings and get lost in the vastness of the sea beyond. When they can’t run any further, when the sturdy railings stop them leaping onto the flinty waves and sprinting into the horizon, they stand there, panting. Then the woman goes and gets them both an ice cream.

The girl thinks this might be the best ice cream she’s ever had, but she doesn’t say that out loud, just in case she’s wrong. Her mummy has a really bad memory, and sometimes she wonders if hers is the same. There are so many things to keep in her head, you see. So many secrets. It’s hard to store all the memories and things for school in there, too. Maybe mint choc chip isn’t her favourite after all. Maybe she likes something else better. She really can’t remember.

They eat the cones, leaning against the railings and looking out to sea, hair flapping behind them like ribbons.

‘I think this is my favourite place in the whole wide world,’ the little girl says.

The woman nods. ‘Mine too. Whenever I come to the seaside, the first thing I do is walk to the end of the pier. It’s a place where land and sea blur into one, a place where you feel anything might be possible.’

‘Even flying?’ the little girl says, her voice full of awe.

‘Even flying,’ the woman says, smiling softly at her. ‘But maybe not today, eh? I think it’s a bit too blustery for that.’

‘Can we come back tomorrow, then?’

‘Of course,’ the woman says, turning to stare out to sea again. ‘We’ve come here every day so far and we can come back every day after if you’d like.’

The little girl thinks about this for a while as she eats her ice cream. Where could they fly to? France or Spain, maybe even Africa? She’s not sure she’s got the right clothes for hot weather, though, so she turns to ask the woman what she should wear and discovers her companion is no longer smiling.

She’s so still, her eyes so empty, that for a moment the little girl is reminded of the dummies in the window of C&A.

‘What’s the matter, Aunty?’ the little girl asks. ‘Are you sad?’

For a long time the lady doesn’t move, but then she turns to look at the girl. Her mouth bends upwards but her eyes still have the same faraway look they did when she was staring out across the grey, choppy waves.

‘A little,’ she says and her eyeballs get all shiny.

The girl takes an extra-big slurp of her ice cream and then she reaches out for the woman’s free hand. They’re very pretty hands. They’re clean and she always has such shiny nail polish. Today, it’s red to match her coat. ‘Why are you sad?’

The woman kneels down so she’s at eye level with the girl. ‘Only because I know this lovely holiday will have to end soon,’ she says, ‘but I’m having so much fun with you I don’t want it to.’

The girl grins. ‘Me neither! Can we just stay here forever, Aunty? Please, please, please?’

The seaside is much, much better than home. There’s no shouting or shut doors and there’s room. Room to run. Room to breathe. Sometimes, when she and Aunty are out together the little girl just spends ages making her chest puff in and out, feeling the salt at the back of her tongue and the clean coldness in her chest.

Before the woman can answer the girl, her scoop of ice cream slides off her cornet and onto the rough planks of the pier. ‘Silly me!’ she says as she looks at it. ‘Raspberry ripple is my favourite, too!’ She delves into her shiny black handbag, picks out a tissue and mops the sticky mess from her fingers.

‘Don’t cry!’ the girl says as a tear slides down the woman’s face. She holds her cornet out. ‘I know it’s only mint choc chip, but you can share mine.’

That makes the woman smile properly, but for some reason the tears fall even harder. She takes a tiny lick and then hands the cone back to the girl. ‘Thank you, Heather,’ she says, and the girl thinks nobody has ever said her name in such a lovely way before, all soft and husky with their eyes full of sunshine.

The little girl hugs the woman, holding her arm out so she doesn’t get pale-green ice cream on the smart red coat. ‘I love you, Aunty,’ she says as she presses her face against the scratchy sleeve.

‘I love you too.’

They hold each other for a long time and then they walk back down the pier hand in hand. When they reach the end, the girl starts to turn right, towards the crazy golf. The woman starts to go that way too, but then she stops. The girl tugs her hand but she doesn’t move. She’s staring at something across the road. The girl can’t see what, because a fat man eating a warm doughnut is in her way, but then his friend calls him and he hurries off. Aunty starts walking briskly.

‘We’re going the wrong way!’ the girl says as they trot along. ‘We’re supposed to be going to the crazy golf!’

‘Not this afternoon,’ the woman replies. She’s looking straight ahead and her voice is all tight. ‘We’ll go back to the B&B and play cards and eat cheese-and-onion crisps, your favourite. How about that?’

The girl nods, even though that’s not what she wants to do. The woman has been very kind bringing her on this holiday and she doesn’t want to be ungrateful, but she also doesn’t understand. Aunty looks worried, and crazy golf has never made her worried before. The only time she has looked scared on their holiday so far was the moment when the special train that climbs up the cliff lurched as it started its journey. She held tight onto the railing and wouldn’t look down when the girl tried to show her how small the people were getting.

The girl has to run a little bit to keep up with the woman as they head back to the B&B. Her head is bobbing up and down, which makes looking over her shoulder difficult, but she eventually manages to do it. There’s nothing there to be worried about behind them, though. Only a policeman, and he’s giving directions to an old couple with white hair. He’s not even looking their way.

CHAPTER ONE

DAISY CHAIN

I pick up a yellowing atlas with a musty-smelling cover. There’s something inside, something that pushes the pages apart, inviting investigation. A bookmark, I suppose. I could be contrary and choose a different place to open the book but I let the pages fall where they want to. There’s no bookmark, just a circle of crushed flowers, pressed flat and paper thin. Daisies. If I touch them, the petals might crumble. I don’t have many memories of my childhood, but I remember putting this here. This is my first daisy chain, the one my sister, Faith, showed me how to make. She taught me to choose the ones with the fattest, hairiest stems, and how to use my fingernail to make a half-moon in the plump green flesh so they didn’t break. Yet they were still so fragile, so easy to crush without meaning to.

NOW

Heather shouldn’t be there. Everything inside her tells her to turn around, walk briskly out of the shop and run back to her car, but she doesn’t. Instead, she stops in front of a display rack of shoes. She imagines the feet that will go inside them – pink and pudgy, with unbelievably small toes that beg to be kissed.

How can something so innocent be so dangerous?

A pair catches her eye. They aren’t bright and gaudy like many of the others, shouting their cheerfulness. They are tiny. Delicate. Made of cream corduroy with yellow and white daisies embroidered over the toes and a mother-of-pearl button instead of a buckle. Maybe that’s why she reaches out and touches them, even though she knows she shouldn’t. Maybe that’s why she lets her fingers run over the tiny, furry ridges of the fabric.

As soon as she makes contact, she knows she’s crossed a threshold. That’s it now. Even though she’s telling herself inside her head that she can stop herself this time, she knows she’s going to do it. She knows these are the ones.

She pulls her hand back and shoves it in her jacket pocket, anchors it there by making a fist, then browses the adjacent stand: floppy sun hats for doll-sized heads, pastel socks all lined up in pleasing pairs. She tries to forget about the shoes.

She wanders round the ground floor of the Bromley branch of Mothercare, a path she’s taken so many times now that she does it automatically. She’s been coming here for years, just browsing, just looking at the miniature clothes, all clean and bright and smelling of hope, even though she has no child at home. But it’s changed from how it used to be. It’s no longer a leisure activity; it’s a compulsion.

As she walks she notices the blonde sales assistant – the bossy one with the sharp eyes – is busy serving a small queue at the till. The other one, the new one, is attempting to show a heavily pregnant woman how to collapse one of the prams on display, but she can’t work out how to do it. Both sales assistant and customer are totally absorbed in the search for the right button or catch. Heather can’t see anyone else on duty.

That’s when she does it.

That’s when she turns swiftly and walks back to the rack of shoes, her feet making hardly any sound on the vinyl floor. That’s when her hands become someone else’s, when she slides the plastic hanger holding the daisy shoes off the pole and into her handbag.

She looks around. The sales assistants are still occupied, neither looking her way. No one shouts. No one comes running. So with her heart punching against her ribcage, she heads for the exit, doing her best to pretend this is a normal Saturday afternoon.

When she finally makes it through the doors and the warm spring air hits her, she has to hold back the urge to vomit. She walks down the pedestrianized section of the High Street, blinking furiously, not really caring where she’s going.

A little voice in her head tells her to go back, to reverse what she’s just done, to slide the shoes back where they belong – no one will ever know! – or even better, she should just surreptitiously pull them out of her bag once she’s back inside the shop, go up to the till and hand the cash over.

Heather starts running then, shame, regret and disgust with herself powering her strides, and she doesn’t stop until she’s at the top of the multi-storey car park, standing outside her car. She doesn’t remember pressing the button for the lift, or pushing her ticket into the parking machine and pulling it out again while it spat out her change. She doesn’t care, though. She just dives inside her car and yanks the door closed, shutting the world outside, insulating herself from what she’s just done.

She throws her handbag onto the passenger seat and braces her hands on the steering wheel. It’s the only way she can get them to stop shaking.

CHAPTER TWO

NOW

Heather is tempted to park around the corner from her flat, even though she knows it’s a stupid idea. It won’t stop the police finding her. They might have tailed her all the way from Bromley High Street and down the hill into the depths of Shortlands. Or they could just look up her registration with the DVLA and find out where her flat is. They have computers in their cars that do that now. She’s seen them on TV.

She parks on the drive, as close to the front door as possible, then grabs her handbag and scurries into the large Victorian house. It was probably once the dwelling of a well-to-do middle-class family, but now it has been carved into three flats, nice but not particularly upmarket. Heather has her head down when she arrives in the hallway, her legs working hard to carry her to her front door as fast as possible. It’s only when she spots a pair of soft, brown desert boots in her field of vision that she stops and looks up.

‘Great,’ the owner of the boots says. ‘I was hoping I’d run into you.’

Heather tries to say something but her mouth has gone dry. ‘R-really?’ she stammers.

He smiles and nods. Even that small gesture has the power to cause her stomach to produce an Olympic-worthy somersault. Perfect tens from all the judges.

He runs his hand through hair that probably needs a cut. ‘Yeah… I’m having plumbing issues. A guy has been round to take a look, and it’s sorted for now, but he told Carlton the whole house might need seeing to, so don’t be surprised if he gets in contact.’

Heather nods. She doesn’t like Carlton, their landlord, much – he’s nosy, always wanting an excuse to get inside her flat and poke around – but she hasn’t had any issues with her water supply, so she reckons she’s probably safe for now. ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ she says quietly.

Jason puts a foot on the bottom stair, preparing to return to his first-floor flat. As he does, it breaks Heather’s trance and she remembers why she’s hurrying towards her front door, why her handbag is burning underneath her arm. She starts to move but he turns and smiles that smile again. She has to try very hard not to reach out for the cool, solid wall for support.

‘We never did get a raincheck on that coffee,’ he says, looking straight into her eyes. Usually, she finds it hard to maintain eye contact with other people, but with Jason it’s not as difficult. ‘My sisters clubbed together and bought me one of those fancy pod machines for my birthday. Don’t suppose you want to help me christen it?’

She feels as if everything inside her is straining towards him, even as she grips her handbag tighter against her body with her elbow. He must see her hesitation, because then he adds, ‘Or there’s always good old instant. I make a mean cup of instant, even if I do say so myself.’

The contents of the handbag burn hotter against her torso and she looks helplessly at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, ‘I can’t today…’ and then, before he can begin to unpick her shabby excuse, she turns and heads for her door. It’s only when it’s closed safely again and she’s leaning against it that she feels her pulse start to slow.

She exhales loudly. Jason Blake. He’s been living here for a few months now, and every time she bumps into him she feels like this. She thought it would wear off after a while, but if anything it’s getting worse.

She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the image of him, his long limbs relaxed and easy, his brown eyes smiling at her, and then she opens her eyes, pushes herself up so she’s bearing her whole weight on her feet again, and walks down the hallway to her living room.

Just being in here makes it easy to breathe again.

The living room of her flat is at the back of the house, leading onto a long, narrow garden that all the tenants share. She walks over to the large bay window with the French doors and stares outside. Jason moans that the garden is stuck in the 1950s. He hates the two thin flowerbeds flanking each fence, with the concrete path down one side, but Heather quite likes it. It’s soothing.

Also soothing is this room, her oasis. It has the minimum of furniture – a sofa, one armchair and a bookcase. A TV and a small dining table with a vase on it. She doesn’t believe in owning things that don’t get used regularly. They’re a waste of space and energy and emotion.

She likes the way she can stand in the middle of the room, close her eyes, and know that nothing is within touching distance. She does that now – closes her eyes – and the feeling of space, of knowing the walls are white and unmarked, that all of the books in the bookcase are perfectly lined up, that the fake hydrangea in the vase on the table will never drop a dry, dead petal, helps her to feel more like herself.

But then the handbag under her arm begins to burn again and she remembers she has one last thing to do. She walks back through the hallway (more white walls, no photos or prints to break up the space) and past the kitchen (sides swept clean of every crumb, all the teaspoons curled up behind each other in the cutlery draw), and stops outside a door.

Heather doesn’t think of this room as her second bedroom. It’s the flat’s second bedroom, foreign territory in her little kingdom. She stares at the brass knob for a few seconds. She can feel the calm she generated only a few moments ago in the living room starting to slip and slide, but she knows she has to do this. It’s the only way.

The long key sits waiting in the lock and she turns it, bracing herself against what she is about to see, against what she will try very hard not to look at before she shuts the door again, and then her hand closes around the doorknob, cold and slick, and she twists it open.

It feels as if the contents of the room are rushing towards her, as if they’re all fighting, climbing, spilling, falling over each other to reach her first. It takes all her willpower not to stagger back and run away.

From floor to ceiling, all she can see is stuff. Her mother’s stuff, crammed into the room in teetering piles. Stuff that came from her old family home, a house that Heather had not been allowed inside for years and never wanted to visit any more anyway. All this clutter is hers now, left to her in a will she didn’t even know existed and was shocked anyone was able to find. The cardboard boxes, the old suitcases, the plastic containers and carrier bags. All of it. All those things filled with stuff she doesn’t want and doesn’t care about. Just looking at it makes her want to go and take a shower.

She looks to the front of the hoard, to where there is a two-metre-square patch of carpet, holding out like a plucky little beach against the tide of belongings surging towards the door. Down on one side is a small chest of drawers. Piles of old newspapers and magazines threaten to slide off it when she tugs open the middle drawer, but she does it quickly, trying to kid herself that she’s doing it on automatic, that she’s really not taking any of this in.

The drawer is full of her guilt. She quickly pulls the tiny corduroy shoes from her bag and stuffs them inside, pushing down assorted baby hats, rompers, stuffed farm animals and blankets – all with the price tags still attached – to make room for the latest addition. Then she shoves the drawer closed again, backs away into the hallway, and shuts the door so hard her own bedroom door rattles in sympathy.

It stars to ebb away then, the itchy, scratchy feeling she’s been having all day, the one that made her go into Mothercare in the first place. She sinks to the floor, her back against the wall, and stares at the brilliant-white gloss of the door she’s just closed, trying as hard as she can to let its clean blankness blot out the knowledge of what lies behind it.