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

CHAPTER THREE

NOW

It’s a double-edged experience for Heather as she leaves her flat on Sunday morning and heads off to her sister’s in Westerham. On the one hand, it’s a relief. Even though she does her best to ignore it, there’s a radar-blip deep inside her, always pulsing – the awareness of all the stuff lurking behind the faceless door of her spare room – but its intermittent throb lessens in intensity and frequency as she joins the A21 and heads out into north Kent. On the other hand, she’s out there. Exposed. And the locks on her doors, the ones keeping all that stuff safe and secret, seem flimsier with each mile she travels from home.

It only takes half an hour to get to Faith’s. The red-brick Victorian houses, pre-war semis, and chunky blocks of flats of Bromley slowly give way to fields and hedgerows, country pubs and rows of flint cottages. Faith says Mum and Dad used to bring them to the little commuter village when they were kids. Before the divorce, obviously. Before things got so crowded in their mother’s head. But Heather doesn’t remember that. She doesn’t remember very much of her childhood at all.

She used to think everyone was like that, that anything before the age of thirteen was just smudges of sound and scent and colour in people’s memories, like the inkling of a dream after waking, but she’s since discovered that some people have crystal-clear memories of their early years: who their first teacher was, what kind of cake they had for their best-ever birthday, stories their parents used to tell them before they went to sleep.

She doesn’t worry about this, though. Mostly because she doesn’t want to remember any of it anyway. The tiny snatches that do try and poke through the fog aren’t that pleasant.

All except one. The holiday with Aunt Kathy at the seaside. Lovely Aunt Kathy with her dark curls and her red coat. Heather doesn’t mind letting that one come.

She’s smiling when she pulls up outside Faith’s house, thinking of candyfloss, jeans rolled up over pale calves, and icy water on her toes, of running out of reach of the waves and then back again, just to tease them into catching her once more.

Faith’s front door opens before Heather is fully out of the car, and her sister stands there, waiting. She isn’t smiling but she isn’t cross either. Just neutral, accepting the monthly visit as she always does.

Faith is three years older than Heather. She has the same gradually darkening blonde hair that won’t keep a wave, no matter how deft she is with the curling tongs, the same grey eyes. They are exactly the same height, but her sister has always seemed taller. Heather has never quite been able to work out why.

Heather follows Faith inside. Her brother-in-law, Matthew, wanders into the hallway from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel, and gives Heather a proper smile. ‘I keep wanting to do a roast, but there’s never enough time after church, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with slow-cooker casserole again,’ he says with a smile.

Heather nods and smiles back. She likes Matthew. He always treats her as if she’s just another one of the family. Normal, in other words. Lots of people would shrug off that label, thinking it boring, but Heather would love to embrace it. For a couple of hours a month, Matthew makes it seem as if that might be possible.

But then Heather thinks of the chest of drawers in her spare room, the one containing all her dirty secrets in pastel colours, and she starts to doubt herself again. She doesn’t let Faith or Matthew see it, though. She keeps smiling, she says the right greetings and asks after the children, whom she can hear stampeding in another part of the house. They’re the only reason she keeps this monthly ‘duty’ date with her sister. She can feel her heart thudding in anticipation of seeing them again.

As if on cue, they come thundering down the stairs at the sound of an unfamiliar voice in the hall and then stop short, staring at her shyly, as they always do at the beginning of a visit. Alice is six and Barney is three. She wants to go and hug them so much. She yearns to feel their tiny arms around her. She wants to rest her chin on their soft hair and just breathe them in, but now they’re all standing there staring at each other and the moment to lean in naturally for a cuddle has passed.

Thankfully, Alice saves Heather with one of her usual blunt questions. ‘Did you bring any presents for us? Aunty Sarah always brings presents.’

Barney nods seriously as his sister watches on.

‘Barney wants to know if you’ve brought chocolate,’ Alice adds, translating her little brother’s gesture.

Heather shakes her head, silently disgruntled with Matthew’s beneficent sister. ‘Sorry, no chocolate today, or toys.’ She risks a glance at Faith. ‘Mummy says you already have lots and lots of toys.’

It happens then – one of those moments that rarely flashes between the two sisters. Just like Alice, Heather is able to translate the look her sibling gives her, an expression on Faith’s face, both knowing and grateful, that for once acknowledges their shared past, their shared hatred of extraneous stuff.

‘But I will play any game you want after dinner,’ Heather adds, hoping that the gift of quality time – something she would have killed for when she was younger – has not gone out of fashion in this era of brightly coloured electronic worlds accessed with the swipe of a chubby finger.

Barney looks blank, but Alice pipes up. ‘I get to pick what game?’ she asks brightly, and Heather nods. Alice is pleased with this response. She smiles to herself and skips off towards the living room, leaving Heather to wonder if it’s right that a six-year-old should look quite so much as if she’s cooking up a plan.

Heather follows her sister and brother-in-law into the kitchen, where pans are boiling on the hob and delicious smells are wafting from a large slow cooker. She watches her sister as she and Matthew bustle round each other, putting the finishing touches to the meal. When he puts an easy hand on Faith’s hip as he reaches past her for a wooden spoon, Heather looks away. It seems too intimate. Too much. Too much to watch, anyway. It’s been so long since someone of the opposite sex touched Heather that she can’t even remember if a man’s fingers have ever rested on her hip that way.

Faith doesn’t even notice the affectionate touch, and that makes Heather sad. And maybe a little bit angry. She’s reminded of her mother, who amassed so much stuff that even her treasures were lost in the sheer volume of her possessions. This seems to be the same kind of wastefulness. Faith has also amassed much – but it comes in the shape of love and people, not things, so now the moments that would be treasured by Heather if she were in Faith’s place are buried and lost in the fullness of her sister’s life.

Once again, it causes Heather to wonder how they turned out so differently. Is it just that she’s broken, damaged, in a way that Faith never was? And how could that be, after the childhood that they both endured?

She waits for Faith’s mask to slip, prods the robustness of her sister’s smile each time it appears. But either Faith is much, much better at this game than Heather is, or her sister has attained the thing that has eluded Heather all her life: she’s moved on. She’s over it.

If that’s the case, Heather isn’t sure whether to worship her or hate her. Faith knows, you see. She knows what’s behind Heather’s façade. She has an understanding that can never be gained from a distance, by studying and logical analysis. This is knowledge that comes from experience, from being flung in the mess and the chaos and struggling through it to come out the other side. Even though they frequently think to themselves that they would rather just cut each other loose so they no longer have to deal with each other, it is this shared struggle that binds the two sisters together. Another thing to blame their mother for.

As the aroma of the cooking chicken intensifies, wrapping the country kitchen in a herby fog, Faith marshals her troops. ‘Come on, you lot! Time to lay the table.’ They snap to attention and set to work without a word of communication. Matthew grabs the crockery out of the cupboard and Alice helps with the knives and forks, although Matthew has to switch them all around when she’s finished. Even Barney has been given a job, and he carefully puts coasters next to each setting.

The table looks lovely, with Faith’s blue and white Calico china and a jug full of flowers from the garden in the centre. Faith’s family are lovely too – the kids are just naughty enough to still be adorable as they whine about the casserole having mushrooms and refuse to eat their peas, and Matthew sometimes looks across at his wife and smiles. Not for any reason that Heather can see. Just because.

It makes her feel as if there’s a gaping hole in her chest, one that is only lightly papered over by her summer blouse and, as she eats the buttery mashed potatoes and creamy sauce, she imagines what it would be like if this were her dining table, if it were her husband sitting at the head, smiling at her. She wants it so much it almost makes her gasp.

Unbidden, a picture of Jason pops into her head. She wants to swipe it away again, because it feels foolish to have him there, even though it’s only within the private confines of her own mind, but she can’t quite bring herself to do it when she sees the way he’s smiling at her. However, her imagination falls down when it comes to filling Alice and Barney’s seats. It seems, even in her fantasies, she can’t allow herself to hope quite that much. She snaps back into the real world to find Faith looking at her, weighing her up, and Heather starts to resent her sister just a little bit more.

How did you do it? she wants to yell. How did you manage all this? It’s just not fair.

And why hasn’t she whispered her secrets to Heather? Why has she guarded them so closely, so jealously? Surely sisters are supposed to share? Only maybe they don’t, Heather thinks bitterly, when you grew up in a home where everything was defined by what you possessed.

When they’ve finished the main course, Heather tells Matthew to sit as she clears and stacks the plates and takes them into the kitchen. Heather always finds this part of the afternoon wearying. Faith will be cross if she doesn’t offer to help, but when she does, Faith just shoos her back into the dining room.

Alice is showing off a bracelet made of neon plastic beads she made at a friend’s party, and is insisting her aunt has a better look, so Heather slides into her sister’s empty seat to do just that. It’s nice, being there, Matthew on one side, Alice next to her and Barney opposite and, as she listens to her niece chattering away, a warm feeling spreads through her chest.

But then Faith returns with the apple crumble to place in the centre of the table. She stops short and shoots her sister a territorial look. Heather slides off the chair and skulks back to her seat next to Barney, and Faith is reinstalled upon her fashionably distressed oak throne.

When dessert is finished, they all tramp dutifully in the direction of the study. It’s time for Faith’s weekly Skype call with their father, who currently lives in Spain, and when Heather is here she’s expected to show some family spirit and join in.

Heather hates it. Not that she doesn’t love her father – she does – but it feels like she’s playing a part for the black pinhole at the top of the computer monitor. Say ‘cheese’, everyone. Pretend you’re one big happy family!

Matthew sets up the connection and moments later Heather sees her father’s smiling face, while Shirley, their stepmother of more than fifteen years, bustles around in the background, leaning in for a wave, but then discreetly disappearing. Probably to dust something. From the sublime to the ridiculous, Heather thinks, although she understands why Shirley’s military cleanliness must be soothing for her father.

‘Hey, there!’ their father says, and Faith gets the kids to tell him what they’ve been doing at school and pre-school respectively. They have some finger painting and spellings to show him, all prepared and laying ready on the desk. Faith fills him in on the wonderfulness of her domestic life, turning the taste of the custard that accompanied the apple crumble a little sour in Heather’s mouth, and then, before Heather can think of anything to say or plan an escape route, it’s her turn. She smiles weakly at the camera.

‘Hi, Dad,’ she says, feeling her sister’s eyes on her, monitoring her levels of family participation and judging her accordingly.

‘Hey, Sweetpea,’ he replies, using the nickname he gave her that everyone else has forgotten. ‘How’s work?’

Heather breathes out. Work is a safe subject. Work is good.

‘Going well. I’ve only got about four months left of this contract now, though, so I’m on the lookout for another post.’

‘Anything on the horizon?’

She shrugs. ‘There’s a senior archivist position in Eltham I’m interested in, but I’m not sure I’ve got enough experience yet, so we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work at Sandwood Park.’

‘Ah,’ her father says, nodding, then goes on to quote the first line of a novel. ‘That’s one of his, isn’t it?’ he adds brightly.

Heather nods. Sandwood Park used to be the home of the celebrated author Cameron Linford. His widow died recently and donated the house to a private trust. It’s due to be opened to the public in a month or two, and it’s Heather’s job to sort and catalogue the masses of documents chronicling the couple’s life: diaries, letters, financial ledgers, and photographs.

‘Found any missing literary masterpieces?’ her father asks with a twinkle in his eye. He always makes this joke and Heather always gives him the same response.

‘Not yet. But I’ll keep hunting.’

The shared moment of humour doesn’t do its job, though. Instead of connecting father and daughter, it only highlights the distance between them. Maybe it would be better if Heather did this when she was on her own – video chatted from the safety of her own flat without Faith scrutinizing her every word – but she never does that. She’s pulled the app up on her iPad a few times but always stops short of pressing the screen to connect.

Thankfully, the kids are eager to show off to their grandpa again, allowing Heather to relinquish centre stage. Alice conducts her little brother in a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, bringing the call to a dazzling finale.

When the monitor is blank again, Matthew goes off to settle the kids in front of the TV, but Faith hangs back.

‘Are we going to join the others?’ Heather asks. Even though she comes here every month, she’s never sure what to do, what the right or natural thing is.

‘If I have to watch even one more episode of Peppa Pig I might just shoot myself,’ Faith says drily, but then she turns to look at Heather. ‘We’ll go through in a second. Before that I have something I need to discuss with you…’

Heather’s stomach swoops. She and Faith never ‘discuss’ stuff. They’re polite, cordial, and matter-of-fact with each other, none of which involves sharing anything of any depth. After all the rows they had both before and after their mother died, they’ve allowed a crust of civility to harden over their relationship, and they both like it that way. ‘Ok-ay…’ she says warily.

‘Do you still have Mum’s things?’

A flash of cold runs through Heather, as if she’s just sprinted full-pelt into a wall of ice. Faith has blindsided her and being forced to think about ‘that room’ without her carefully constructed mental defences in place pulls her chest tight and her jaw even tighter. ‘W-what?’

‘Mum’s stuff,’ Faith repeats, frowning slightly. ‘You have some old family photos, right?’

Heather can’t speak. Her mouth has gone dry. Thinking specifically about what sits in her spare room has a tendency to do that to her. She nods.

‘Well, Alice has a school project. She needs photos of both Matthew and me as children, and I wondered if you could root one out?’

It would be odd for most people not to have photographs of themselves when they were young, ones passed on by parents, maybe when they moved out of home for the first time or started a family. Heather wishes she could play that card now, just tell her sister to go and hunt through the storage boxes in her vast attic, but she knows she can’t. It’s not that the photos don’t exist, just that they’re lost. Buried. At least, that’s what she assumes.

‘I… I don’t even know if I have them,’ she stammers, hoping against hope that Faith will let this drop.

Faith gives her a sideways look. A ‘Heather’s being difficult again’ kind of look that only a big sister can bestow. ‘Well, can you at least have a rummage around, see if you can lay your hands on any? After all, Mum didn’t leave any to me, just to you.’

Ah, there it is. The dig. She knew this was coming. Faith always wheels this out when she wants to guilt Heather into doing something, even though they both know being left out of the will was an act of kindness. If anything, Heather should be using that to hold Faith to ransom.

The thought of going through her mother’s possessions makes Heather feel physically sick. She wants to yell at Faith, tell her to do it herself, but she can’t let Faith see inside that room. She’d be even more disappointed with Heather than she already is. But Heather can’t rummage (just thinking the word makes her stomach churn) in there either. She’s stuck.

Faith sees the war going on behind Heather’s carefully schooled features and snorts. ‘You’re always so precious about Mum’s stuff, although God only knows why!’

Heather flinches. Not precious, she thinks, anything but. She’d rather let dust balls grow to the size of watermelons under her sofa than go in that room and really look around. It holds too many secrets. Too many horrible, horrible things.

Faith puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s for Alice!’ she says, exasperated. ‘I know it’s a stretch to get you to do anything for me, but I thought, since it was for the niece you supposedly adore, that maybe just for once you’d act like you were part of this family and show some loyalty.’

It stabs Heather in the heart to hear this. She does adore Alice, even though she suspects the six-year-old is on the verge of mastering her mother’s disapproving look every time her aunt steps over the threshold. She so badly wants the kids to love her, for them to be able to come for days out and sleepovers, but once again that stupid room is getting in the way of anything good happening.

‘You don’t understand,’ she mutters.

Faith’s voice is silky smooth. ‘No, of course I don’t. How could I? Because Heather is special, Heather is different, no one understands her.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s probably my fault,’ she says more to herself than to her sister. ‘I should have been tougher, shouldn’t have let you play the victim for so long, but I just…’ She trails off, shaking her head again.

Heather glares at her sister. She’s always known that the blame lies at her own door. She doesn’t need Faith to remind her.

Faith breathes out, regains some of her usual composure. It’s unlike her to lash out like this, to actually put words to the resentment Heather knows simmers under the surface. Pointed looks and a here-she-goes-again attitude usually describe Faith’s demeanour when dealing with her younger sibling.

‘Look…’ she begins, softening slightly. ‘I know you have… issues. But you don’t have to let them define you. I haven’t! Mainly because I got help, talked to people. There’s a really good person at our church. I’m sure she could fit you in if I asked her nicely.’

‘No.’ Heather’s response is firm and low.

Faith just stares at her. ‘Fine,’ she eventually says, her eyes narrowing. ‘But I’m starting to suspect you actually enjoy being this way, because you won’t get help, you won’t let anyone close.’

Seeing no change in Heather’s shut-down expression, Faith gives up and heads for the living room, obviously preferring the hated Peppa Pig instead of the company of her one and only sister. ‘Just find a bloody photo for Alice,’ she says over her shoulder as she walks away. ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to come and dig one out myself. It’s the least you can do for this family.’

Heather shivers and wraps her arms around her middle. That can’t happen, she thinks. It just can’t. She’ll find some way of putting Faith off, maybe even scour the internet for old pictures that could have been Faith when she was younger and print them off.

She slopes into the living room and perches on a chair in the corner, more there for decoration than because it’s comfortable to sit on. Faith steadily ignores her as the children jump up and down, acting out parts of Peppa’s story as it unfolds brightly on the screen. The cartoon shows a made-up world where everyone fits in, where every story has a happy ending, and every child gets kissed goodnight before they fall soundly asleep in their own bed.

After four episodes, Matthew clicks the TV off. The children moan in unison, then Alice turns round and spies her aunt. Heather has been trying to blend into the wallpaper, just counting down the minutes until she can leave without Faith throwing another hissy fit.

‘Aunty Heather, you promised you’d play a game with us!’

Heather nods. Thank goodness. One shining moment in an otherwise crappy afternoon. Anything to distract herself from looking at the back of Faith’s head, when she knows her older sister is just sitting there, stewing. She smiles warmly as Alice comes running towards her, trailed by her little brother.

‘What do you want to play? Snap? That Disney-princess board game I got you for Christmas?’

Alice shakes her head and then glances at Barney, who is grinning, her obvious accomplice.

‘We want to play hide-and-seek,’ she says firmly.

The smile freezes on Heather’s face. ‘What?’

Alice rolls her eyes, a perfect reproduction of her mother. ‘Hide-and-seek, silly! You know, one person counts while the others hide? And then you have to try and find us. Only, I’m counting first because it was my idea, which means it’s my game.’

Heather shakes her head, her neck so stiff that the side-to-side movement is only barely perceptible. ‘I can’t play hide-and-seek,’ she whispers.

Alice folds her arms. ‘You promised,’ she says, with the air of someone producing a winning card.

Heather shakes her head again. ‘Sorry, darling. It’s just that I hate… I just can’t…’ She looks helplessly at Faith, who has now turned her head and is watching the exchange, frowning. Her sister just tightens her jaw and says nothing. ‘I’ll play anything else you want,’ Heather adds. ‘As many times as you like. For hours and hours!’

It’s then that Alice’s eyes fill with tears. Her bottom lip wobbles impressively. ‘But you promised!’

Heather’s eyes threaten to fill too, but she manages to squeeze the tears away. Who knows what Faith will say if she has a total meltdown this afternoon, on top of everything else? ‘Sorry,’ she whispers.

Alice runs off crying, followed by a bemused-looking Barney. Heather catches Faith’s eye. ‘Everything has to be on your terms, doesn’t it?’ she says in a low voice, thick with disapproval. ‘Always by your rules and within your boundaries.’

‘That’s not true!’ Heather blurts out, surprising herself.

Faith just looks back at her. ‘Then go and tell the little girl who’s sobbing her heart out on her bed you’ve changed your mind.’

Heather stares back at her, unable to respond.

Faith huffs and stands up. ‘Exactly,’ she says. ‘Like I said: on your terms or not at all. I honestly don’t know why you bother coming to these Sunday dinners if you’re going to be like this.’

One tear slides down Heather’s face, but it doesn’t melt her sister’s frosty expression at all. Faith marches towards the door and, just before she leaves the room, she rests a hand on the jamb and turns round, shaking her head in both disgust and pity. ‘You know, sometimes you’re just like Mum.’