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

CHAPTER FOUR

CASSANDRA

The doll is queen of this house. She stands on the corner of the highest bookshelf, surveying her kingdom. The stuff climbs like a mountain towards her, a worshipper reaching for its god. Her eyes are clear and blue, haughty, her glossy brown ringlets perfect, her miniature faux-Victorian dress pink and delicate. Who can compete with the cold porcelain skin of her face and arms? Who can match the rosy cheeks and coral painted lips?

THEN

‘One… Two… Three… Four…’

Heather runs as Faith starts counting, her heart jumping in her chest. She has to find the best hiding place this time, one her sister will never guess, because Faith always wins at hide-and-seek. She always catches Heather quickly, shaking her head and telling her younger sister she’s an ‘amateur’, even though Heather isn’t really sure what that is. Someone who’s really bad at playing hide-and-seek, she supposes. She just hopes she knows as many big words as Faith does when she’s ten years old.

Heather thinks hard about a hiding place as she runs away. She can’t just race around giggling, like she did last time. She makes herself slow down. It’s not hard, though, because no one can run really fast in their house. There’s too much stuff in the way.

As soon as Faith started counting, Heather set off down one of the ‘rabbit trails’. Heather’s not quite sure why her sister calls them that – she’s never seen any bunnies in their house.

The trails are the paths between the stuff. They have lots of stuff. There are books and papers, plastic containers full of things Heather’s mummy doesn’t like her to touch. There are clothes, lots and lots of clothes. They’re piled high on the armchair and the table where the family used to eat their dinner. There are toys too, some old and broken, which Heather’s mummy says she’ll fix one day, and some still with tags on that Heather couldn’t play with even if she wanted to, because they’re so high up she can’t reach them. Some of the piles of stuff are so big that sometimes, when she looks up, they seem to lean over and look at her, trying to decide whether they should fall on her or not. She doesn’t like it when they do that.

There are also lots of things Heather’s mummy says she’s going to get around to throwing away when she’s not so tired. Maybe that will be when Heather’s daddy stops working so much and spends more time in the house. She overheard her parents arguing about that the other night. She also once overheard Aunty Kathy joke their house was like an Aladdin’s cave, only full of crap instead of treasure.

Heather’s not allowed to say that word Aunty Kathy said. Patrick Hull said it once at school and Miss Perrins made him sit in the corner then had to have a quiet word with his mum when she came to collect him.

Miss Perrins has had quiet words with Heather’s mummy quite a few times too, but not because she says anything naughty. Heather’s not exactly sure what the quiet words were, because Mummy and Miss Perrins were talking in the hallway, but it looked important and Miss Perrins’ face wasn’t smiley like usual.

She thinks it was about her school uniform one time (Mummy lost it under all the other clothes in the house and Heather had to wear her denim pinafore dress to school instead), and another time was when Heather was really itchy and the little insects from Fluffy the cat kept biting her tummy so she kept scratching instead of doing her spellings. Sometimes they hid in her jumper and came to school with her, and then they bit the other children too. Faith called them ‘bloody little hitchhikers’ but her teacher didn’t hear her say that so she didn’t have to sit in the corner. There were more quiet words after that, because the boys started calling her ‘Hobo Heather’ at playtime and wouldn’t stop chasing her.

Heather’s mummy has never been cross with her about the quiet words, though. Afterwards, she just comes home, lies on the sofa in front of the TV, and cries. She hugs Heather and tells her she’s a good girl, that it’s not Heather’s fault and that she’s going to do better from now on.

Heather is trying her hardest to move silently through the dining room when she hears Faith stop counting. It’s difficult to stay completely quiet, because of all the old plastic cartons and scrunchy cellophane that seem to collect on the floor in their house, and her feet slip on bits of paper and clothes that fall off the top of the piles.

‘Hea-ther!’ Faith calls in a sing-song voice. ‘I’m coming to get you!’

Heather starts to move faster. She’s not even thinking about giggling now and her heart is beating extra-hard. She’s got to find somewhere, somewhere small, somewhere Faith won’t expect.

Heather turns and heads up the stairs. Her feet are smaller than Faith’s and she finds the gaps in the piles of books and papers lining each step without making them fall over. When her foot hits the clear patch of carpet where the stairs meet the landing, she turns left and darts into the room there. This used to be her bedroom until the stuff filled it up. Once upon a time, the stuff was only downstairs and in her parents’ room, but it started to spread. Somehow the piles just kept getting bigger and bigger. Heather wonders if the big piles have babies. She asked Faith this once and her sister told her not to be stupid, but it makes sense to Heather. How else do new ones keep appearing?

So now the pile babies sleep in her room and Heather sleeps on the armchair downstairs.

She looks around the room for a good spot. She remembers that Daddy took his guitar out from under the bed and sold it to a man down the street. There’s a hole where it used to be that’s just big enough for her to climb into. Once inside, she pulls a bit of blanket down from the edge of the bed to cover herself.

Something on top of the blanket, maybe one of the piles balancing on the bed, comes crashing down and Heather freezes. Faith goes quiet too, and Heather hears footsteps coming closer and closer. Faith’s coming up the stairs! Heather holds her breath and closes her eyes, wishing she could turn herself invisible.

‘Hea-ther,’ Faith sings again. ‘You know I’m going to find you, don’t you?’

Heather wants to giggle so badly. She presses a hand over her mouth to hold it in. She can see Faith’s feet. She can just about make them out from under the edge of the blanket. Her sister is standing in the doorway.

Go away, go away, go away, she wishes inside her head.

Just as Heather thinks Faith is going to yank up the blanket and say, ‘Ha! Found you!’ her sister’s feet move. They turn and walk away. Heather’s so surprised she doesn’t breathe out again for ages, not until her chest starts to feel funny and then she gulps in air.

She can hear Faith walking around, calling her name, but her voice sounds different now. Not so pleased with herself. More fed up. Heather smiles to herself and curls up even tighter under the bed. Today she will win hide-and-seek and Faith will be the amateur!

Heather stays there for ages. Faith looks in all the other rooms upstairs and then she goes back down to the ground floor. Even when Mummy calls to say lunch is ready, Heather doesn’t move. It could be a trick and, even if it isn’t, she doesn’t want Faith saying she gave up. She’s not coming out again until Faith does what she makes Heather do when she can’t find her: stand in the middle of the house and shout that Heather is the queen of hide-and-seek and Faith is the loser. Heather wants that way more than a ham sandwich, even if her tummy is starting to rumble.

A long time later, Heather starts to feel cold and she opens her eyes. Did she fall asleep? The sounds of the bedroom, and then the rest of the house, come back slowly. She strains her ears. Somewhere downstairs, someone is crying and someone else is shouting.

‘Heather! Heather? Where are you?’ Faith’s voice has lost its taunting tone. Heather wonders if it is a trick to make her come out.

‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ their mummy is saying in between sobs. ‘I can’t lose my baby! I can’t lose my baby! It can’t be happening again!’ There’s a pause and she hears her mother shout at Faith. ‘You were supposed to be watching her!’

There is thunder on the staircase after that and lots of shouting. Heather starts to feel scared. Something tells her this isn’t a game any more, that she needs to come out, but she’s too scared to move. She can’t even open her mouth to shout out.

Eventually, she manages to shuffle forward a bit. At the same time, feet appear behind the blanket. Heather tries to say ‘I’m here!’ but her voice comes out all croaky and quiet, like she’s forgotten how to use it.

The pounding feet and loud voices stop. The air goes very still.

‘Here,’ she squeaks, and then the blanket is wrenched away from the entrance to her hiding place and, at the same time, everything else that was on top of the bed comes crashing to the floor, sealing her in. That’s when she starts to panic. She pushes at the things trapping her with her hands and feet, and starts to shout ‘Mummy’, over and over and over again.

There’s more crashing, and she can’t hear what the others are saying, but eventually she hears her mother yelling, ‘Stop! Stop, Heather! Stop!’

Heather goes still.

After a few moments, air comes rushing into her hiding place and she sees her mother’s face. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks shakily.

Heather nods, but then when her mother starts to look worried, Heather realises it’s too dark under the bed for her to see her properly so she adds, ‘I’m okay. This is my hide-and-seek spot. Did I win?’

From behind Mummy, there’s a huff. A Faith kind of huff. Heather smiles to herself.

Her mother laughs but when she speaks her voice sounds like it does when she’s been crying. ‘Yes, darling. I think you won. I also think you scared us quite badly. Are you sure you’re okay?’

Her mother reaches for her, and Heather finally pops free from under the bed. She looks around the room. It’s worse than ever. The landslide from the top of the mattress has made the path disappear. Not even the tiniest bunny could hop down that trail now.

‘Your foot!’ Faith says and Heather looks down. There’s blood coming through her sock. She must have hurt it on the stuff when she was kicking it away.

Her mummy lets out a noise that reminds Heather of how Fluffy sounds when he’s hungry. At first Heather thinks she’s upset about the blood – now Heather knows it’s there, her toe is starting to sting – but then she realises her mother isn’t even looking at her. She’s looking at something on the floor. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no…’ she says, and then she kneels down to pick it up. ‘Cassandra!’ she says, and she’s properly crying now.

Heather ignores the stinging in her toe and gets up. She puts her arms around her mother’s neck and whispers ‘I’m sorry’ into the skin behind her ear, but maybe Mummy doesn’t hear her, because she’s looking down at a doll she’s holding. She has lots of curly hair, a pretty pink dress and a smooth face and limbs. Two of her tiny cold fingers are missing. Her mother is holding them in her other hand.

Heather feels a dark, empty hole opening up inside of her. This was her fault. Hers. She made her mummy sad.

Heather suspects her mother must be thinking this too, because she doesn’t look at Heather, she doesn’t ask about her poorly foot. She just stares at the dolly and cries, saying something about the doll being her favourite, her very, very special girl.

A hand rests on Heather’s shoulder and she looks up to find Faith staring down at her. Her sister doesn’t look cross that she won hide-and-seek any more. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Come downstairs and I’ll find a plaster for your foot.’

CHAPTER FIVE

NOW

Heather bangs the front door when she gets back to her flat. Although she was careful to keep her expression neutral as she said farewell to her sister and her family, she is now scowling. Faith just hadn’t been able to resist getting another lecture in, especially after they’d abandoned the idea of hide-and-seek in favour of KerPlunk.

‘It’s time you stopped floating around the edges of this family and plugged yourself in properly,’ Faith said, arms crossed, as she walked Heather to her car. ‘I don’t know why you come, honestly I don’t. You obviously don’t want to be here.’

Heather mumbled something about that not being true.

Faith let out a snort of laughter. ‘Really? You really think that?’ she said, then listed all of Heather’s shortcomings over the visit – the way she’d let the kids down, the lack of any effort at conversation – before landing on the topic Heather had most wanted to avoid: the photograph.

‘I’m only asking one thing of you, and it’s not even a big thing. I’m not asking you to go to family counselling, or to phone me occasionally just to chat or ask something about my life. I’m not even asking that you have us over one month, instead of us entertaining you. All I’m asking for is one photograph. Is that really too much?’

Yes, Heather wanted to say. It is. Because you don’t know what you’re asking.

Faith has no right to back her into a corner over this. No right at all.

Heather almost runs into her living room to complete her ritual: standing in the middle, arms outstretched, eyes closed. It’s only then that the anger at her sister starts to fade. But just as she is beginning to breathe properly again, there is a loud rap on the glass of her French doors. Her eyes snap open and her heart starts to gallop. And not just because Jason is standing there smiling softly at her from the other side of the glass.

What must he think she was doing, standing in the middle of her living room like a cross between a scarecrow and a zombie? She smiles weakly back.

He makes a motion to indicate she should open the door. Heather has to look for the key. While she likes looking at the neat, orderly garden, she doesn’t often go out there. Opening the door would let insects and grass clippings in. She’d be worried she’d missed something that blew under the sofa and it would sit there for days undetected, slowly contaminating.

Heart still pounding, she opens the door and steps outside, closing it behind her to keep not just the bugs and dandelion heads out, but Jason too. No one else has set foot in her flat (except nosy old Carlton) since she moved in three years ago.

Before that, she hadn’t lived in Bromley for a long time, but her mother’s declining health and a maternity-cover job had brought her back. She knew she was lucky to have found another post close enough to stay here. Her job was competitive and, at her age, permanent positions were scarce. Usually, she lived from contract to contract and had to go where the work took her.

‘Yes?’ she says to Jason, who’s still got the hint of a smile on his lips, and she knows her tone has added bite because of her lousy afternoon. Another thing that’s Faith’s fault.

‘Thought I’d mow the grass and give the borders a bit of a weed,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Now the weather’s turned nicer, I was also thinking about having a barbecue – you know, the housewarming I didn’t get round to organizing – just a few friends over to have some burgers and sausages.’

Heather nods. Oh, so that’s it. While it’s a shared garden and Jason is perfectly within his rights to mow, cook or even turn cartwheels in it, he’s being polite. He’s asking if she minds. ‘Go ahead,’ she says. ‘Although it’d be nice to know the date and time when you’ve arranged it.’ That way she can make sure she keeps to the bedroom and the kitchen that afternoon, then there’s no chance of her being mistaken for an undead scarecrow again or having people peering into her space like she’s an exhibit in the reptile house at London Zoo. She might even go out.

His smile gets wider. ‘Well, I thought maybe you’d like to join us? It seems rude not to ask, especially as we’ll be hanging out right in front of your living room.’

Heather checks his face for the usual telltale signs of a pity invite: the tightness around the edges of the mouth, the narrow pupils and fixed jaw (she’s thinking of Faith’s face as she does this), but finds none of them. However, she can’t believe he’s asking because he actually wants her there, so that leaves her standing in her garden, worrying whether aphids from the nearby roses are attaching themselves to her hair, and not knowing quite what to do.

‘Okay?’ he says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to offer invitations to strangers, bring them into your world, your stuff.

There’s no excuse she can give. Not yet, anyway. So she just nods and says, ‘Okay.’ And then she turns and goes back inside her flat without looking round. She desperately wants to, though. She wants to know if he’s still smiling or if his brows are drawn together in a deep frown of confusion.

Heather heads for her bedroom, but as she passes the spare room she pauses.

It’s in there. The photo. The thing Faith wants. She doesn’t know exactly where, but it’s in there somewhere. Probably. Heather stares at the blank door for a full minute, and then she thinks to herself, Not today. I’ve had as much as I can handle today. I’ll do it soon, though. Maybe tomorrow.

CHAPTER SIX

NOW

‘She’s in tears, Heather! Everyone else in her class has brought their family-history projects in already. The teacher has given her until Monday, but that’s absolutely her last chance! I am driving over to you Sunday afternoon and picking a bloody photo up. Have you got that?’

Somehow, looking for a photograph ‘tomorrow’ had turned into the day after that, and the day after that had turned into a week, and then that week had become two. There have been texts from her sister, hard, barking little questions fired into her phone like missiles. Heather hasn’t exactly ignored them, not really, not when each one has lit a fire of shame and guilt inside her, but she hasn’t exactly replied to them either. And now it’s Friday evening, almost two weeks later, and Faith is on the warpath.

‘Yes, got it,’ Heather whispers penitently. What else can she do?

There is a relieved sigh on the other end of the line.

‘Okay.’ Mamma-Bear Faith is standing down. Heather exhales, mirroring her sister.

There is so much Heather wants to say to her: that she truly does love Alice and Barney; that she knows her sister doesn’t believe that because Heather’s just so useless at acting normal around them. But that is only because she wants so desperately to see that love reflected back in their eyes that she second-guesses every move, every word. She wants to tell Faith that she’s gutted she’s made Alice cry and feel ‘the odd one out’ with the kids at school because she knows how awful that is. But Heather says none of this. It’s as if, when it comes to Faith, her mouth is perpetually glued shut.

‘Right. I’ll give you a bell on Sunday morning to let you know what time. Matthew has a meeting after church, so it’ll depend on whether he can take the kids too or not.’

‘Okay,’ Heather says meekly, but a chill is unfurling inside her. They say their goodbyes and she puts the phone down slowly. Then, before she can chicken out, she turns and walks down the hallway and stops in front of the innocent-looking closed white door. Blood rushes so loudly in her ears that it drowns out the sound of traffic on the main road outside.

She doesn’t move for the longest time, just stares at the door, and then, when it feels as if she has almost hypnotized herself into a catatonic state by staring at the blank white paint, she reaches out and her palm closes around the door handle.

This is how to do it, she tells herself. Like it’s not real. Like it’s a dream.

She has a vague memory of something that looked like photograph albums in the left corner of the room, in a box on top of a bookcase, next to piles of her mother’s old clothes, still bagged up in black sacks. She pulls up a mental image of that box and fixes it at the front of her brain.

She inhales deeply, resists the urge to hold her breath, and twists the creaky old brass knob. The door swings open.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Just move.

She’s fine at first, as she’s crossing the bare patch of carpet near the door, even as she treads carefully down the narrow path between the boxes and bags on that side, but there’s obviously been a landslide at the back of the room. One of the storage boxes containing some bric-a-brac that was sitting atop a pile of newspapers has toppled, spilling itself gleefully over the space. She needs to go forward, but she doesn’t want to bend and clear the mess up. She doesn’t want to touch it. She doesn’t want to touch any of it.

So she doesn’t. She just keeps moving, walks over the top of the contents of the spilled box. It was what her mother did when she was alive, after all. When the ‘rabbit trails’ were devoured by the growing hoard, she’d just walk over the top, changing the topography of the house from flat carpeted floors into hills and mountains of rubbish. In her later years, they’d grown so huge that in some places they were four or five feet deep, and spaces that should have been doorways had turned into crawl spaces.

However, when Heather’s foot crunches on one of the photo frames, one that’s just a wooden surround, already having lost its glass, memories come flooding back, things that have nothing to do with this room, this hoard – the lack of light, the perpetual twilight caused by the skyscraper piles, the sting of cat urine in her nostrils and the particular smell of dirt that’s built up over years not months. A sob escapes her, but she thinks of Alice and pushes forward.

Blindly, she throws the black sacks full of clothes out of the way until she spots a ragged cardboard box, one so weak and old it might disintegrate if she tried to lift it. So she grabs the forest-green spine of what looks like a photo album, clutches it to her chest and retreats as fast as possible. It’s only when the door is safely shut behind her, the key turned in the lock, that the swirling feeling in her head stops.

She takes the photo album into her living room and lays it on the desk – a coffee table would have been the perfect spot, except Heather has no coffee table. What’s wrong with a shelf or a side table to put your mug on? A coffee table would fill up the centre of the room, rob her of that perfect, precious space in the centre of the rug. She leaves the album there, then goes back to the spare room, removes the key and carefully places it in her desk drawer. For some reason, it just doesn’t feel safe leaving it in the door any more. She then makes herself a cup of camomile tea.

When that is done, she fetches the album and sits down on one end of her sofa. As Heather turns the first few pages, the sense of uncleanness at having been in the spare room fades. When she tries to think back to her childhood, which isn’t often, most of it is just a big white fog, yet here it is – all the things she can’t remember – in colour prints, yellowing a little with age. They come rushing up off the page to meet her.

There’s her mum and dad together, actually looking happy. She’d seen her dad smile like that when he’d met Shirley, but she’d forgotten he must have looked at her mother that way too once upon a time.

How odd. The only thing that drifts through the fog when she dares to look into it are raised voices and soft male sobbing. He left when she was still in primary school, and he had just got to a place where he couldn’t take it any more. She doesn’t blame him for leaving. Who in their right mind would have wanted to stay?

She looks at the photos on the opposite page. One draws her curiosity enough for her to peel back the protective layer and prise it from the gluey lines holding it down. On the back, hastily scrawled in biro, it says ‘Kathy and Heather, Eastbourne (1994)’. Heather places it back down and smooths the cellophane over the top. They’re standing against some metal railings at the seafront. It’s sunny, but obviously windy. Aunt Kathy is smiling brightly at the person behind the lens, and so is the little girl next to her, but her hair is being blown forwards over her face so Heather can’t even see her own features. She’s holding a mint-choc-chip ice cream, though, so she doesn’t seem to care about the wind.