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

Mint choc chip. I used to love that, she thinks. How did I forget?

That holiday with her aunt is the one bright oasis in the pearly fog of her childhood, the one thing that stands out, bold and colourful. She remembers those two weeks as if they were yesterday – except she doesn’t remember this photo being taken. Never mind. The rest is still clear: building sandcastles with complex moats on the beach, fish and chips under one of the shelters on the pier after a sudden cloudburst, crazy golf… Oh, how she’d loved the crazy golf, even if it took fifteen attempts to get each ball in the hole. But Aunty Kathy hadn’t minded, she’d been patient and encouraging and had never once hurried her along.

The little girl in the photo looks happy. Heather knows it must be her, but she doesn’t recognize herself. This girl looks as if she might grow up to be someone nice, someone with a good job and maybe a decent man to love. Not a freak who can’t even go into her spare bedroom without having an epic meltdown.

Heather’s eyes go dull and she stops smiling. Aunty Kathy. She hasn’t seen her favourite aunt since her childhood. Yet another casualty of her mother’s addiction. Heather closes her eyes. Her mother had been selfish, so selfish. Driving everyone who loved her away. Sometimes it had seemed as if she was on a mission to make everyone hate her.

Heather shakes her head and opens her eyes again. She’s not going to think about that now, because far from recoiling from the other memories leaping up at her from the pages, she’s actually enjoying this. She doesn’t remember seeing any of these photos before. Probably because this album had been buried under two tons of crap in her mother’s house for most of her formative years, and since Heather had taken custody of the belongings… Well, let’s just say she hadn’t wanted to go there.

But these photos are safe. They’re two-dimensional, stored behind cellophane so they’ve stayed clean and nice. Not like the rest of her mother’s stuff, which is too rich with memories, too immediate. Her mother always said she had to keep most of her stuff because the objects were her memory keepers. She’d pick up something – an ornament or a book, even a piece of Tupperware for the kitchen – and she’d be able to reel off all sorts of details about the item: when she’d bought it or who had given it to her, along with a story. There were always stories.

But Heather doesn’t want those memories; she doesn’t want that talent. On some level, she misses her mother, grieves for her, but that is obscured by the overriding sense of fury that engulfs her every time she thinks about her. So selfish. And then to leave things so Heather had to inherit what was left of her crap, had to take responsibility for it. She never asked for that burden and she doesn’t want it, and she can’t even go and shout at her mother for her final self-absorbed act, for once more protecting her stuff more than caring about what was good for her own flesh and blood.

Heather takes a deep breath and refocuses on the photograph album. Not thinking about that, remember? It only ever makes her miserable, and it’s a wonderful revelation that there were some happy things that happened in her childhood, evidenced in the smiles and laughter caught on these pages.

There’s a snap of a few older people at what looks like a birthday party. She thinks two of them might be her grandparents – her father’s parents – but she’s not sure. They both died when she was very little. And thinking of little… the next page reveals a picture of her and Faith taken at Christmas. They’re wearing matching woollen jumpers in a horrible shade of orange, but they are hugging onto each other and doing their cheesiest grins for the camera so their faces are all teeth and hardly any eyes. It makes her smile.

But then she notices something, and the joy slides from her face.

The room behind them… It’s empty.

Well, not actually empty, but… normal. She can see a wall painted in magnolia. An actual wall. Heather’s not even sure she knew what colour the walls were in some parts of her family home because, as far as she could remember, they’d always had things stacked against them.

Heather stares at the picture, unable to tear her eyes away. It’s a shock to realize her mother’s house hadn’t always been that way, although, if Heather didn’t studiously avoid thinking about her mother in every waking moment, maybe she’d have worked this out by now. After all, she can’t have been a hoarder from birth. It had to have started somewhere. For the first time, Heather asks herself when.

The problem is that she hadn’t been able to talk to her mother about her hoarding. Even as an adult, if she’d tried to raise the subject, her mother would get defensive and cross. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a bit of clutter,’ she used to say. ‘I’m a collector, that’s all.’ And Christine Lucas had been right about that. She’d collected everything as far as Heather could remember: newspapers, old plastic pots, clothes – lots and lots of clothes – every toy Heather and Faith had ever owned, even though many were broken and unwanted by their owners.

There had been the china ornaments, cutesy little things – unicorns and fairies, covered in glitter – that had made Heather want to gag. Worst of all were the dolls. Even now, when Heather thinks of the frilly dresses, the porcelain faces with staring blue eyes, it makes her shiver.

But there seems to be none of that in this photo. From the outside, and at a distance of more than twenty years, these two girls look as if they come from a normal, happy family.

She can’t resist pulling the cellophane back, even though it tears a little in the corner, to check if there’s writing on the back of the print. There is: ‘Faith and Heather, Christmas 1991.’ Heather does the maths: Faith would have been eight, just about to turn nine, and she would have been five.

She turns the page. This one is close enough to the back of the album that the spine creaks and shifts, pulling the pages behind it open, and some things fall out the back of the book: more photographs and a couple of hand-drawn birthday cards from her and Faith to their mum. This makes an odd warm feeling flare in Heather’s chest. Normally, she hates the idea of her mother keeping anything, especially if it had sentimental value – because everything she owned had sentimental value, even the bags of rubbish that had filled the kitchen so they could no longer cook in it, let alone eat at the table – but this is something she can understand. Somehow, it helps her breathe out.

The other crap in the pile quickly erodes the sensation: grocery receipts from fifteen years ago, a pizza-delivery flyer that must have come through the letterbox, and numerous newspaper cuttings, carefully clipped and folded in half. Heather prepares to tuck it all back inside the cover of the photo album, but before she does so she checks the newspaper articles, just in case something of more value is hiding inside. She’d like to feel that warm feeling again, even if it confuses her a little.

One article is about the discovery of Roman ruins in nearby Orpington, another about the opening of the massive shopping mall that now takes up most of Bromley town centre. Heather refolds and discards them. Maybe these were saved in the earlier days of her mother’s hoarding? Later on, she didn’t bother being this organized, cutting things out and folding them; she’d just kept the whole newspaper.

The last one is yet another clipping from the Bromley and Chislehurst News Shopper, the free local paper that used to come through the door. Sadder, though. ‘Hunt For Missing Bromley Girl Continues,’ the headline reads. Heather takes a moment to look at the child in the photograph taking up a quarter of the report. It’s a school picture with a mottled blue background. The girl has a uniform on – a white shirt with a green and blue striped tie – that looks too big for her, as if she’s still trying to grow into it.

Something flashes in the back of Heather’s brain. She recognizes these colours, this uniform. St Michael’s Primary. That was the school she and Faith had gone to. Maybe that’s why her mum had kept this clipping, because of that sense of connection? Something about the story had made it personal. Maybe Heather had known her, been at St Michael’s at the same time?

She looks more closely at the girl and decides that if they had been in the same year, maybe they would have been friends. The girl has neat long, blonde plaits. Her fringe is a little too long but there’s a mischievous twinkle in the eyes peering from underneath the silky strands. Heather smiles. I hope they found her, she silently wishes, I hope she was okay.

She gets ready to fold the article up and store it away with the other ones, but as she moves the paper, something catches her eye:

Police are asking for anyone local who might have been in the Fossington Road area on Friday, 3rd July, around three in the afternoon, to contact them, in case they saw something relevant to the enquiry.

Heather wonders what she was doing on 3 July. She checks the date at the top of the page. The report is from 15 July 1992, almost two weeks later. Yes, she would have been six then, and at St Michael’s. Just finishing the summer term of her second year.

A chill runs through her. She was probably running around in the playground, or reading a book under one of the big horse chestnuts, completely unaware.

Hooked now, she carries on reading:

Her mother is begging anyone who knows anything to come forward. ‘We just want our little Heather back safe and sound,’ she says.

Heather.

Heather?

Deep down inside, she begins to quiver. It has to be a coincidence, right? Even though her name wasn’t massively popular at that time. But it was possible there was another Heather at the school. There had to have been.

Heather frantically tries to focus her eyes on the print at the top of the article, but she can’t seem to make her brain stay still enough to interpret what she’s reading. She closes her eyes and opens them again, resetting them, to see if that helps, and the opening paragraph slams into focus.

Heather Lucas, aged 6, has been missing for the past twelve days…

CHAPTER SEVEN

NOW

‘Did you know about this?’

As her sister enters the communal hallway of her flat, Heather flies towards Faith waving the newspaper clipping wildly. Faith has arrived to collect Alice’s photograph. She backs up, tripping slightly over the threshold, and ends up on the porch.

Heather has been sitting inside all morning, holding the scrap of newsprint in her hands. Obsessing. When the door buzzer sounded, it had the same effect as a starter’s pistol. Heather knows she’s acting like a complete lunatic, but on one level it’s quite pleasing to see the look of shock and confusion on her sister’s face, rather than the well-worn eye roll and look of saintly forbearance. It’s an admission that something really, truly is wrong.

‘Did you? Did you know?’

Heather finally stops moving enough for her sister to see what she’s waving around. Faith’s eyes fall on the grainy photograph in the newspaper cutting and she goes pale. ‘Why don’t we go inside?’

Heather stares at her. She’s whipped herself up into such a tornado of fury that she hasn’t thought about how she’ll react if Faith actually answers in the affirmative. It’s only because she’s so flabbergasted that Faith manages to grab her by the arm and manoeuvre her inside.

‘Hey, Heather,’ a voice calls from the stairs. It’s Jason. But Faith bustles her past him and into her flat, glancing up at him with her mouth set in a thin line. Heather can’t unscramble her brain enough to say something sensible to him at the best of times, so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

She regains her language skills as Faith steers her into the kitchen. ‘You did, didn’t you?’ she asks, surprised at how calm and rational she sounds after her outburst only moments before.

Faith looks at her for a few seconds, then nods.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Heather says, her volume rising again. ‘Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?’ A rush of pure hatred for her mother leaps through her like a flame. She wants to throw things, to scream so loud that Mrs Rowe in the top flat will get worried and call the police. She picks up a mug, feeling the smoothness of the china under her fingers, and imagines hurling it towards the kitchen units. It’s only the fact that this was precisely the sort of thing her mother used to do that stops her.

Faith is looking confused. ‘You don’t remember?’

Heather’s fingers grip the mug tighter. The urge to launch it towards the opposite wall is almost overwhelming now. ‘I was six!’

‘But I remember things from when I was that age, and less traumatic things, too. I always thought those sorts of memories – the ones accompanied by strong emotion – were supposed to be the clearest.’

Heather makes an incredulous little cough of a laugh. ‘Wasn’t the fact I’ve never once in my life mentioned it a bit of a giveaway?’

Faith eyes the mug in Heather’s hand with a concerned expression, which only makes Heather want to fling it all the more. ‘I suppose I assumed you just didn’t want to talk about it. You’ve got to admit, you’re not big on sharing, are you?’

Heather slumps into one of the chairs surrounding her tiny, two-seater dining set. The mug falls from her fingers and totters for a second before making contact with the tabletop, landing gracefully on its base.

‘Why?’ she whispers, more to herself than to her sister. ‘Why would you think that? Why would you never even think to mention it?’

Faith looks helpless. Heather realizes she’s never seen her sister look helpless before. ‘Well, none of us talked about it. We just… didn’t.’ She pauses and frowns before carrying on. ‘Okay, maybe that’s not true. I remember Dad and Aunt Kathy talking about it a couple of times after it happened, but if they ever mentioned it to Mum she just shut down or got hysterical. I learned very quickly not to raise the subject.’ Faith looks long and hard at the table before raising her eyes to meet Heather’s again. ‘I loved Mum, despite all her flaws, but she was a very controlling person.’

Heather can’t help laughing. Is her sister living in a parallel universe? ‘What are you talking about? She had no control over anything! Do you not remember how we lived? It was chaos!’

‘The freaking out, the meltdowns. That was her way of avoiding things she didn’t want to face, and making sure we didn’t bring them up again. If that’s not being manipulative, I don’t know what is. She might have seemed weak, but she controlled us all.’ Faith lets out a long, memory-laden sigh. ‘She was a master at it.’

Heather stares at her sister. What she has said is shocking, something Heather had never considered, but even more shocking is the expression on her face. It’s calm. Not serene and at peace, but accepting. If Faith really feels that way, why isn’t she shouting and screaming with the unfairness of it? That’s what Heather wants to do.

This is all Mum’s fault, she thinks, feeling venom pulse through her veins. How things are between me and Faith, the shoplifting, everything… And now I find she’s landed me in this mess, too.

She turns to her sister. She only has one point, but she’s going to keep hammering it in until Faith understands. ‘It doesn’t matter what Mum was like. We’ve been grown up and out of that house for years now. You should have told me.’

Faith sits down on a chair and pulls her hand through her hair. ‘I was only nine myself,’ she says quietly. ‘And all I know is what I remember from back then. To be honest, I haven’t thought about it in years.’

This makes Heather’s spine stiffen. ‘The most horrible, momentous thing that’s ever happened to your little sister and you don’t even think about it? How very telling.’

‘Don’t be like that.’ Faith sighs wearily. ‘I did used to consider mentioning it, but I really wasn’t sure if it would help. I mean, help you, if it was all dredged up again. Sometimes you just seem so…’ Her expression softens, begs forgiveness for what she’s about to say. ‘Fragile. And I suppose, to some extent, I did block it out, bury it. I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but our family is very good at that kind of stuff.’

Heather sits down across from her sister. Yes. Very good, she thinks, and all the energizing adrenaline begins to leak away. ‘So what do you know? I went missing… Did I wander off and get lost? What?’

Faith takes a moment. Heather can see her eyes making tiny movements, as if she’s pulling up memories and facts from a dusty drawer in the back of her brain. ‘You were taken.’

Heather breathes the word, echoing her sister. ‘Taken.’

Faith looks worried. She nods.

‘You mean… kidnapped?’

‘Sort of.’ Faith’s voice is scratchy and dry. ‘“Snatched” is what I remember hearing people say. I don’t think there was a ransom or anything. Nothing like that.’

‘But I was obviously found. Returned home. How… how long was I gone?’

Her sister looks pained. Heather suspects she’s not 100 per cent sure of the facts any more. ‘It seemed like forever at the time, but I think it was only a week or two.’

Heather swallows. Long enough. For exactly what she doesn’t want to think about.

Faith leans forward, looks genuinely distressed. ‘Mum was such a mess afterwards. She just… fell apart. Everyone was walking on eggshells. Even one mention could set her off and send her into a downward spiral for days.’

Heather nods. She knows what their mother was like.

‘I was cross with her at the time, but now I understand totally.’ Faith’s eyes fill. ‘If anything were to happen to Barney or Alice…’ she trails off, unable to finish.

Heather finds a lump in her throat, too. Losing a child, whichever way it happens…

‘You don’t know anything more than that?’

Faith shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry it’s come as such a shock. I would have said something if I’d known you had no memory of it, believe me.’

Unfortunately, Heather does, which leaves her with a ball of anger, curled up in the slingshot of her chest, with no one to fire it at. No one alive, anyway.

Faith looks at Heather. ‘What are you going to do?’

Heather just looks wordlessly back at her. She really has no idea.

CHAPTER EIGHT

NOW

The following Saturday, Heather gets into her car and drives to Bickley, an affluent area just a couple of miles away on the other side of Bromley town centre. It’s full of leafy streets, nice schools and even nicer houses. She drives down Southborough Road, then turns into a side road and stops her car halfway down.

She gets out and, not having parked at her exact destination, walks a little farther down the street. She stops opposite an Edwardian detached house but doesn’t cross the road. She doesn’t walk up the path and knock on the door; she just stares, arms hanging limply by her sides.

This is her childhood home, the house her mother lived in until just two years ago. She hasn’t been back down Hawksbury Road since shortly after that, and before her mother’s death, not for almost five years.

It’s a shock to see the overgrown rhododendrons stripped back at the front, cleared to make way for a driveway, she guesses, from the neat row of stone blocks lining the perimeter of a bed of flattened sand and the paving slabs piled up on the adjacent lawn. The house looks naked this way.

The ground floor is aged red brick, and the upper floors are covered in the original pebble-dash, now painted a gleaming white instead of mottled cream with pocks and holes in its render. The roof tiles are all uniform and lined in neat rows, with no cracks or mossy patches to be seen, and the satisfyingly heavy original front door is now a stylish dove grey with frosted panels at the top.

She and Faith had inherited the house, but they’d sold it as speedily as possible, probably forfeiting tens of thousands each because they hadn’t spruced it up at all. The only person willing to snap it up had been a developer. He’d boasted about building a block of flats, carving the spacious garden up into numbered parking spaces. Heather had happily pocketed the money, glad to be rid of the property, and had thought no more about it. But it must have niggled Faith because she’d kept tabs on the progress, done a bit of digging, and had eventually informed Heather that planning permission had been refused. The shark-like developer (the only thing Heather can remember about him was his teeth: overcrowded and slightly pointed) had put it straight back on the market without even mowing the lawn.

She supposes she must have known someone would buy it eventually, given the desirable location, despite the state it had been in.

It almost looks like a different house now, as if their life there has been erased, like a computer drive reformatted and written over. It will be as if her past, her childhood, never occurred. A new family will lay down their memories here now. From the quality of the work done so far, she guesses they’ll be bright, happy ones, and she silently hates them for it.

She isn’t quite sure why she drove here, only that she thought there might be clues, something ghostly left behind that would silence the questions that have been running round her brain since her discovery last week, but this is just a blank canvas.

But then Heather remembers that, even if you erase a hard drive, little telltale fragments are left behind, and as she continues to stare, the air around the house starts to shift and shimmer until she can almost see the Virginia creeper crawling back up the house, suffocating each window as it goes. The overgrown shrubs that almost obliterated the path and obscured the plastic storage crates and junk from passers-by begin to form like ghostly shapes in the garden.

She can imagine her mother sitting on the only seat in the house: one end of the sofa where she’d made a nest for herself, where she sat to watch the TV, slept and even ate. Heather takes a step forward until she is right on the very edge of the kerb, but she goes no further.

Why? It is a question she has never asked of this house before. In the past, she didn’t want to know. Recently she’s been so focused on the immediacy of her anger and hurt that she hasn’t looked for the root beneath it.

Why did things get this way, Mum? How did you come to do this to yourself? To us?

And why did she never ask these questions of her mother while she still had the chance?

CHAPTER NINE

DOORBELL

The doorbell is old. Not horrible old, like one of those plastic boxes with a flat, round button that fools you into thinking it’s working but never produces any sound. No, nothing as cheap and deceitful as that. This bell was installed in the 1920s. It has a creamy domed Bakelite button set in a decorative brass surround. Even now it works, heralding the arrival of every visitor with a clear, self-confident ring. The sound can be heard in every dark and shadowy corner of our house.

THEN

‘Mummy, can I have Megan round for tea?’

Heather’s mother looks up from where she is digging in a pile of clothes. She’s trying to find Heather’s PE kit. Heather brought it home to be washed before the Easter holidays, but she’s been back at school for three weeks now and nobody can find it. Miss Perrins has said she’s very sorry, but she’s going to have to give Heather a red mark on her behaviour chart if she doesn’t have it for her next lesson. Heather really doesn’t want to get a red mark. She hasn’t had one yet, because she tries super-extra-hard to be good at school.

‘What?’ her mother says.