Fiona Harper - The Memory Collector - The emotional and uplifting new novel from the bestselling author of The Other Us

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.

‘Can Megan come for tea one day?’ Heather hops from foot to foot because she’s really excited about the idea. ‘I’ve been round to hers loads.’

Her mother sighs and looks around the living room. ‘I don’t think so, darling. Sorry. Maybe when I get the house straight.’

Heather looks down at her shoes. Ever since the hide-and-seek incident, the whole family wears shoes indoors all the time. ‘But you said the same thing after the summer holidays…’

Her mother stops rummaging in a pile of clothes that has just come back from the launderette. The washing machine is broken, but her mum gets cross if her dad mentions getting someone round to fix it.

‘I said “no”, Heather. Now run along. It’s teatime soon.’

Heather crosses her arms. ‘It’s not fair! Megan says that proper best friends go round each other’s houses, and Katie Matthews asks her to tea nearly every week. If we don’t let her come here, she might just end up being Katie’s friend instead and I’ll be left out.’

‘Heather! Just go and find something to do! I’m trying to find your PE kit, and you know you’ll be upset if I don’t, so you need to let me do this now and we’ll talk about it later. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ Heather mumbles, reversing back through the rabbit trail and going to find Faith, who’s in the kitchen cooking their tea. Now Faith’s eleven, she’s allowed to do things like that.

Heather climbs over some plastic bags tied at the top when she gets to the hallway. They weren’t there yesterday. They’re full of dollies. But these dollies aren’t pretty ones like Cassandra. A Barbie with no clothes on is sticking out the top of one bag and her hair has been cut funny. It looks rough and fluffy, not smooth and silky like it does when they come out the box. She’s also missing one arm. Heather guesses her mother must have been to the charity shop again on one of her ‘rescue missions’. She gets the dollies so she can fix them and make them better, then she’ll be able to give them to the hospital or to poor children.

Heather thinks her mummy must be a very good person to do something like that; she just wishes there weren’t so many of them. There are bags and bags now, lining the hallway and the landing. Some even creep into Faith’s room, but Faith keeps putting them back outside again. Not where anyone will notice they’ve reappeared, of course. She finds a spot somewhere else and hides them so their mother won’t get upset she moved them.

Faith is cooking chicken nuggets and chips in the oven. They have to do everything in the oven at the moment because the bit on top doesn’t work.

‘Go and find the ketchup,’ Faith says when she sees her younger sister. She’s looking a bit cross, but Faith always seems to be cross these days. Their mother says it’s because she’s almost a teenager. Faith says it’s from living in a dump like this.

Heather climbs on top of some boxes full of pots and pans to reach the cupboard where the ketchup lives. She pulls the bottle out, but it’s empty apart from some red sludge at the bottom. ‘It’s all gone,’ she calls to Faith.

Her sister sighs dramatically. ‘Keep looking. There’ll be another one back there. You know how mum likes to stock up.’

Heather throws the empty bottle on the floor with the rest of the rubbish, then stands on tiptoes to reach further into the cupboard. The box wobbles a little but she manages to stop herself from falling by holding onto the cupboard door. There’s another bottle in there, and it’s half-full with ketchup, but round the top it’s green and fluffy. ‘Shall I throw this one away too?’ she asks.

Faith shakes her head. ‘Put it back for now. Mum will want to check it if it’s not properly finished.’

‘But it’s yucky!’

‘I said she’d want to check it. I didn’t say it’d make sense,’ Faith says. ‘There’s only one thing for it – we’ll have to break into the emergency rations.’

Heather jumps down from the boxes, smiling. ‘Cool! I know where Mummy keeps them!’ She goes to the drawer by the back door and opens it. Inside are hundreds and hundreds of tiny packets – sugar, salt, pepper, salad cream, vinegar – just about anything you can find in a café or a restaurant. Mum always puts loads in her handbag when they go out to eat (which is getting to be more and more, with the top of the oven being broken) because she says it’s part of what they pay for when they pay for the food, and you never know when they’ll come in handy. When Heather got up this morning, she didn’t know today was going to be that day. It’s kind of exciting!

She reaches into the drawer, feeling the sachets slide through her fingers, enjoying the shifting colours as she searches for the ketchup ones. It’s kind of like looking for buried treasure. By the time Faith gets the nuggets and chips out of the oven Heather has six sachets clutched in each hand. Faith serves up their food and carries the plates through to the living room. They have to squish up together to fit into the space on the end of the sofa, but they don’t mind. At least this way they can watch cartoons while they eat.

The best bit is opening up the little packets and squeezing out the ketchup from the inside. It feels like they’re being fancy. There are still two or three each left over when they’ve finished eating.

Faith grins at Heather as she rips open another one. ‘Look, Heather! It’s like blood.’ She says the last bit in a creepy voice that makes Heather’s spine feel all tickly, and when Faith presses on the packet so the ketchup oozes out, she does a laugh that goes mwah-hah-hah! and makes Heather giggle, so Heather tears open one of her packets and does the same.

After that they can’t stop. They both keep ripping and mwah-hah-hah-ing until they’re laughing so hard they’re in danger of missing their plates and decorating their legs instead.