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

But then the air in the room goes instantly cold. Heather and Faith freeze.

‘Girls! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

Heather drops her last unsqueezed ketchup packet onto her plate, where it lands in the big blob of pretend blood she’s been collecting.

‘Just eating our tea,’ Faith says. ‘I cooked chips and nuggets for me and Heather.’

Heather’s mother hasn’t got time to be impressed by that; she’s too busy staring at the twisted and torn wrappers littering the girls’ plates. ‘Where did you get those?’ she says, and her voice sounds all quiet and quivery.

‘From the ’mergency draw,’ Heather says helpfully. ‘The other ketchup was fluffy.’

Their mother’s expression changes to the one she wears when she’s trying to explain something and keep her temper at the same time. ‘Those… those… They’re not for you to use! They’re to be kept there. Just in case.’

‘But it was “just in case”, Mummy!’ Heather explains.

Their mother shakes her head, closes her eyes. ‘You don’t understand.’ And then her eyes snap open again and she looks at Heather. ‘How many did you take? How many?’

‘I… I…’

‘How many, Heather!’ She’s shouting now and Heather can’t seem to make the counting bit of her brain work.

Faith stands up. ‘Don’t shout at her! It’s not her fault. I told her to get them. And there were twelve, okay? Just twelve. And there are hundreds left in there!’

Their mother runs down the hall. The sisters put their plates down on the sofa and follow. Inside the kitchen, their mother wrenches the drawer open. The packets rustle and slide over each other as she sticks her hands inside and moves them around, counting softly.

She goes still and lifts her head up. ‘Right. Girls, get your coats on. We’re going to the Harvester for tea.’

The girls look at each other, big grins on their faces. That’s really fancy! But then Faith stops smiling. ‘But we’ve just eaten our tea,’ she says, looking confused.

‘Don’t get cheeky with me, young lady!’ Mum yells. ‘I need to get a dozen more and then it’ll all be okay again. You did say it was twelve, right?’

They both nod, but neither moves, and then their mother’s expression stops being hard and angry and she starts to look as if she’s about to cry.

‘Sorry, girls. Sorry, my babies.’

She comes and puts her arms round them and pulls them to her, one in each arm. ‘I tell you what, you don’t need to eat more tea – just dessert. How about that? An absolutely giant ice-cream sundae if you like. With sprinkles! And I can pick up more sachets to replace the ones we’re missing.’

She lets go of the girls, and all three of them are excited now.

‘Is Daddy coming?’ Heather asks.

‘No, poppet. He’s working late again tonight.’

Faith sighs. ‘He’s always working late,’ she grumbles.

Their mother’s eyes get that shiny look again, but then she smiles and says, ‘All the more for us, then! Go on, go and get your coats!’

Heather starts to run towards the piles near the front door. She thinks that’s where she left hers, but then the doorbell goes and everyone freezes. Both sisters turn and look at their mother. She puts her finger to her lips and motions for them to come towards her. Quietly. It’s hard to do, because everything underneath their feet is crunchy, but they’ve had plenty of practice.

‘Hello?’ a voice calls through the front door. ‘Mrs Lucas?’ The man knocks loudly. Heather starts to feel scared.

Her mother points at the next room, near the big table that’s always full of all her important papers. There’s a space down the side and both girls instinctively head for it and crouch there.

The letterbox clatters. The man must be peeping through it. ‘Mrs Lucas? I’m just here to read the electric meter… Are you there?’

But Mrs Lucas doesn’t answer him. Instead, she runs to where her daughters are hiding and squats down beside them, holding them tight. As they all close their eyes and wait for the man to go away, Heather realizes there probably isn’t going to be any ice-cream sundae tonight after all, and probably no chocolate sprinkles either.

CHAPTER TEN

NOW

It’s much later in the afternoon when Heather gets back to her flat after visiting her old house in Bickley. She goes into town for a cappuccino, sits outside her favourite café and watches the people march up and down the pedestrianized section of the High Street.

This is a mistake.

Because eventually she joins them, and then Mothercare pulls her inside, and by the time she’s feeding pound coins into the parking machine in The Glades shopping centre a squashy toy giraffe is tucked securely in the side pocket of her bag.

She’s really glad to get back to her flat, her sanctuary. She stows her contraband in the forbidden drawer and hurries into the living room, ready to perform her breathing ritual, but when she finds her usual spot in the middle of the rug and looks up she gets a shock.

Instead of flat, green grass and regimented borders, she’s met with a garden full of people. And there’s Jason in the middle of them, flipping burgers on a barbecue and swigging Coke from a bottle. He looks completely at ease as he smiles and chats with a group of guys.

Heather is completely infuriated, but she knows she has no right to be. When they’d bumped into each other in the hallway a couple of days ago, he’d told her he was having his housewarming thing this afternoon. The weather forecast was good for once, he’d said, so he’d decided to go for it. It’s not Jason’s fault her thoughts have been so tangled lately that the information got lost inside her head.

As if he knows she’s staring at him, he turns and looks at her, meets her gaze and smiles. She waves back. His smile grows wider and he makes a beckoning motion. She has no choice but to follow his tractor beam, to unlock the French doors and walk outside. She doesn’t look to the left or the right, doesn’t pay attention to the other bodies or the curious glances she’s getting. She just walks straight towards him.

‘Hi,’ he says softly, once she is standing in front of him.

‘Hi,’ she says back.

‘Want a burger?’

She nods, even though she has no idea if she’s hungry or not. It’s not a fancy affair, no lettuce or pickle, just a charred piece of meat stuck inside a floury white roll with a blob of ketchup. It tastes like heaven.

‘Glad you could make it,’ he says as Heather takes another bite. ‘I wasn’t entirely sure you were going to put in an appearance.’ And before Heather can say neither was she, he steers her towards a group of people. ‘Here, let me introduce you to the gang.’ Her mouth is too full of burger to object.

‘This is Damien, my partner in crime from my university days, and this is his girlfriend Tola.’ More names fill Heather’s head as he goes round the group, all instantly rejected and lost – her brain’s storage drive is too full – but she pulls her cheek muscles into what she hopes is a smile and nods with each introduction.

‘So,’ says Damien (the one name she can remember), ‘you’re Jay’s mysterious girl downstairs.’

Heather’s eyebrows rise. She’s mysterious? That sounds a lot more interesting and romantic than the truth: that she is Jason’s terminally damaged girl downstairs, the one who’s on the verge of being arrested for petty theft. She doesn’t disabuse Jason’s friend of the notion, though. She learned right from childhood that most people don’t look too far below the surface and anything they superimpose on you is invariably better than the reality. These assumptions create a useful shield, one she does her best not to dislodge.