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

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.