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