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

Fiona Harper

‘Touching and uplifting, this is Fiona Harper at her very best.’ MILLY JOHNSONFrom the author of The Other Us***THE WINNER OF THE 2018 SPECULATIVE ROMANTIC NOVEL AWARD***‘This book tore my heart into tiny pieces, then put it back together and made it fly.’ JANE LINFOOT‘A beautiful story of loss, discovery and recovery.’  HEIDI SWAIN'Heart-wrenching and compelling.’ SARAH MORGAN'Beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking.’ CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLIN***Heather Lucas lives her life through other people’s memories.Heather doesn’t want to remember her childhood, not when her mother’s extreme hoarding cast her family life into disarray.For Heather’s mother, every possession was intimately connected to a memory, so when Heather uncovers a secret about her past that could reveal why her mother never let anything go, she knows there’s only one place she’ll find answers – behind the locked door of her spare room, where the remains of her mother’s hoard lie hidden.As Heather uncovers both objects and memories, will the truth set her free? Or will she discover she’s more like her mother than she ever thought possible?A powerful, uplifting story about love, loss and the things we leave behind, perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and The Keeper of Lost Things.

As a child, FIONA was constantly teased for two things: having her nose in a book and living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least she’s found a career that puts her runaway imagination to use.

Fiona’s first book was published in 2006 and she now has twenty-six published books under her belt. She started her career writing heartfelt but humorous romances for Mills & Boon, but now writes romantic comedies and feel-good women’s fiction for HQ, including The Little Shop of Hopes and Dreams, which was a Kindle bestseller in 2015. She is a previous winner of the Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Award, has had five books shortlisted for a RoNA Award and won the ‘Best Short Romance’ at the Festival of Romance for three consecutive years.

Fiona lives in London with her husband and two daughters (oh, the drama in her house!), and she loves good books, good films and anything cinnamon-flavoured. She also can’t help herself if a good tune comes on and she’s near a dance floor – you have been warned!


Copyright


An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Fiona Harper 2018

Fiona Harper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008216962

For Siân and Rose

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

CHAPTER SIXTY

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

RED COAT

The coat isn’t the orangey-red of postboxes, but the crimson of a film star’s lipstick. It has boxy shoulders and it nips in at the waist then flares out again, ending just above a pair of shapely calves. Even after all these years, every time I go to the seaside I look for a red coat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one like it.

THEN

The lady in the red coat is laughing. She smiles down at the little girl standing beside her. It’s windy today and hardly anyone is at the beach but neither of them cares. They race each other along the pier, and their shrieks of mirth blow over the railings and get lost in the vastness of the sea beyond. When they can’t run any further, when the sturdy railings stop them leaping onto the flinty waves and sprinting into the horizon, they stand there, panting. Then the woman goes and gets them both an ice cream.

The girl thinks this might be the best ice cream she’s ever had, but she doesn’t say that out loud, just in case she’s wrong. Her mummy has a really bad memory, and sometimes she wonders if hers is the same. There are so many things to keep in her head, you see. So many secrets. It’s hard to store all the memories and things for school in there, too. Maybe mint choc chip isn’t her favourite after all. Maybe she likes something else better. She really can’t remember.

They eat the cones, leaning against the railings and looking out to sea, hair flapping behind them like ribbons.

‘I think this is my favourite place in the whole wide world,’ the little girl says.

The woman nods. ‘Mine too. Whenever I come to the seaside, the first thing I do is walk to the end of the pier. It’s a place where land and sea blur into one, a place where you feel anything might be possible.’

‘Even flying?’ the little girl says, her voice full of awe.

‘Even flying,’ the woman says, smiling softly at her. ‘But maybe not today, eh? I think it’s a bit too blustery for that.’

‘Can we come back tomorrow, then?’

‘Of course,’ the woman says, turning to stare out to sea again. ‘We’ve come here every day so far and we can come back every day after if you’d like.’

The little girl thinks about this for a while as she eats her ice cream. Where could they fly to? France or Spain, maybe even Africa? She’s not sure she’s got the right clothes for hot weather, though, so she turns to ask the woman what she should wear and discovers her companion is no longer smiling.

She’s so still, her eyes so empty, that for a moment the little girl is reminded of the dummies in the window of C&A.

‘What’s the matter, Aunty?’ the little girl asks. ‘Are you sad?’

For a long time the lady doesn’t move, but then she turns to look at the girl. Her mouth bends upwards but her eyes still have the same faraway look they did when she was staring out across the grey, choppy waves.

‘A little,’ she says and her eyeballs get all shiny.

The girl takes an extra-big slurp of her ice cream and then she reaches out for the woman’s free hand. They’re very pretty hands. They’re clean and she always has such shiny nail polish. Today, it’s red to match her coat. ‘Why are you sad?’

The woman kneels down so she’s at eye level with the girl. ‘Only because I know this lovely holiday will have to end soon,’ she says, ‘but I’m having so much fun with you I don’t want it to.’

The girl grins. ‘Me neither! Can we just stay here forever, Aunty? Please, please, please?’

The seaside is much, much better than home. There’s no shouting or shut doors and there’s room. Room to run. Room to breathe. Sometimes, when she and Aunty are out together the little girl just spends ages making her chest puff in and out, feeling the salt at the back of her tongue and the clean coldness in her chest.

Before the woman can answer the girl, her scoop of ice cream slides off her cornet and onto the rough planks of the pier. ‘Silly me!’ she says as she looks at it. ‘Raspberry ripple is my favourite, too!’ She delves into her shiny black handbag, picks out a tissue and mops the sticky mess from her fingers.

‘Don’t cry!’ the girl says as a tear slides down the woman’s face. She holds her cornet out. ‘I know it’s only mint choc chip, but you can share mine.’

That makes the woman smile properly, but for some reason the tears fall even harder. She takes a tiny lick and then hands the cone back to the girl. ‘Thank you, Heather,’ she says, and the girl thinks nobody has ever said her name in such a lovely way before, all soft and husky with their eyes full of sunshine.

The little girl hugs the woman, holding her arm out so she doesn’t get pale-green ice cream on the smart red coat. ‘I love you, Aunty,’ she says as she presses her face against the scratchy sleeve.

‘I love you too.’

They hold each other for a long time and then they walk back down the pier hand in hand. When they reach the end, the girl starts to turn right, towards the crazy golf. The woman starts to go that way too, but then she stops. The girl tugs her hand but she doesn’t move. She’s staring at something across the road. The girl can’t see what, because a fat man eating a warm doughnut is in her way, but then his friend calls him and he hurries off. Aunty starts walking briskly.

‘We’re going the wrong way!’ the girl says as they trot along. ‘We’re supposed to be going to the crazy golf!’

‘Not this afternoon,’ the woman replies. She’s looking straight ahead and her voice is all tight. ‘We’ll go back to the B&B and play cards and eat cheese-and-onion crisps, your favourite. How about that?’

The girl nods, even though that’s not what she wants to do. The woman has been very kind bringing her on this holiday and she doesn’t want to be ungrateful, but she also doesn’t understand. Aunty looks worried, and crazy golf has never made her worried before. The only time she has looked scared on their holiday so far was the moment when the special train that climbs up the cliff lurched as it started its journey. She held tight onto the railing and wouldn’t look down when the girl tried to show her how small the people were getting.

The girl has to run a little bit to keep up with the woman as they head back to the B&B. Her head is bobbing up and down, which makes looking over her shoulder difficult, but she eventually manages to do it. There’s nothing there to be worried about behind them, though. Only a policeman, and he’s giving directions to an old couple with white hair. He’s not even looking their way.

CHAPTER ONE

DAISY CHAIN

I pick up a yellowing atlas with a musty-smelling cover. There’s something inside, something that pushes the pages apart, inviting investigation. A bookmark, I suppose. I could be contrary and choose a different place to open the book but I let the pages fall where they want to. There’s no bookmark, just a circle of crushed flowers, pressed flat and paper thin. Daisies. If I touch them, the petals might crumble. I don’t have many memories of my childhood, but I remember putting this here. This is my first daisy chain, the one my sister, Faith, showed me how to make. She taught me to choose the ones with the fattest, hairiest stems, and how to use my fingernail to make a half-moon in the plump green flesh so they didn’t break. Yet they were still so fragile, so easy to crush without meaning to.

NOW

Heather shouldn’t be there. Everything inside her tells her to turn around, walk briskly out of the shop and run back to her car, but she doesn’t. Instead, she stops in front of a display rack of shoes. She imagines the feet that will go inside them – pink and pudgy, with unbelievably small toes that beg to be kissed.

How can something so innocent be so dangerous?

A pair catches her eye. They aren’t bright and gaudy like many of the others, shouting their cheerfulness. They are tiny. Delicate. Made of cream corduroy with yellow and white daisies embroidered over the toes and a mother-of-pearl button instead of a buckle. Maybe that’s why she reaches out and touches them, even though she knows she shouldn’t. Maybe that’s why she lets her fingers run over the tiny, furry ridges of the fabric.

As soon as she makes contact, she knows she’s crossed a threshold. That’s it now. Even though she’s telling herself inside her head that she can stop herself this time, she knows she’s going to do it. She knows these are the ones.

She pulls her hand back and shoves it in her jacket pocket, anchors it there by making a fist, then browses the adjacent stand: floppy sun hats for doll-sized heads, pastel socks all lined up in pleasing pairs. She tries to forget about the shoes.

She wanders round the ground floor of the Bromley branch of Mothercare, a path she’s taken so many times now that she does it automatically. She’s been coming here for years, just browsing, just looking at the miniature clothes, all clean and bright and smelling of hope, even though she has no child at home. But it’s changed from how it used to be. It’s no longer a leisure activity; it’s a compulsion.

As she walks she notices the blonde sales assistant – the bossy one with the sharp eyes – is busy serving a small queue at the till. The other one, the new one, is attempting to show a heavily pregnant woman how to collapse one of the prams on display, but she can’t work out how to do it. Both sales assistant and customer are totally absorbed in the search for the right button or catch. Heather can’t see anyone else on duty.

That’s when she does it.

That’s when she turns swiftly and walks back to the rack of shoes, her feet making hardly any sound on the vinyl floor. That’s when her hands become someone else’s, when she slides the plastic hanger holding the daisy shoes off the pole and into her handbag.

She looks around. The sales assistants are still occupied, neither looking her way. No one shouts. No one comes running. So with her heart punching against her ribcage, she heads for the exit, doing her best to pretend this is a normal Saturday afternoon.

When she finally makes it through the doors and the warm spring air hits her, she has to hold back the urge to vomit. She walks down the pedestrianized section of the High Street, blinking furiously, not really caring where she’s going.

A little voice in her head tells her to go back, to reverse what she’s just done, to slide the shoes back where they belong – no one will ever know! – or even better, she should just surreptitiously pull them out of her bag once she’s back inside the shop, go up to the till and hand the cash over.

Heather starts running then, shame, regret and disgust with herself powering her strides, and she doesn’t stop until she’s at the top of the multi-storey car park, standing outside her car. She doesn’t remember pressing the button for the lift, or pushing her ticket into the parking machine and pulling it out again while it spat out her change. She doesn’t care, though. She just dives inside her car and yanks the door closed, shutting the world outside, insulating herself from what she’s just done.

She throws her handbag onto the passenger seat and braces her hands on the steering wheel. It’s the only way she can get them to stop shaking.

CHAPTER TWO

NOW

Heather is tempted to park around the corner from her flat, even though she knows it’s a stupid idea. It won’t stop the police finding her. They might have tailed her all the way from Bromley High Street and down the hill into the depths of Shortlands. Or they could just look up her registration with the DVLA and find out where her flat is. They have computers in their cars that do that now. She’s seen them on TV.

She parks on the drive, as close to the front door as possible, then grabs her handbag and scurries into the large Victorian house. It was probably once the dwelling of a well-to-do middle-class family, but now it has been carved into three flats, nice but not particularly upmarket. Heather has her head down when she arrives in the hallway, her legs working hard to carry her to her front door as fast as possible. It’s only when she spots a pair of soft, brown desert boots in her field of vision that she stops and looks up.

‘Great,’ the owner of the boots says. ‘I was hoping I’d run into you.’

Heather tries to say something but her mouth has gone dry. ‘R-really?’ she stammers.

He smiles and nods. Even that small gesture has the power to cause her stomach to produce an Olympic-worthy somersault. Perfect tens from all the judges.

He runs his hand through hair that probably needs a cut. ‘Yeah… I’m having plumbing issues. A guy has been round to take a look, and it’s sorted for now, but he told Carlton the whole house might need seeing to, so don’t be surprised if he gets in contact.’

Heather nods. She doesn’t like Carlton, their landlord, much – he’s nosy, always wanting an excuse to get inside her flat and poke around – but she hasn’t had any issues with her water supply, so she reckons she’s probably safe for now. ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ she says quietly.

Jason puts a foot on the bottom stair, preparing to return to his first-floor flat. As he does, it breaks Heather’s trance and she remembers why she’s hurrying towards her front door, why her handbag is burning underneath her arm. She starts to move but he turns and smiles that smile again. She has to try very hard not to reach out for the cool, solid wall for support.

‘We never did get a raincheck on that coffee,’ he says, looking straight into her eyes. Usually, she finds it hard to maintain eye contact with other people, but with Jason it’s not as difficult. ‘My sisters clubbed together and bought me one of those fancy pod machines for my birthday. Don’t suppose you want to help me christen it?’

She feels as if everything inside her is straining towards him, even as she grips her handbag tighter against her body with her elbow. He must see her hesitation, because then he adds, ‘Or there’s always good old instant. I make a mean cup of instant, even if I do say so myself.’

The contents of the handbag burn hotter against her torso and she looks helplessly at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, ‘I can’t today…’ and then, before he can begin to unpick her shabby excuse, she turns and heads for her door. It’s only when it’s closed safely again and she’s leaning against it that she feels her pulse start to slow.

She exhales loudly. Jason Blake. He’s been living here for a few months now, and every time she bumps into him she feels like this. She thought it would wear off after a while, but if anything it’s getting worse.

She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the image of him, his long limbs relaxed and easy, his brown eyes smiling at her, and then she opens her eyes, pushes herself up so she’s bearing her whole weight on her feet again, and walks down the hallway to her living room.

Just being in here makes it easy to breathe again.

The living room of her flat is at the back of the house, leading onto a long, narrow garden that all the tenants share. She walks over to the large bay window with the French doors and stares outside. Jason moans that the garden is stuck in the 1950s. He hates the two thin flowerbeds flanking each fence, with the concrete path down one side, but Heather quite likes it. It’s soothing.

Also soothing is this room, her oasis. It has the minimum of furniture – a sofa, one armchair and a bookcase. A TV and a small dining table with a vase on it. She doesn’t believe in owning things that don’t get used regularly. They’re a waste of space and energy and emotion.

She likes the way she can stand in the middle of the room, close her eyes, and know that nothing is within touching distance. She does that now – closes her eyes – and the feeling of space, of knowing the walls are white and unmarked, that all of the books in the bookcase are perfectly lined up, that the fake hydrangea in the vase on the table will never drop a dry, dead petal, helps her to feel more like herself.

But then the handbag under her arm begins to burn again and she remembers she has one last thing to do. She walks back through the hallway (more white walls, no photos or prints to break up the space) and past the kitchen (sides swept clean of every crumb, all the teaspoons curled up behind each other in the cutlery draw), and stops outside a door.

Heather doesn’t think of this room as her second bedroom. It’s the flat’s second bedroom, foreign territory in her little kingdom. She stares at the brass knob for a few seconds. She can feel the calm she generated only a few moments ago in the living room starting to slip and slide, but she knows she has to do this. It’s the only way.

The long key sits waiting in the lock and she turns it, bracing herself against what she is about to see, against what she will try very hard not to look at before she shuts the door again, and then her hand closes around the doorknob, cold and slick, and she twists it open.

It feels as if the contents of the room are rushing towards her, as if they’re all fighting, climbing, spilling, falling over each other to reach her first. It takes all her willpower not to stagger back and run away.

From floor to ceiling, all she can see is stuff. Her mother’s stuff, crammed into the room in teetering piles. Stuff that came from her old family home, a house that Heather had not been allowed inside for years and never wanted to visit any more anyway. All this clutter is hers now, left to her in a will she didn’t even know existed and was shocked anyone was able to find. The cardboard boxes, the old suitcases, the plastic containers and carrier bags. All of it. All those things filled with stuff she doesn’t want and doesn’t care about. Just looking at it makes her want to go and take a shower.

She looks to the front of the hoard, to where there is a two-metre-square patch of carpet, holding out like a plucky little beach against the tide of belongings surging towards the door. Down on one side is a small chest of drawers. Piles of old newspapers and magazines threaten to slide off it when she tugs open the middle drawer, but she does it quickly, trying to kid herself that she’s doing it on automatic, that she’s really not taking any of this in.

The drawer is full of her guilt. She quickly pulls the tiny corduroy shoes from her bag and stuffs them inside, pushing down assorted baby hats, rompers, stuffed farm animals and blankets – all with the price tags still attached – to make room for the latest addition. Then she shoves the drawer closed again, backs away into the hallway, and shuts the door so hard her own bedroom door rattles in sympathy.

It stars to ebb away then, the itchy, scratchy feeling she’s been having all day, the one that made her go into Mothercare in the first place. She sinks to the floor, her back against the wall, and stares at the brilliant-white gloss of the door she’s just closed, trying as hard as she can to let its clean blankness blot out the knowledge of what lies behind it.

CHAPTER THREE

NOW

It’s a double-edged experience for Heather as she leaves her flat on Sunday morning and heads off to her sister’s in Westerham. On the one hand, it’s a relief. Even though she does her best to ignore it, there’s a radar-blip deep inside her, always pulsing – the awareness of all the stuff lurking behind the faceless door of her spare room – but its intermittent throb lessens in intensity and frequency as she joins the A21 and heads out into north Kent. On the other hand, she’s out there. Exposed. And the locks on her doors, the ones keeping all that stuff safe and secret, seem flimsier with each mile she travels from home.

It only takes half an hour to get to Faith’s. The red-brick Victorian houses, pre-war semis, and chunky blocks of flats of Bromley slowly give way to fields and hedgerows, country pubs and rows of flint cottages. Faith says Mum and Dad used to bring them to the little commuter village when they were kids. Before the divorce, obviously. Before things got so crowded in their mother’s head. But Heather doesn’t remember that. She doesn’t remember very much of her childhood at all.

She used to think everyone was like that, that anything before the age of thirteen was just smudges of sound and scent and colour in people’s memories, like the inkling of a dream after waking, but she’s since discovered that some people have crystal-clear memories of their early years: who their first teacher was, what kind of cake they had for their best-ever birthday, stories their parents used to tell them before they went to sleep.

She doesn’t worry about this, though. Mostly because she doesn’t want to remember any of it anyway. The tiny snatches that do try and poke through the fog aren’t that pleasant.

All except one. The holiday with Aunt Kathy at the seaside. Lovely Aunt Kathy with her dark curls and her red coat. Heather doesn’t mind letting that one come.

She’s smiling when she pulls up outside Faith’s house, thinking of candyfloss, jeans rolled up over pale calves, and icy water on her toes, of running out of reach of the waves and then back again, just to tease them into catching her once more.

Faith’s front door opens before Heather is fully out of the car, and her sister stands there, waiting. She isn’t smiling but she isn’t cross either. Just neutral, accepting the monthly visit as she always does.

Faith is three years older than Heather. She has the same gradually darkening blonde hair that won’t keep a wave, no matter how deft she is with the curling tongs, the same grey eyes. They are exactly the same height, but her sister has always seemed taller. Heather has never quite been able to work out why.

Heather follows Faith inside. Her brother-in-law, Matthew, wanders into the hallway from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a tea towel, and gives Heather a proper smile. ‘I keep wanting to do a roast, but there’s never enough time after church, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with slow-cooker casserole again,’ he says with a smile.

Heather nods and smiles back. She likes Matthew. He always treats her as if she’s just another one of the family. Normal, in other words. Lots of people would shrug off that label, thinking it boring, but Heather would love to embrace it. For a couple of hours a month, Matthew makes it seem as if that might be possible.

But then Heather thinks of the chest of drawers in her spare room, the one containing all her dirty secrets in pastel colours, and she starts to doubt herself again. She doesn’t let Faith or Matthew see it, though. She keeps smiling, she says the right greetings and asks after the children, whom she can hear stampeding in another part of the house. They’re the only reason she keeps this monthly ‘duty’ date with her sister. She can feel her heart thudding in anticipation of seeing them again.

As if on cue, they come thundering down the stairs at the sound of an unfamiliar voice in the hall and then stop short, staring at her shyly, as they always do at the beginning of a visit. Alice is six and Barney is three. She wants to go and hug them so much. She yearns to feel their tiny arms around her. She wants to rest her chin on their soft hair and just breathe them in, but now they’re all standing there staring at each other and the moment to lean in naturally for a cuddle has passed.

Thankfully, Alice saves Heather with one of her usual blunt questions. ‘Did you bring any presents for us? Aunty Sarah always brings presents.’

Barney nods seriously as his sister watches on.

‘Barney wants to know if you’ve brought chocolate,’ Alice adds, translating her little brother’s gesture.

Heather shakes her head, silently disgruntled with Matthew’s beneficent sister. ‘Sorry, no chocolate today, or toys.’ She risks a glance at Faith. ‘Mummy says you already have lots and lots of toys.’

It happens then – one of those moments that rarely flashes between the two sisters. Just like Alice, Heather is able to translate the look her sibling gives her, an expression on Faith’s face, both knowing and grateful, that for once acknowledges their shared past, their shared hatred of extraneous stuff.

‘But I will play any game you want after dinner,’ Heather adds, hoping that the gift of quality time – something she would have killed for when she was younger – has not gone out of fashion in this era of brightly coloured electronic worlds accessed with the swipe of a chubby finger.

Barney looks blank, but Alice pipes up. ‘I get to pick what game?’ she asks brightly, and Heather nods. Alice is pleased with this response. She smiles to herself and skips off towards the living room, leaving Heather to wonder if it’s right that a six-year-old should look quite so much as if she’s cooking up a plan.

Heather follows her sister and brother-in-law into the kitchen, where pans are boiling on the hob and delicious smells are wafting from a large slow cooker. She watches her sister as she and Matthew bustle round each other, putting the finishing touches to the meal. When he puts an easy hand on Faith’s hip as he reaches past her for a wooden spoon, Heather looks away. It seems too intimate. Too much. Too much to watch, anyway. It’s been so long since someone of the opposite sex touched Heather that she can’t even remember if a man’s fingers have ever rested on her hip that way.

Faith doesn’t even notice the affectionate touch, and that makes Heather sad. And maybe a little bit angry. She’s reminded of her mother, who amassed so much stuff that even her treasures were lost in the sheer volume of her possessions. This seems to be the same kind of wastefulness. Faith has also amassed much – but it comes in the shape of love and people, not things, so now the moments that would be treasured by Heather if she were in Faith’s place are buried and lost in the fullness of her sister’s life.

Once again, it causes Heather to wonder how they turned out so differently. Is it just that she’s broken, damaged, in a way that Faith never was? And how could that be, after the childhood that they both endured?

She waits for Faith’s mask to slip, prods the robustness of her sister’s smile each time it appears. But either Faith is much, much better at this game than Heather is, or her sister has attained the thing that has eluded Heather all her life: she’s moved on. She’s over it.

If that’s the case, Heather isn’t sure whether to worship her or hate her. Faith knows, you see. She knows what’s behind Heather’s façade. She has an understanding that can never be gained from a distance, by studying and logical analysis. This is knowledge that comes from experience, from being flung in the mess and the chaos and struggling through it to come out the other side. Even though they frequently think to themselves that they would rather just cut each other loose so they no longer have to deal with each other, it is this shared struggle that binds the two sisters together. Another thing to blame their mother for.

As the aroma of the cooking chicken intensifies, wrapping the country kitchen in a herby fog, Faith marshals her troops. ‘Come on, you lot! Time to lay the table.’ They snap to attention and set to work without a word of communication. Matthew grabs the crockery out of the cupboard and Alice helps with the knives and forks, although Matthew has to switch them all around when she’s finished. Even Barney has been given a job, and he carefully puts coasters next to each setting.

The table looks lovely, with Faith’s blue and white Calico china and a jug full of flowers from the garden in the centre. Faith’s family are lovely too – the kids are just naughty enough to still be adorable as they whine about the casserole having mushrooms and refuse to eat their peas, and Matthew sometimes looks across at his wife and smiles. Not for any reason that Heather can see. Just because.

It makes her feel as if there’s a gaping hole in her chest, one that is only lightly papered over by her summer blouse and, as she eats the buttery mashed potatoes and creamy sauce, she imagines what it would be like if this were her dining table, if it were her husband sitting at the head, smiling at her. She wants it so much it almost makes her gasp.

Unbidden, a picture of Jason pops into her head. She wants to swipe it away again, because it feels foolish to have him there, even though it’s only within the private confines of her own mind, but she can’t quite bring herself to do it when she sees the way he’s smiling at her. However, her imagination falls down when it comes to filling Alice and Barney’s seats. It seems, even in her fantasies, she can’t allow herself to hope quite that much. She snaps back into the real world to find Faith looking at her, weighing her up, and Heather starts to resent her sister just a little bit more.

How did you do it? she wants to yell. How did you manage all this? It’s just not fair.

And why hasn’t she whispered her secrets to Heather? Why has she guarded them so closely, so jealously? Surely sisters are supposed to share? Only maybe they don’t, Heather thinks bitterly, when you grew up in a home where everything was defined by what you possessed.

When they’ve finished the main course, Heather tells Matthew to sit as she clears and stacks the plates and takes them into the kitchen. Heather always finds this part of the afternoon wearying. Faith will be cross if she doesn’t offer to help, but when she does, Faith just shoos her back into the dining room.

Alice is showing off a bracelet made of neon plastic beads she made at a friend’s party, and is insisting her aunt has a better look, so Heather slides into her sister’s empty seat to do just that. It’s nice, being there, Matthew on one side, Alice next to her and Barney opposite and, as she listens to her niece chattering away, a warm feeling spreads through her chest.

But then Faith returns with the apple crumble to place in the centre of the table. She stops short and shoots her sister a territorial look. Heather slides off the chair and skulks back to her seat next to Barney, and Faith is reinstalled upon her fashionably distressed oak throne.

When dessert is finished, they all tramp dutifully in the direction of the study. It’s time for Faith’s weekly Skype call with their father, who currently lives in Spain, and when Heather is here she’s expected to show some family spirit and join in.

Heather hates it. Not that she doesn’t love her father – she does – but it feels like she’s playing a part for the black pinhole at the top of the computer monitor. Say ‘cheese’, everyone. Pretend you’re one big happy family!

Matthew sets up the connection and moments later Heather sees her father’s smiling face, while Shirley, their stepmother of more than fifteen years, bustles around in the background, leaning in for a wave, but then discreetly disappearing. Probably to dust something. From the sublime to the ridiculous, Heather thinks, although she understands why Shirley’s military cleanliness must be soothing for her father.

‘Hey, there!’ their father says, and Faith gets the kids to tell him what they’ve been doing at school and pre-school respectively. They have some finger painting and spellings to show him, all prepared and laying ready on the desk. Faith fills him in on the wonderfulness of her domestic life, turning the taste of the custard that accompanied the apple crumble a little sour in Heather’s mouth, and then, before Heather can think of anything to say or plan an escape route, it’s her turn. She smiles weakly at the camera.

‘Hi, Dad,’ she says, feeling her sister’s eyes on her, monitoring her levels of family participation and judging her accordingly.

‘Hey, Sweetpea,’ he replies, using the nickname he gave her that everyone else has forgotten. ‘How’s work?’

Heather breathes out. Work is a safe subject. Work is good.

‘Going well. I’ve only got about four months left of this contract now, though, so I’m on the lookout for another post.’

‘Anything on the horizon?’

She shrugs. ‘There’s a senior archivist position in Eltham I’m interested in, but I’m not sure I’ve got enough experience yet, so we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work at Sandwood Park.’

‘Ah,’ her father says, nodding, then goes on to quote the first line of a novel. ‘That’s one of his, isn’t it?’ he adds brightly.

Heather nods. Sandwood Park used to be the home of the celebrated author Cameron Linford. His widow died recently and donated the house to a private trust. It’s due to be opened to the public in a month or two, and it’s Heather’s job to sort and catalogue the masses of documents chronicling the couple’s life: diaries, letters, financial ledgers, and photographs.

‘Found any missing literary masterpieces?’ her father asks with a twinkle in his eye. He always makes this joke and Heather always gives him the same response.

‘Not yet. But I’ll keep hunting.’

The shared moment of humour doesn’t do its job, though. Instead of connecting father and daughter, it only highlights the distance between them. Maybe it would be better if Heather did this when she was on her own – video chatted from the safety of her own flat without Faith scrutinizing her every word – but she never does that. She’s pulled the app up on her iPad a few times but always stops short of pressing the screen to connect.

Thankfully, the kids are eager to show off to their grandpa again, allowing Heather to relinquish centre stage. Alice conducts her little brother in a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, bringing the call to a dazzling finale.

When the monitor is blank again, Matthew goes off to settle the kids in front of the TV, but Faith hangs back.

‘Are we going to join the others?’ Heather asks. Even though she comes here every month, she’s never sure what to do, what the right or natural thing is.

‘If I have to watch even one more episode of Peppa Pig I might just shoot myself,’ Faith says drily, but then she turns to look at Heather. ‘We’ll go through in a second. Before that I have something I need to discuss with you…’

Heather’s stomach swoops. She and Faith never ‘discuss’ stuff. They’re polite, cordial, and matter-of-fact with each other, none of which involves sharing anything of any depth. After all the rows they had both before and after their mother died, they’ve allowed a crust of civility to harden over their relationship, and they both like it that way. ‘Ok-ay…’ she says warily.

‘Do you still have Mum’s things?’

A flash of cold runs through Heather, as if she’s just sprinted full-pelt into a wall of ice. Faith has blindsided her and being forced to think about ‘that room’ without her carefully constructed mental defences in place pulls her chest tight and her jaw even tighter. ‘W-what?’

‘Mum’s stuff,’ Faith repeats, frowning slightly. ‘You have some old family photos, right?’

Heather can’t speak. Her mouth has gone dry. Thinking specifically about what sits in her spare room has a tendency to do that to her. She nods.

‘Well, Alice has a school project. She needs photos of both Matthew and me as children, and I wondered if you could root one out?’

It would be odd for most people not to have photographs of themselves when they were young, ones passed on by parents, maybe when they moved out of home for the first time or started a family. Heather wishes she could play that card now, just tell her sister to go and hunt through the storage boxes in her vast attic, but she knows she can’t. It’s not that the photos don’t exist, just that they’re lost. Buried. At least, that’s what she assumes.

‘I… I don’t even know if I have them,’ she stammers, hoping against hope that Faith will let this drop.

Faith gives her a sideways look. A ‘Heather’s being difficult again’ kind of look that only a big sister can bestow. ‘Well, can you at least have a rummage around, see if you can lay your hands on any? After all, Mum didn’t leave any to me, just to you.’

Ah, there it is. The dig. She knew this was coming. Faith always wheels this out when she wants to guilt Heather into doing something, even though they both know being left out of the will was an act of kindness. If anything, Heather should be using that to hold Faith to ransom.

The thought of going through her mother’s possessions makes Heather feel physically sick. She wants to yell at Faith, tell her to do it herself, but she can’t let Faith see inside that room. She’d be even more disappointed with Heather than she already is. But Heather can’t rummage (just thinking the word makes her stomach churn) in there either. She’s stuck.

Faith sees the war going on behind Heather’s carefully schooled features and snorts. ‘You’re always so precious about Mum’s stuff, although God only knows why!’

Heather flinches. Not precious, she thinks, anything but. She’d rather let dust balls grow to the size of watermelons under her sofa than go in that room and really look around. It holds too many secrets. Too many horrible, horrible things.

Faith puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s for Alice!’ she says, exasperated. ‘I know it’s a stretch to get you to do anything for me, but I thought, since it was for the niece you supposedly adore, that maybe just for once you’d act like you were part of this family and show some loyalty.’

It stabs Heather in the heart to hear this. She does adore Alice, even though she suspects the six-year-old is on the verge of mastering her mother’s disapproving look every time her aunt steps over the threshold. She so badly wants the kids to love her, for them to be able to come for days out and sleepovers, but once again that stupid room is getting in the way of anything good happening.

‘You don’t understand,’ she mutters.

Faith’s voice is silky smooth. ‘No, of course I don’t. How could I? Because Heather is special, Heather is different, no one understands her.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s probably my fault,’ she says more to herself than to her sister. ‘I should have been tougher, shouldn’t have let you play the victim for so long, but I just…’ She trails off, shaking her head again.

Heather glares at her sister. She’s always known that the blame lies at her own door. She doesn’t need Faith to remind her.

Faith breathes out, regains some of her usual composure. It’s unlike her to lash out like this, to actually put words to the resentment Heather knows simmers under the surface. Pointed looks and a here-she-goes-again attitude usually describe Faith’s demeanour when dealing with her younger sibling.

‘Look…’ she begins, softening slightly. ‘I know you have… issues. But you don’t have to let them define you. I haven’t! Mainly because I got help, talked to people. There’s a really good person at our church. I’m sure she could fit you in if I asked her nicely.’

‘No.’ Heather’s response is firm and low.

Faith just stares at her. ‘Fine,’ she eventually says, her eyes narrowing. ‘But I’m starting to suspect you actually enjoy being this way, because you won’t get help, you won’t let anyone close.’

Seeing no change in Heather’s shut-down expression, Faith gives up and heads for the living room, obviously preferring the hated Peppa Pig instead of the company of her one and only sister. ‘Just find a bloody photo for Alice,’ she says over her shoulder as she walks away. ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to come and dig one out myself. It’s the least you can do for this family.’

Heather shivers and wraps her arms around her middle. That can’t happen, she thinks. It just can’t. She’ll find some way of putting Faith off, maybe even scour the internet for old pictures that could have been Faith when she was younger and print them off.

She slopes into the living room and perches on a chair in the corner, more there for decoration than because it’s comfortable to sit on. Faith steadily ignores her as the children jump up and down, acting out parts of Peppa’s story as it unfolds brightly on the screen. The cartoon shows a made-up world where everyone fits in, where every story has a happy ending, and every child gets kissed goodnight before they fall soundly asleep in their own bed.

After four episodes, Matthew clicks the TV off. The children moan in unison, then Alice turns round and spies her aunt. Heather has been trying to blend into the wallpaper, just counting down the minutes until she can leave without Faith throwing another hissy fit.

‘Aunty Heather, you promised you’d play a game with us!’

Heather nods. Thank goodness. One shining moment in an otherwise crappy afternoon. Anything to distract herself from looking at the back of Faith’s head, when she knows her older sister is just sitting there, stewing. She smiles warmly as Alice comes running towards her, trailed by her little brother.

‘What do you want to play? Snap? That Disney-princess board game I got you for Christmas?’

Alice shakes her head and then glances at Barney, who is grinning, her obvious accomplice.

‘We want to play hide-and-seek,’ she says firmly.

The smile freezes on Heather’s face. ‘What?’

Alice rolls her eyes, a perfect reproduction of her mother. ‘Hide-and-seek, silly! You know, one person counts while the others hide? And then you have to try and find us. Only, I’m counting first because it was my idea, which means it’s my game.’

Heather shakes her head, her neck so stiff that the side-to-side movement is only barely perceptible. ‘I can’t play hide-and-seek,’ she whispers.

Alice folds her arms. ‘You promised,’ she says, with the air of someone producing a winning card.

Heather shakes her head again. ‘Sorry, darling. It’s just that I hate… I just can’t…’ She looks helplessly at Faith, who has now turned her head and is watching the exchange, frowning. Her sister just tightens her jaw and says nothing. ‘I’ll play anything else you want,’ Heather adds. ‘As many times as you like. For hours and hours!’

It’s then that Alice’s eyes fill with tears. Her bottom lip wobbles impressively. ‘But you promised!’

Heather’s eyes threaten to fill too, but she manages to squeeze the tears away. Who knows what Faith will say if she has a total meltdown this afternoon, on top of everything else? ‘Sorry,’ she whispers.

Alice runs off crying, followed by a bemused-looking Barney. Heather catches Faith’s eye. ‘Everything has to be on your terms, doesn’t it?’ she says in a low voice, thick with disapproval. ‘Always by your rules and within your boundaries.’

‘That’s not true!’ Heather blurts out, surprising herself.

Faith just looks back at her. ‘Then go and tell the little girl who’s sobbing her heart out on her bed you’ve changed your mind.’

Heather stares back at her, unable to respond.

Faith huffs and stands up. ‘Exactly,’ she says. ‘Like I said: on your terms or not at all. I honestly don’t know why you bother coming to these Sunday dinners if you’re going to be like this.’

One tear slides down Heather’s face, but it doesn’t melt her sister’s frosty expression at all. Faith marches towards the door and, just before she leaves the room, she rests a hand on the jamb and turns round, shaking her head in both disgust and pity. ‘You know, sometimes you’re just like Mum.’

CHAPTER FOUR

CASSANDRA

The doll is queen of this house. She stands on the corner of the highest bookshelf, surveying her kingdom. The stuff climbs like a mountain towards her, a worshipper reaching for its god. Her eyes are clear and blue, haughty, her glossy brown ringlets perfect, her miniature faux-Victorian dress pink and delicate. Who can compete with the cold porcelain skin of her face and arms? Who can match the rosy cheeks and coral painted lips?

THEN

‘One… Two… Three… Four…’

Heather runs as Faith starts counting, her heart jumping in her chest. She has to find the best hiding place this time, one her sister will never guess, because Faith always wins at hide-and-seek. She always catches Heather quickly, shaking her head and telling her younger sister she’s an ‘amateur’, even though Heather isn’t really sure what that is. Someone who’s really bad at playing hide-and-seek, she supposes. She just hopes she knows as many big words as Faith does when she’s ten years old.

Heather thinks hard about a hiding place as she runs away. She can’t just race around giggling, like she did last time. She makes herself slow down. It’s not hard, though, because no one can run really fast in their house. There’s too much stuff in the way.

As soon as Faith started counting, Heather set off down one of the ‘rabbit trails’. Heather’s not quite sure why her sister calls them that – she’s never seen any bunnies in their house.

The trails are the paths between the stuff. They have lots of stuff. There are books and papers, plastic containers full of things Heather’s mummy doesn’t like her to touch. There are clothes, lots and lots of clothes. They’re piled high on the armchair and the table where the family used to eat their dinner. There are toys too, some old and broken, which Heather’s mummy says she’ll fix one day, and some still with tags on that Heather couldn’t play with even if she wanted to, because they’re so high up she can’t reach them. Some of the piles of stuff are so big that sometimes, when she looks up, they seem to lean over and look at her, trying to decide whether they should fall on her or not. She doesn’t like it when they do that.

There are also lots of things Heather’s mummy says she’s going to get around to throwing away when she’s not so tired. Maybe that will be when Heather’s daddy stops working so much and spends more time in the house. She overheard her parents arguing about that the other night. She also once overheard Aunty Kathy joke their house was like an Aladdin’s cave, only full of crap instead of treasure.

Heather’s not allowed to say that word Aunty Kathy said. Patrick Hull said it once at school and Miss Perrins made him sit in the corner then had to have a quiet word with his mum when she came to collect him.

Miss Perrins has had quiet words with Heather’s mummy quite a few times too, but not because she says anything naughty. Heather’s not exactly sure what the quiet words were, because Mummy and Miss Perrins were talking in the hallway, but it looked important and Miss Perrins’ face wasn’t smiley like usual.

She thinks it was about her school uniform one time (Mummy lost it under all the other clothes in the house and Heather had to wear her denim pinafore dress to school instead), and another time was when Heather was really itchy and the little insects from Fluffy the cat kept biting her tummy so she kept scratching instead of doing her spellings. Sometimes they hid in her jumper and came to school with her, and then they bit the other children too. Faith called them ‘bloody little hitchhikers’ but her teacher didn’t hear her say that so she didn’t have to sit in the corner. There were more quiet words after that, because the boys started calling her ‘Hobo Heather’ at playtime and wouldn’t stop chasing her.

Heather’s mummy has never been cross with her about the quiet words, though. Afterwards, she just comes home, lies on the sofa in front of the TV, and cries. She hugs Heather and tells her she’s a good girl, that it’s not Heather’s fault and that she’s going to do better from now on.

Heather is trying her hardest to move silently through the dining room when she hears Faith stop counting. It’s difficult to stay completely quiet, because of all the old plastic cartons and scrunchy cellophane that seem to collect on the floor in their house, and her feet slip on bits of paper and clothes that fall off the top of the piles.

‘Hea-ther!’ Faith calls in a sing-song voice. ‘I’m coming to get you!’

Heather starts to move faster. She’s not even thinking about giggling now and her heart is beating extra-hard. She’s got to find somewhere, somewhere small, somewhere Faith won’t expect.

Heather turns and heads up the stairs. Her feet are smaller than Faith’s and she finds the gaps in the piles of books and papers lining each step without making them fall over. When her foot hits the clear patch of carpet where the stairs meet the landing, she turns left and darts into the room there. This used to be her bedroom until the stuff filled it up. Once upon a time, the stuff was only downstairs and in her parents’ room, but it started to spread. Somehow the piles just kept getting bigger and bigger. Heather wonders if the big piles have babies. She asked Faith this once and her sister told her not to be stupid, but it makes sense to Heather. How else do new ones keep appearing?

So now the pile babies sleep in her room and Heather sleeps on the armchair downstairs.

She looks around the room for a good spot. She remembers that Daddy took his guitar out from under the bed and sold it to a man down the street. There’s a hole where it used to be that’s just big enough for her to climb into. Once inside, she pulls a bit of blanket down from the edge of the bed to cover herself.

Something on top of the blanket, maybe one of the piles balancing on the bed, comes crashing down and Heather freezes. Faith goes quiet too, and Heather hears footsteps coming closer and closer. Faith’s coming up the stairs! Heather holds her breath and closes her eyes, wishing she could turn herself invisible.

‘Hea-ther,’ Faith sings again. ‘You know I’m going to find you, don’t you?’

Heather wants to giggle so badly. She presses a hand over her mouth to hold it in. She can see Faith’s feet. She can just about make them out from under the edge of the blanket. Her sister is standing in the doorway.

Go away, go away, go away, she wishes inside her head.

Just as Heather thinks Faith is going to yank up the blanket and say, ‘Ha! Found you!’ her sister’s feet move. They turn and walk away. Heather’s so surprised she doesn’t breathe out again for ages, not until her chest starts to feel funny and then she gulps in air.

She can hear Faith walking around, calling her name, but her voice sounds different now. Not so pleased with herself. More fed up. Heather smiles to herself and curls up even tighter under the bed. Today she will win hide-and-seek and Faith will be the amateur!

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.

‘Yes?’ she says to Jason, who’s still got the hint of a smile on his lips, and she knows her tone has added bite because of her lousy afternoon. Another thing that’s Faith’s fault.

‘Thought I’d mow the grass and give the borders a bit of a weed,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Now the weather’s turned nicer, I was also thinking about having a barbecue – you know, the housewarming I didn’t get round to organizing – just a few friends over to have some burgers and sausages.’

Heather nods. Oh, so that’s it. While it’s a shared garden and Jason is perfectly within his rights to mow, cook or even turn cartwheels in it, he’s being polite. He’s asking if she minds. ‘Go ahead,’ she says. ‘Although it’d be nice to know the date and time when you’ve arranged it.’ That way she can make sure she keeps to the bedroom and the kitchen that afternoon, then there’s no chance of her being mistaken for an undead scarecrow again or having people peering into her space like she’s an exhibit in the reptile house at London Zoo. She might even go out.

His smile gets wider. ‘Well, I thought maybe you’d like to join us? It seems rude not to ask, especially as we’ll be hanging out right in front of your living room.’

Heather checks his face for the usual telltale signs of a pity invite: the tightness around the edges of the mouth, the narrow pupils and fixed jaw (she’s thinking of Faith’s face as she does this), but finds none of them. However, she can’t believe he’s asking because he actually wants her there, so that leaves her standing in her garden, worrying whether aphids from the nearby roses are attaching themselves to her hair, and not knowing quite what to do.

‘Okay?’ he says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to offer invitations to strangers, bring them into your world, your stuff.

There’s no excuse she can give. Not yet, anyway. So she just nods and says, ‘Okay.’ And then she turns and goes back inside her flat without looking round. She desperately wants to, though. She wants to know if he’s still smiling or if his brows are drawn together in a deep frown of confusion.

Heather heads for her bedroom, but as she passes the spare room she pauses.

It’s in there. The photo. The thing Faith wants. She doesn’t know exactly where, but it’s in there somewhere. Probably. Heather stares at the blank door for a full minute, and then she thinks to herself, Not today. I’ve had as much as I can handle today. I’ll do it soon, though. Maybe tomorrow.

CHAPTER SIX

NOW

‘She’s in tears, Heather! Everyone else in her class has brought their family-history projects in already. The teacher has given her until Monday, but that’s absolutely her last chance! I am driving over to you Sunday afternoon and picking a bloody photo up. Have you got that?’

Somehow, looking for a photograph ‘tomorrow’ had turned into the day after that, and the day after that had turned into a week, and then that week had become two. There have been texts from her sister, hard, barking little questions fired into her phone like missiles. Heather hasn’t exactly ignored them, not really, not when each one has lit a fire of shame and guilt inside her, but she hasn’t exactly replied to them either. And now it’s Friday evening, almost two weeks later, and Faith is on the warpath.

‘Yes, got it,’ Heather whispers penitently. What else can she do?

There is a relieved sigh on the other end of the line.

‘Okay.’ Mamma-Bear Faith is standing down. Heather exhales, mirroring her sister.

There is so much Heather wants to say to her: that she truly does love Alice and Barney; that she knows her sister doesn’t believe that because Heather’s just so useless at acting normal around them. But that is only because she wants so desperately to see that love reflected back in their eyes that she second-guesses every move, every word. She wants to tell Faith that she’s gutted she’s made Alice cry and feel ‘the odd one out’ with the kids at school because she knows how awful that is. But Heather says none of this. It’s as if, when it comes to Faith, her mouth is perpetually glued shut.

‘Right. I’ll give you a bell on Sunday morning to let you know what time. Matthew has a meeting after church, so it’ll depend on whether he can take the kids too or not.’

‘Okay,’ Heather says meekly, but a chill is unfurling inside her. They say their goodbyes and she puts the phone down slowly. Then, before she can chicken out, she turns and walks down the hallway and stops in front of the innocent-looking closed white door. Blood rushes so loudly in her ears that it drowns out the sound of traffic on the main road outside.

She doesn’t move for the longest time, just stares at the door, and then, when it feels as if she has almost hypnotized herself into a catatonic state by staring at the blank white paint, she reaches out and her palm closes around the door handle.

This is how to do it, she tells herself. Like it’s not real. Like it’s a dream.

She has a vague memory of something that looked like photograph albums in the left corner of the room, in a box on top of a bookcase, next to piles of her mother’s old clothes, still bagged up in black sacks. She pulls up a mental image of that box and fixes it at the front of her brain.

She inhales deeply, resists the urge to hold her breath, and twists the creaky old brass knob. The door swings open.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Just move.

She’s fine at first, as she’s crossing the bare patch of carpet near the door, even as she treads carefully down the narrow path between the boxes and bags on that side, but there’s obviously been a landslide at the back of the room. One of the storage boxes containing some bric-a-brac that was sitting atop a pile of newspapers has toppled, spilling itself gleefully over the space. She needs to go forward, but she doesn’t want to bend and clear the mess up. She doesn’t want to touch it. She doesn’t want to touch any of it.

So she doesn’t. She just keeps moving, walks over the top of the contents of the spilled box. It was what her mother did when she was alive, after all. When the ‘rabbit trails’ were devoured by the growing hoard, she’d just walk over the top, changing the topography of the house from flat carpeted floors into hills and mountains of rubbish. In her later years, they’d grown so huge that in some places they were four or five feet deep, and spaces that should have been doorways had turned into crawl spaces.

However, when Heather’s foot crunches on one of the photo frames, one that’s just a wooden surround, already having lost its glass, memories come flooding back, things that have nothing to do with this room, this hoard – the lack of light, the perpetual twilight caused by the skyscraper piles, the sting of cat urine in her nostrils and the particular smell of dirt that’s built up over years not months. A sob escapes her, but she thinks of Alice and pushes forward.

Blindly, she throws the black sacks full of clothes out of the way until she spots a ragged cardboard box, one so weak and old it might disintegrate if she tried to lift it. So she grabs the forest-green spine of what looks like a photo album, clutches it to her chest and retreats as fast as possible. It’s only when the door is safely shut behind her, the key turned in the lock, that the swirling feeling in her head stops.

She takes the photo album into her living room and lays it on the desk – a coffee table would have been the perfect spot, except Heather has no coffee table. What’s wrong with a shelf or a side table to put your mug on? A coffee table would fill up the centre of the room, rob her of that perfect, precious space in the centre of the rug. She leaves the album there, then goes back to the spare room, removes the key and carefully places it in her desk drawer. For some reason, it just doesn’t feel safe leaving it in the door any more. She then makes herself a cup of camomile tea.

When that is done, she fetches the album and sits down on one end of her sofa. As Heather turns the first few pages, the sense of uncleanness at having been in the spare room fades. When she tries to think back to her childhood, which isn’t often, most of it is just a big white fog, yet here it is – all the things she can’t remember – in colour prints, yellowing a little with age. They come rushing up off the page to meet her.

There’s her mum and dad together, actually looking happy. She’d seen her dad smile like that when he’d met Shirley, but she’d forgotten he must have looked at her mother that way too once upon a time.

How odd. The only thing that drifts through the fog when she dares to look into it are raised voices and soft male sobbing. He left when she was still in primary school, and he had just got to a place where he couldn’t take it any more. She doesn’t blame him for leaving. Who in their right mind would have wanted to stay?

She looks at the photos on the opposite page. One draws her curiosity enough for her to peel back the protective layer and prise it from the gluey lines holding it down. On the back, hastily scrawled in biro, it says ‘Kathy and Heather, Eastbourne (1994)’. Heather places it back down and smooths the cellophane over the top. They’re standing against some metal railings at the seafront. It’s sunny, but obviously windy. Aunt Kathy is smiling brightly at the person behind the lens, and so is the little girl next to her, but her hair is being blown forwards over her face so Heather can’t even see her own features. She’s holding a mint-choc-chip ice cream, though, so she doesn’t seem to care about the wind.

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.

‘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.

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.

‘Put on a good face,’ her mother always said when they left the house. So no one would guess, so no one would know. Even social services hadn’t guessed the horror that lay inside the detached house in a ‘nice’ area for years. And Heather has cultivated this approach in her adult life, carefully painting a veneer of Perfectly Normal on top of her real self.

‘Oh, I’m not mysterious at all,’ she says.

‘How long have you been living here?’ Damien’s girlfriend asks.

‘A couple of years,’ Heather replies, feeling as if she’s giving something away she shouldn’t. Her mother taught her that information was to be hoarded just as much as belongings. It wasn’t until Heather was almost a teenager that she realized not everyone shared this mindset, that some people live their whole lives spilling everything out of their mouths with no thought for the consequences.

‘Oh well, don’t let Jason here keep you awake late at night when he gets maudlin and decides to play his Smiths albums back to back,’ Tola adds, sticking her tongue out at their host.

‘Oh, no, I don’t… I mean… he doesn’t. Not that I’ve heard anyway. He’s a good neighbour.’ And she shoots a look across at him and is rewarded by a burning sensation in her cheeks.

Thankfully, the rest of the group are in an ebullient mood and the conversation quickly sweeps by Heather. She stands there on the fringes of the group, sipping a beer that someone handed her, and smiling shyly every now and then when someone says something funny. She doesn’t mind that she doesn’t know any of the people they’re referring to or that she doesn’t get the in-jokes. It’s nice to stand out here in the sunshine and feel… well, as a thirty-two-year-old woman ought to feel. Just for a moment, she forgets about the faceless house in Hawksbury Road with the new driveway. She forgets about the toy giraffe that rode all the way home in her handbag.

‘So, what do you do, Heather?’ the guy with the ginger beard in the stripy T-shirt asks. She wants to call him Isaac, but she’s not sure that’s right.

‘I’m an archivist.’

‘You work in a library?’

‘Yes, well, sort of, I’ve moved all over the country since I qualified, but I’m from this area originally. I moved back when I got a job covering maternity leave for someone at the V&A. Now I work at a stately home.’

‘Cool,’ Tola says. ‘I love that museum. Which bit do you work in?’

‘Um, I’m not…’ Okay, maybe this isn’t as easy as she’d first thought, but Tola and T-shirt Man have open, enquiring looks on their faces. They don’t look as if they’re scanning the garden for someone more interesting to talk to, so she carries on. ‘I finished there about a year ago and was lucky enough to find another contract within commuting distance, so I didn’t have to pack up and move away.’

Jason comes up behind her. She knows it’s him from the smell of hickory smoke and the way the whole of her back warms up as he gets closer. ‘What’s this I’m overhearing about packing up and moving away?’

She turns to look at him. He’s frowning instead of looking hopeful, which surely has to be a good thing. ‘Oh, no one!’ she says quickly. ‘I was telling…’ – there’s a pause where she realizes she still doesn’t know T-shirt Man’s name – ‘your friends about my job.’

‘Which is?’

‘I work at Sandwood Park in East Sussex. It used to belong to a famous author but his widow died recently and the whole estate was left to a private trust.’

‘They didn’t have any kids to leave the house to?’ Tola asks.

Heather smiles. This is nice, having people interested in what she’s saying. Slightly giddying, in fact. She can’t resist keeping it going by sharing a bit of gossip. ‘Well, yes, actually, they did, but the wife decided not to leave her beautiful Arts and Crafts home to any of her two remaining children or five grandchildren. She left specific instructions to her solicitor to that effect, saying she didn’t trust her offspring not to rip out half the walls, replace the grand conservatory with sliding glass doors that fold up like a concertina, or make a swimming pool out of the rose garden. So she left them nothing but the ashes of their dearly beloved family pets: three dogs, two cats, and a guinea pig.’

‘Ouch!’ Tola says, laughing.

Heather feels as if she’s floating inside. She made another person laugh; she had no idea she could do that.

This leads to some bantering back and forth about jobs, during which Heather learns that Jason is an ‘heir hunter’ like that programme on daytime TV. His firm, based in central London, tracks down the beneficiaries of unclaimed estates and reunites them with their inheritances. For a commission, of course.

Someone new saunters up. ‘Hey, Jason. Great barbecue,’ the guy says. ‘Is Alex coming? I haven’t seen him in ages.’

Something odd happens then. Jason’s normally affable and friendly demeanour cools to freezing point and he gives the intruder a stony look. ‘No. Alex isn’t here.’ And then he just walks off, leaving the rest of the group looking awkwardly at each other.

‘Well done, Jack,’ Damien mutters.

‘What?’ the new guy says, looking most perplexed. ‘He and Alex have been best mates for years. I thought they’d have patched things up by now.’

Tola shakes her head and rolls her eyes. ‘Really? What parallel universe are you living in? I know Alex was caught between a rock and a hard place, but once you break Jason’s trust like that, there’s no coming back from it. Don’t you remember what he was like about Caleb and the whole bike incident?’

Jack’s eyes widen. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘It’s as bad as that? I didn’t know.’

Heather feels as if she’s eavesdropping, even though she is not. She should really walk away, but she’s too hungry for information about Jason to do that.

‘Well, when you factor in there was a woman involved…’ Tola adds darkly.

All of them glance over at the barbecue, where Jason is now flipping burgers so hard that one falls on the ground.

Damien sighs. ‘He’s a great bloke, but he’s got to get over his knight-in-shining-armour complex. It might work in the storybooks, but in real life those girls he keeps trying to rescue are the kind of women who’ll really do a number on you.’

Tola flips her long braids over her shoulder. ‘Are you saying you’re not the rescuing type? What if I needed you to rescue me?’

Damien pulls her to him with one arm and plants a kiss on her lips. ‘You’re much too feisty to be anyone’s damsel in distress,’ he tells her, and Tola obviously approves of his answer because she grins at him.

‘You’d better believe it!’

The whole group laughs, which causes the cluster of people nearby to turn and join in. Heather merges into the group with them and listens to the stories about other people’s lives – what they do, who they love, who they don’t love any more and would, therefore, love to shame on Twitter, if it wasn’t beneath them.

The group are all in stitches about someone’s tale of a drunken-holiday tattoo when Jason calls her over to the barbecue. ‘Sausage?’ he says, brandishing a plump offering with a pair of giant tongs. She nods. She even smiles. ‘We could do this again some time over the summer,’ he adds. Heather must look a bit panicked because he laughs and adds, ‘Don’t worry! I’m not going to be filling the garden with people every weekend. I meant, now that I’ve got this barbecue, I might as well use it. You could join me for burgers and sausages one evening. Or if I get really adventurous, maybe even a chicken drumstick or two?’

Heather flushes. ‘I couldn’t let you do that—’

‘Yes, you could,’ he replies, interrupting her so cheerfully that she can’t seem to mind. ‘Because I’m hoping you might be able to bring a salad or something. I’m good with meat but hopeless with vegetables. It’s not that I can’t cook them, just that everything ends up looking… well, not very pretty. I don’t have that artistic touch.’

Heather lets out a little laugh. ‘And you think I do?’

He smiles, and this one isn’t a full-on grin like the other ones, more of a playful one, like they’re sharing a secret. ‘I think you look like the creative sort – a girl who has a bit more going on under the surface than anyone else knows.’

Damian’s words from earlier flash into her brain: Jason’s mysterious girl.

Her smile doesn’t dim, but she feels something deflate inside. If only you knew, she thinks, but she’s glad he doesn’t know because, if he did, he wouldn’t be inviting her for burgers and drumsticks in the garden, and she thinks she might rather like that.

He looks away as he searches the plastic table set up next to the barbecue for something. ‘Gah!’ he says, frowning. ‘Run out of plates.’ He glances back up towards his flat and then back at Heather. ‘Think I brought down every one I owned. Don’t suppose I could borrow a few off you, could I? I’ll even wash them up afterwards!’

‘Um…’ Heather stutters. ‘I’m not sure—’

He places her sausage back on the edge of the grill rack, as far away from the heat as possible. ‘I’ll come and get them, if you like? Save you lugging them all the way out here.’ And he heads off towards the French doors before Heather can say anything.

Panic mode snaps in. That same thing that always thumps in Heather’s chest when anyone gets too close to her flat. She doesn’t even like the postman pushing things in through the letterbox, and is always relieved when she sees his red fleece strolling back down the driveway, even though she knows her territorial reaction is stupid.

She runs after Jason, neatly intercepting him and standing at the threshold of her living room, barring his way. She stretches one arm across the open doorway. ‘It’s fine. I’ll get them. You need to keep an eye on the barbecue anyway.’

Jason smiles at her. A slightly perplexed one this time. ‘I’m here now. No problem at all.’

But Heather doesn’t give in. She doesn’t back down. Jason can’t see it, but she’s bracing her hand even harder against the doorframe. She shakes her head.

You can’t come in, she tells him silently. No one can ever come in. Even though she knows her kitchen is spotless and her set of lovely white plates with the broad grey border are neatly stacked in a clean, white cupboard. She can’t have him this close to That Room. It’s making her feel sick just thinking about it. Her blood starts to pound in her ears.

‘You know what?’ she says suddenly. ‘I’m not sure about that sausage anyway. I hadn’t planned on…’ She stops, gathers herself a little, pulls herself tall and looks him in the chin because that’s as far north as she can manage. ‘Thank you, but I think I’d better be going now.’ And she steps back and closes the doors in his face, then turns and runs to the kitchen where she throws open the cupboard and stares at her plates, all neatly stacked and in pristine condition. For the first time ever, she gains no solace in that.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NOW

Heather stays in her flat for hours. She doesn’t even go into the living room. She stays in the kitchen, caught between wanting to turn the radio up loud to block out the sounds of the barbecue outside and not wanting to turn it on at all, in case Jason hears it and it reminds him what a nutjob she is.

Sometimes, she goes to the window in the far corner of the kitchen. If she leans over the counter, just to the point where her stomach starts hurting, and presses her face against the cabinet above the kettle, she can see him standing near the barbecue, tongs in hand.

He’s still smiling, still chatting to his friends, but every now and then he glances over towards her French doors and his expression darkens.

He must think she’s a freak.

Only when it’s dark and the last stragglers have shouted their goodbyes from the driveway as they saunter back to their cars or nearby Shortlands station does Heather creep back into her living room. She closes the curtains then switches on a single lamp.

She reaches for the TV remote and the screen leaps into life. Football is on, highlights from a match earlier that day, so she hits the button over and over, searching for something to watch – through the comedy and drama channels, through the ‘plus ones’ of the terrestrials, until she ends up in the nature, reality and crime section of the channel list. It’s there that an image freezes her thumb mid-air.

It’s one of those awful programmes about compulsive hoarders. Not the jaunty, pretend-it’s-comedy kind where they make neat freaks go and clean their houses, but the kind that interviews people, sends in crews of trained professionals to help. Usually, Heather doesn’t venture this far up the channel list, precisely because she doesn’t want to see this sort of thing, but until a moment ago she was caught in a trance of button-pushing, rhythmically pressing to soothe herself instead of tapping in the number of her favourite movie channel and jumping straight over this section of programming.

She makes herself put down the remote and crosses her arms to stop herself picking it up again. You deserve to watch this, she tells herself, because this is what you came from. This is who you are.

The episode features a man who’s car obsession has raged out of control. His whole two-acre property is filled with rusting wrecks, some of them so far gone they’re not even recognizable as vehicles, yet he still refuses to let the TV helpers cart them away, just in case some part in the depths of their bellies might be useful to him some day.

The other subject of the programme – she didn’t realize there’d be two – is a young mother. Yes, this looks much more familiar: clothes stacked to the ceiling, piled so high they’ve created mountains of fabric; papers and books stuffed in every available hole, and rubbish filling in the gaps. Apart from the fact the voices are American, when Heather looks at the shots where they show the house and not the people, it could have been their family home on Hawksbury Road twenty years ago.

There’s a kid in the family, a daughter with wiry brown hair and glasses. Heather pauses the TV as the camera zooms in on the girl and takes in the haunted look in her eyes, the silent plea for someone to help, to get her out of there.

They might come, she tells the girl inside her head. They might take you away to somewhere clean and uncluttered, but you’ll never be free. Sorry, kid. No happy-ever-after for you.

Even the Dad reminds her of her own father. He has that same trapped expression, the one that says he stopped fighting about the mess long ago. The professionals buzz around, offering advice. Don’t they know it’s hopeless? That even if they get the place spotless, it’ll be just as bad in a couple of years?

Heather reaches for the remote in disgust. She can’t watch any more of this fairy story.

But then the TV shrink asks the husband where it all started, why he thinks his wife is driven to this. Pain crosses his features and he shrugs. ‘I guess it was when we lost our son, Cody. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was nobody’s fault but Selena blamed herself.’

A picture of a cute little baby with chubby cheeks and a gummy smile pops up on the screen.

‘She started buying things, getting ready for the new baby,’ he continues. ‘We’d been trying for a second one for five years by then and she was so excited. I knew she was going a little overboard, but I couldn’t begrudge her. I really couldn’t. And then, somehow, after… we lost him… she didn’t stop. She just kept buying more and more baby stuff. At first she would say we were going to try again, but after a couple of years it became obvious that was just an excuse.’ He sighs heavily. ‘I just don’t know how to help her, and I don’t know if I can take any more.’

Heather’s stomach has been sinking ever since the man started talking about babies. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to feel this rush of empathy for the woman, to share in her pain for the child that will be forever missing from her life, so when the mother has a meltdown because someone wants to throw away a ratty baby blanket covered in cobwebs and mouse droppings, Heather grabs at the opportunity to turn the warm feeling sour.

‘You have a child!’ she shouts at the screen. ‘You have one left that didn’t die and you’re losing her in a pile of junk! Why don’t you think of her for a change? Think about what this is doing to her?’

It feels strangely good to hurl the words at these stupid people who can’t hear her, people who are flushing their lives down the toilet and won’t get off their sorry backsides to do anything about it. So instead of switching over, she suspends her disbelief as the house is cleared and the families are shown happy and smiling at the end of the episode, and she watches the episode after that too. Apparently, the channel is having a bit of a marathon this weekend.

The next one features an older lady who started hoarding after her beloved father died, and a waste-of-space woman who can’t see that seventy cats in one cluttered house is too many. Heather shouts at her, too. Why not? There’s no one here to see, and she’s really starting to enjoy herself. It’s two in the morning before she crawls into bed.

She lies there, her duvet tucked neatly under her arms and her pillows arranged just so under her head, and she stares at the high ceiling of her bedroom. As much as she doesn’t want to, she can’t stop thinking about those people on the television, particularly that baby.

That was the common thread in a lot of cases, wasn’t it? Loss. At least five of the eight people in the episodes she watched had lost someone, either through death or divorce, even children being given up for adoption. Someone had been taken away from them, without them expecting it and without their permission, and to fill the hole they’d started to shop and store and collect.

Is that what her mother had done? If you’d have asked Heather a month ago what her mother could have lost that would make her start behaving that way, she would have shaken her head and said there was nothing, no rhyme or reason to it. But now she knows better.

It was me, she thinks. The thing she lost was me. But somehow, even though she came back, her mother behaved as if Heather had never returned and she never threw another thing away for the rest of her life.

Heather thinks of the photo she gave to Faith for Alice, of how everything looked normal and clean. Christmas 1991. Only seven months before the date on the newspaper report. Is that the key, then? Is her being ‘snatched’ what started it all?

She closes her eyes, not so much to welcome sleep but because she’s stemming the tears that are pooling there, and lets out a long, ragged sigh.

Even when she was little, she’d always been afraid, from the way her mother talked to her, sometimes even the way she looked at her, that maybe everything had been her fault. Now she knows she was right.