Читать книгу The Memory Collector: The emotional and uplifting new novel from the bestselling author of The Other Us - Фиона Харпер - Страница 7

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.