Читать книгу The Memory Collector: The emotional and uplifting new novel from the bestselling author of The Other Us - Фиона Харпер - Страница 8

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.