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

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 (#ulink_29fc9a05-ff5c-5144-8f7f-d839a8e56b50)

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?’