The Memory Keepers

by Natasha Ngan

  ‘As if she has the balls,’ he murmured with a snort. Because of course she didn’t.

  The White girl was rich and pampered. She’d never had a reason to be brave. Not like him. Seven had had to fight, claw, scrape for every single thing in his life. When had she ever needed to work for anything herself?

  He was so sure the girl wasn’t going to show that when he saw the servants’ side door opening and her slipping out of the house, that cascade of thick red hair unmistakable in the bright starlight, he didn’t let himself believe it.

  Then –

  ‘Crap,’ Seven said, scowling.

  He hated being proved wrong.

  16

  ALBA

  She’d waited until the house was dark and silent before getting out of bed. She had dressed in an emerald-green sweater Dolly had given her for her sixteenth birthday, plain black trousers that hugged her legs, and a pair of old plimsolls. After making sure she had the key to the servants’ door tucked safely in the pocket of her trousers – Dolly had given Alba a copy years ago to allow her to slip in and out of the house quietly – she’d left her room and headed down the hidden staircase.

  When she pushed open the door and went out into the grounds, Alba felt as though she were stepping into another world.

  It was a cool night, a fresh breeze stirring the grass and filling the air with a papery rustling. Wind-teased strands of hair danced round her face. She brushed them aside, squinting into the darkness, her eyes roaming the shadows below the line of Dutch elms just beyond this side of the house across the flat, silver-tipped lawn. Moonlight made everything look icy, crystallised.

  Alba’s entire body felt alive and alert. She wanted to laugh, or cry, or run across the estate with her hands spread at her sides until she was going so fast she could have lifted off the earth and danced into the air.

  Everything she’d been feeling that day had fallen away as soon as she left the house. Gone was the image of her mother’s sly smile over dinner; Oxana hadn’t mentioned the visit from the matchmaker, though Alba saw the secret brightening her eyes. All Alba felt now was exhilaration at the small act of rebellion she was about to make.

  She breathed in deeply, savouring the green scent of the grounds, the freshness of the midnight air. Her stomach gave an excited swoop as she spotted the boy from last night, hiding under the elms. He motioned for her to join him. There was only the slightest second of hesitation before she nodded to herself (He won’t hurt you – he’s too afraid of what Father would do) and went over to him.

  ‘Hello,’ Alba said, avoiding his eyes.

  She hugged her arms across her chest, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Just like last night, everywhere the boy looked at her made her skin feel hot, as though his gaze were a touch, soft fingers brushing her body and face.

  ‘Hey.’

  His voice was husky. He was leaning against the tree, wearing the same blue trousers, work boots and grey shirt as yesterday. Reaching up an arm to scratch the back of his neck, he flashed a wide, lopsided grin.

  ‘Almost didn’t recognise you with so many clothes on.’

  Alba blushed furiously. She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, are we going to go, or not?’

  The boy laughed. ‘Right this way, Princess.’ He stepped aside, bowing and twirling out an arm. Teasing eyes glittered from under his flop of dark hair. ‘Unless her majesty would like to use me as her steed?’

  ‘No,’ Alba snapped, stalking past him. ‘Her majesty most certainly would not.’

  The boy, who was called Seven (Alba only just managed to remember her manners, stopping herself from asking why he had such a strange name), led her to the edge of the estate. The five-metre wrought-iron fence loomed dark against the row of houses opposite.

  ‘Over?’ Alba whispered in disbelief, wrinkling her nose. Wary of the estate guards, she kept her voice low. ‘You want me to go over it?’ She clutched the hem of her jumper and tugged it down, cheeks flushing as she imagined her bottom wobbling in Seven’s face.

  It was obvious he didn’t like her. She didn’t need to give him any more bait for snide remarks.

  Seven smirked. ‘You’re welcome to dig your way under it if you’d prefer.’ When Alba only glared at him in reply, he shrugged and headed up to the fence. ‘Come on. It’s not that hard. Anyway, it’s the only way past the guards.’

  After fumbling around in the darkness at the base of the railing, he stepped back, pulling a rope that tightened as he moved away, revealing its end tied round the tree on the other side. One if its branches skimmed the top of the fence.

  Seven held out the rope. ‘You go first. So I can make sure you get over OK.’

  Steeling herself, Alba took the rope. She tugged on it until it was pulled tight, then braced herself against the fence, one foot pressed against the iron columns, the other still on the ground. She drew a deep breath. Then, clinging to the rope so tightly her fingers already felt numb, she pushed off the ground and placed a second foot on the fence.

  Her plimsolls slipped. Before she could slide back down, Alba pulled harder on the rope and took another step. Then another. It was hard going, the painted metal of the railings slippery beneath her weight, but she kept climbing, determined to make it, despite the stinging bite of the rope against her palms and the pain screaming in her injured wrist.

  Besides, Alba could feel Seven’s eyes on her as he waited below. More than anything, she wanted to quickly get up and over the fence so he’d please stop staring at her bottom.

  17

  SEVEN

  He had to admit, he was a little disappointed when the girl finally reached the top. He’d been kind of enjoying the view.

  It took longer than usual to get to Chelsea Harbour because Alba kept stopping on the way, gasping at every little thing. It was as though she’d never seen the city before. Or maybe it was just the city at night, Seven thought, with its starlit streets, everything brushed in the soft glow of the streetlights. There was a kind of magic to it. He didn’t think a stuck-up North princess like her would have cared, but maybe there were certain kinds of magic in this world that everyone couldn’t help but notice.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ the girl whispered, gazing round at the North streets as they headed for the river.

  Seven smirked and muttered under his breath, ‘Just wait till you see South.’

  He didn’t tell her how they were going to cross the border until they arrived at the harbour. They perched at the end of one of the jetties overlooking the Thames. The river glittered under sparkling riverside lights, water-taxis and sleek, modern cruisers bobbing at their moorings in the harbour. Along the jetty-front behind them the restaurants and bars were still busy, the chinks of glasses and bursts of laughter filling the area with noise.

  Alba bent down and peered into the shadows of the tunnel entrance to the old sewer carved into the side of the jetty. This particular part of the sewer system had been disused for years, but it still carried the smell of stagnant water and rotting things. River-water splashed up over its lip.

  ‘This takes us under the Thames?’ she asked, her voice stuffy-sounding.

  Seven guessed she was holding her nose. He snorted. Effing hell. How is she gonna manage when we get to South?

  ‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  Before she could protest, he grabbed the rim of the entrance and ducked, swinging his legs inside. A few moments later the rusted metal beneath his feet clanged as the girl came in after him, landing heavily.

  ‘The smell!’ she moaned. There was a pause. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Well, don’t. It smells bad enough without you adding to it.’

  Moving forward in a crouch, Seven found the lamp he’d hidden. He fumbled with a match. A moment later the lamp’s flame flickered into life, casting amber light on the curving walls of the tunnel. Holding it out before him, he led Alba deeper into the shadows, their shoes squelching in the stagnant water.

  There was a
yelp behind him. Seven smirked. The girl must have spotted the rotting fox corpse half-buried under the mucky brown water.

  She groaned. ‘I almost wish you’d left us in the dark.’

  An hour later, they arrived at his flat in Vauxhall. Since South residents worked all hours, its streets were not nearly as quiet as most of North’s had been, even at this time of night. Seven had to take a longer route home to avoid drawing any unwanted attention. Not only was Alba a girl – and a stupidly pretty one at that, a fact which still very much annoyed him – but her clothes gave her away as a Norther. She may as well walk through the streets with a flashing light on top of her head, shouting, ‘Here I am, boys! I’m rich. Come and get me!’

  Seven couldn’t risk Alba being seen. The boys in his block of flats had already proven that if it came down to a fight, he would most certainly not be on the winning side.

  To be honest, Seven didn’t really know why he cared. If the girl was taken from him it was unlikely she’d ever be found (alive, that is). The knowledge that he’d broken into her house to steal a memory would die with her. He’d be safe.

  But actually, Seven didn’t like to think of Alba dying. He didn’t like to think of what a bunch of rough South boys would do to her. For some inexplicable reason, he felt a strange pressure to protect her from harm. Maybe it had something to do with how pale her skin was, like a clean, unbroken canvas, or the sky just before sunrise. It seemed criminal to spoil it.

  Though wasn’t that what he was? A criminal?

  ‘Well.’ Seven waved a hand at the door to his flat. ‘Here it is. Chez Seven.’

  He took in its familiar red paint, faded and peeling, the broken number plate. A pile of rubbish had been dumped outside. A straggly cat with mangy fur slunk up to them, and when Alba went to stroke it the animal hissed and darted away.

  Seven laughed humourlessly. ‘Welcome to South.’

  Now they were here, embarrassment knotted his stomach. He remembered the clean, musty smell of the Whites’ house. How everything shone and glittered. He cringed.

  There was a long beat of tense silence. Then Alba broke it, a cheerful smile on her face.

  ‘It’s … lovely,’ she said.

  Seven looked sideways at her, eyebrows raised. A second later they burst into laughter. Even though he didn’t like to admit it, it felt weirdly nice to be laughing with her.

  He was so used to laughing alone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alba said, clasping a hand to her chest. She forced down her smile. ‘I don’t mean to be laughing at your home.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, come on. It’s a complete dump. And you haven’t even seen inside yet.’ He laughed again, but the girl didn’t join in.

  ‘Have you lived here all your life?’ she asked quietly, her cheeks flushed (man, was she pretty when she blushed).

  ‘Nah. Just seven years.’

  ‘With your parents?’

  He shook his head, voice turning bitter. ‘Don’t have any. They abandoned me when I was just a kid.’

  The words were out before he could stop them. Now it was Seven’s turn to flush red. Only Carpenter knew Seven’s history; that he’d been abandoned as a child and had grown up on the streets. Seven hadn’t planned to tell Alba, but somehow her questions had caught him off-guard. And when she looked at him like that, all soft pink cheeks and glittering eyes, he felt himself opening, unfurling towards her, the lies that usually lay on his tongue falling away to let the truth rise gently up.

  Seven coughed, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Anyway, I like it. I get to live by my rules. No parents telling me what to do.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Alba said quietly, and it was the first time anyone had ever spoken those words to Seven.

  18

  ALBA

  She had expected his flat to be cluttered and dirty, all unwashed crockery and clothes and mess, as you’d anticipate from three teenage South boys living together. Instead, it was bare. The front door opened up into a small living room with a tattered brown sofa and a cheap-looking plastic table.

  As his flatmates were home – Alba could hear one of them snoring from behind a door with the name Sid scrawled across it in Biro – Seven bundled her quickly through the flat. She didn’t see much of it, but the impression she got was one of emptiness. She wondered whether it was because that’s how they liked it or simply because they couldn’t afford many things.

  The thought it might be the latter filled Alba with guilt. Her room at home was full of beautiful, expensive things. Their whole house was.

  The whole of North was.

  Seven led her to a small room at the back of the flat, locking the door behind them as they went in.

  He waved a hand. ‘So. My memorium. I know it’s nothing like yours,’ he added quickly, catching her eyes as she looked round.

  She shook her head. ‘No. It’s – it’s lovely.’

  This time, Alba didn’t have to lie. There was something special about the room; she could feel it. Though the memories were hidden away, they seemed to hum from within the blue filing cabinets lining the walls, filling the air with a shimmering, magical quality. The room thrummed with the promise of hundreds of possibilities, hundreds of worlds just a heartbeat away.

  Seven leant against a cabinet. ‘What d’you wanna surf, then? I’ve got over 300 skids.’ There was a touch of pride in his voice.

  Alba walked slowly around the room, fingers trailing the cool metal fronts of the cabinets. ‘All these are memories you’ve stolen?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, grinning.

  Alba couldn’t help it: she was impressed. She was less impressed, however, with his labelling system. Seven did use some … interesting phrases. The Fear, Desperation and General Wetting-your-pants Kind of Stuff cabinet, for example. Wetting her pants wasn’t exactly something she wanted to be thinking about in front of a boy. Or at all, for that matter.

  Another cabinet’s label caught her eye: BORING BORING NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

  Alba’s curiosity was instantly stirred. She moved closer. The label was peeling at the edges. ‘There’s another label underneath this one,’ she said, lifting her fingers to prise it back, but in a flash Seven was pushing her away.

  ‘Nah, you don’t want those,’ he said hurriedly, throwing out his arms to hide the cabinet. The tips of his ears turned pink.

  Alba stepped back, reddening herself. She had an inkling just what sort of memories might be in that cabinet. Once, Dolly had taken her to Soho for a rare shopping trip, the two of them taking the opportunity while Alba’s parents were away on business. They’d gotten lost in its tangle of narrow backstreets and come across a woman in a tight dress standing in a neon-lit shop entrance under a sign flashing the words: PORN-SURFING. The pink light had glazed her exposed flesh.

  At the time, Alba had been too young to understand what the sign meant, and Dolly had ushered her away before she could take a closer look. It was the only time Alba had seen her handmaid blush.

  Now, Seven was the one who was blushing.

  ‘Maybe you should try one of those,’ he said, voice unnaturally high. He nodded to a cabinet across the room, labelled: Get the Effing Hell Outta Here.

  ‘Are they memories about travelling?’ Alba asked, interested.

  Seven nodded. He peeled away from the cabinet he’d been hiding and dragged a strange-looking machine out from one corner of the room. ‘From all over the world.’

  Excitement fluttered through Alba. ‘So I can just pick where I want to go from the places you have in the selection?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. I don’t say what’s in the skids.’

  ‘But how do you know what’s in them? Won’t it always be a surprise?’

  Seven grinned, his smile crinkling his eyes and dimpling his cheeks in a way that made Alba feel a strange flush of something hot in her belly.

  ‘That’s what makes it so fun. Now, come on.’ He patted the machine. ‘Butler’s waiti
ng.’

  19

  SEVEN

  He couldn’t help it. There was something so exciting about introducing someone to skid-surfing that Seven didn’t even mind it was this girl, of all people. A girl he should have left to die in the stinking tunnels of the sewer deep under the Thames, but was instead letting her use Butler, not to mention his small, precious allowance of electricity.

  Maybe it was about power. This was something he had over the girl, after all. She was relying on him to help her, to show her how to surf. She was putting her trust in him.

  Not many people did that.

  And maybe that was it: the fact that she was trusting him, even though everything she knew would have taught her to do the complete opposite.

  Seven finished fixing the wrist-straps to Alba’s arms and stepped back, grinning at how funny she looked, all wired up to Butler. Though even the metal cap pinching onto the top of her head couldn’t take away from how pretty she was. It was annoying. He plugged the feed cable into the DSC she had picked at random from the travel cabinet.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  The girl swallowed. Her green eyes flickered with something that took Seven a second to place –

  Fear.

  ‘I’m … I’m scared,’ she said, biting her lip and glancing away.

  Seven could have laughed. He could have thrown a snide comment or made fun of her. He could have ignored her, because what was the effing problem? She’d dragged her own stupid ass into this so there was no point complaining now.

  But instead he said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll have a great time,’ and in the brief moment after he pressed the ACTIVATE option on the screen and before Alba dipped away into the memory, their eyes met and they shared a smile.

  20

  ALBA

  ‘MEMORY ACTIVATED,’ came a flat, robotic voice, echoing up from somewhere deep within her skull. ‘EXPIRATION IN TWENTY-ONE MINUTES, SEVENTEEN SECONDS.’