by Fiona Harper
Heather freezes, eyes fixed on her English homework. This is not good news.
Her mum spotted a skip round the corner in Park Road the other day and Heather knew right then that it was only a matter of time before she’d want to go and rummage through it. She also knew her mother would want to haul her along to help. She always does. But this time Heather was especially sure – her mum sprained her ankle a couple of weeks ago. She tripped over a box that had fallen into one of the rabbit trails one afternoon and lay there, half-buried, for almost an hour before Heather came home from school and dug her out.
‘Heather!’
The shout is fainter. Heather hunkers down. If she stays quiet there’s a good chance she’ll escape this dumpster-diving expedition. If there’s one good thing about living with a hoarder, it’s that they’re easily distracted. Hopefully her mum will stumble upon something interesting in the mess and forget all about going out – at least until it’s too dark and cold to do anything about it.
She doesn’t call again for about twenty minutes and Heather relaxes. She even risks a sortie to retrieve her dictionary from the living room, but as she’s creeping back towards the stairs, her mother emerges from the kitchen door and spots her.
‘Oh, good! There you are! I need you to come with me.’ She pulls a coat from the pile in the hallway and starts to head out the door. When Heather doesn’t move, she looks over her shoulder. ‘Come on. We need to get out before the light goes.’
‘I’m supposed to be writing a poem for English.’
‘It’ll only take ten minutes.’
Heather’s shoulders slump and she grabs her coat from under a bundle of carrier bags. There’s no point fighting. Her mother will cry and plead and beg until she gives in. At least if she goes now it’ll be over and done with – in much more than ten minutes, she expects; but at least she’ll be back inside finishing her English poem before it gets really freezing.
She pulls the zip on her coat up until it scratches the underneath of her chin, and follows her mother outside, keeping a couple of steps behind her as they make the short walk to Park Road.
Heather’s road is nice but Park Road is even nicer. When Heather was little she used to think the houses were mansions. The skip is outside a property that is at least three times the size of their house. There are no lights in the windows and the garden is overgrown, but it’s obvious someone has been cutting things back, tidying up.
Mum’s not interested in the architecture one bit. Why would she be, when the bright-yellow paint of the skip is calling to her? ‘Ooh, look!’ she says, getting all excited. ‘Can you reach that, Heather? There’s a lovely old iron bucket in there.’
‘Mum. It’s broken.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I reckon I can fix it.’
Heather stares at the bucket. It’s so badly rusted that the bottom has gone thin and papery, almost crumbled away. She tells her mother so, but it doesn’t make any difference. In the end she’s forced to lean over the edge of the skip and hook it out with her gloved hand. She passes it to her mother.
‘Ooh, and what’s that underneath?’
Her mother’s eyes are really sparkling now. They rove across the skip as if she’s just unearthed the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb. She points out items to Heather, and Heather fishes them out, only because it’s easier to give in than to stand there arguing in the freezing cold.
Soon her mother’s arms are full. She tries to put some of her goodies – a couple of door knobs and a ripped lampshade – in the metal pail, but the heavier items drop through the bottom. Heather sighs.
‘Can you reach that chair?’ her mother asks hopefully. ‘I’d do it myself but…’ She waggles her bad foot in explanation.
‘Mum, it’s old and broken. The leg’s hanging half off. Anyway, there’s no way you can carry that home with your dodgy ankle.’
Her mum frowns but, miracle of miracles, she shifts her focus to something else. She points, suddenly so excited that she almost drops what she’s holding. ‘Can you see it, Heather? Can you see it? The vase?’
Heather really doesn’t want to spend more time peering into the skip than she has to – it smells – but she does it anyway. Down underneath all the bits of cardboard, metal and dust she can see the neck of a vase. It’s translucent cream glass, fading to brown at its top and bottom, with a swirl of painted flowers.
Her mother is almost jumping up and down now. ‘I think that might be worth something!’
Heather rolls her eyes. If this is the only thing she’s spotted of any value, why is she carting all the other rubbish home? As gratifying as it would be for her mother to find something she could sell and get money for (Heather needs new school shoes, and has done for about a month), Heather knows her mum is never going to actually part with it. Just the possibility it’s valuable is enough for her.
And even if it is valuable, it won’t help in the long run. In fact, it will do the opposite, reinforcing this horrible behaviour, because the one time in a thousand she finds anything nice just makes her sure there are more ‘treasures’ waiting to be found at the bottom of every dustbin or skip.
‘Who knows?’ Heather replies. ‘But it doesn’t matter. There’s no way I can reach it.’
Her mother stares hard at the vase, as if she can make it float to the surface by the sheer force of her will, then she turns to her daughter. ‘Just hop in and get it for me, will you? You’re so light and I’m sure you could stand on that flat bit of metal.’
‘No,’ Heather says. ‘No way.’
Five minutes later Heather’s face is flaming as she swings one leg over the cold metal side of the skip. Her mother is looking both tearful, from the argument they’ve just had in the middle of a very nice street, and triumphant because she got her way yet again. I hate you, Heather thinks as she tries to find something solid to put her weight on, and she just about manages to mean it too.
Her mother is a backseat dumpster-diver, it turns out, micromanaging Heather’s progress to the right spot by calling out instructions – Not that way! Put your foot on the edge of that bookcase – but eventually Heather reaches a place where she can stretch out her arm and brush the top of the vase with her fingertips.
Just as she grips it round the neck and pulls it free, the worst thing ever happens. She hears people coming! They’re leaving the house next door. Heather ducks down. She hates even being spotted with her mother on the return journey from one of these expeditions, arms full of junk, but to be caught actually in the skip? Her life would officially be over.
‘Oh, my God!’ Someone exclaims, followed by a tinkle of appalled laughter. Heather crouches down even more.
‘It’s legal!’ Heather’s mum says. ‘I’m not stealing. I asked the owner!’
Well, that’d be a first, Heather thinks.
There’s more laughter – at her mother not with her – because mum doesn’t get that the act itself is horrifyingly amusing, not whether she has permission or not.
‘So lame!’ a younger voice says, and Heather is so surprised she almost loses her balance.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, Heather chants inside her head. It can’t be! Please, no.
Someone’s moving closer, coming to the edge of the skip. There’s a part of Heather that’s desperate to know for sure, a part that wants to be proved wrong, and maybe that’s the bit of her that forgets to keep still, so she loses her balance and has to stand up to steady herself.
She lifts her gaze and stares straight into the eyes of Tia Paine. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the house next door belongs to her aunt, and her whole family are there – mum, dad, younger sister – all staring in horror at the urchin that has just risen from the skip.
‘Tia?’ her mum asks, sounding worried. ‘Do you know this person?’
A slow smile creeps across Tia’s thin lips. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says, locking eyes with Heather and refusing to let her look away. ‘I’d never associate with trash.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
NOW
Heather rips back the cellophane of the photo album and pulls the image of the woman in the red coat from its gluey backing, tearing the edge of the picture in the process. She holds it up closer to her face and stares at it.
It’s her, isn’t it? Her heart pounds yes, yes, yes in reply.
She can’t seem to tear her eyes from it, but the longer she stares, the fainter the thump of confidence in her chest becomes. Am I just seeing what I want to see? she asks herself. Superimposing one memory on another? After all, until recently her recollection of her early years has always been unreliable, if there at all. Maybe now the truth is out, it isn’t setting her free; it’s just sending her slowly insane.
But then her head jerks up: Jason. He saw the woman on the pier as well, if only for a moment. She can ask him. She can…
Heather is halfway to the door when she stops. It’s 4.12 a.m., hardly the time to be asking him to check out a photo for her, even if it is a life-changing emergency. But that’s not the only thing that stops her going upstairs and pounding on his door. It’s the fact that she wants to so badly. She’s becoming too reliant on him. Too entangled. At the very least, she should wait until morning.
Four hours later she’s in her living room, the photograph placed in the middle of her desk, square to the edges, and she’s sitting on her office chair, fully dressed and sipping a cup of lukewarm tea. She’s been here for the last couple of hours. Waiting.
However, even though she can hear muffled footsteps in the flat above, the bang of a door that she guesses must be the bathroom when she hears the newly fixed pipes sputter and groan, she doesn’t go upstairs to see Jason. Somehow she knows that in fifteen minutes or less he’ll be jogging down the stairs to see her.
For ten minutes she sips her cold tea and looks at the photograph and then, when the pipes in the ceiling judder and go quiet, she quickly picks it up, tucks it in her handbag, and slips out of the front door.
* * *
Since her car is still sitting uselessly in the driveway, Heather walks into Bromley town centre and catches the first train to Oxted. It’s a three-mile walk to Faith’s from there, as there’s no station in Westerham, but she’d much rather be active than sitting on the one bus that connects the two locations, crawling through the country lanes.
Faith’s face is free of make-up when she answers the door, and when she sees Heather standing there she looks puzzled. It’s as if, along with her BB cream and mascara, she hasn’t had time to apply her sense of seniority either. She looks genuinely concerned to find her sister on her doorstep. ‘Heather? Are you okay? Has something happened?’
Heather is clutching the photograph in her left hand. She holds it up squarely in front of her sister’s face. ‘Do you recognize her?’ she asks, knowing she should at least apologize for turning up unannounced, but the question burning on her tongue has hijacked her manners.
Faith’s frown deepens. ‘I don’t think so. Who is she?’
‘I think this is the woman who… you know… stole me.’
Faith’s eyes almost pop out of her head. She looks at the photo, then blinks and looks at it even harder, shaking her head. ‘This is actually her? How do you know?’
Heather peers into the hallway, suddenly feeling the weariness of her trek here on public transport. ‘Can I… you know… Can we go inside?’
‘Of course! What am I thinking?’ She leads Heather through to the large kitchen-diner, where the kids are eating breakfast at the table. They glance up, then both drop their slices of apple and run over to their aunt. Alice looks as if she’s going to come in for a hug but she stops just short, looking shy. Barney puts his arms round his aunt’s knees and squeezes as he smiles up at her. Heather runs a hesitant hand over his silky hair and, much to her surprise, he doesn’t pull away.
‘Are you finished with your apple?’ Faith asks them. They both nod. ‘Then go and watch Peppa.’
Alice, sharp as always, replies, ‘But you said no more Peppa.’
‘Yeah,’ Barney chimes in. Heather smiles. She likes their solidarity, the fact her niece and nephew act like teammates rather than opponents.
‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’ Faith says.
Alice frowns. ‘But—’
‘Do you want to watch Peppa or not?’
They don’t need to be asked twice. Both children scurry off in the direction of the living room. When it’s quiet again, Faith lays the photograph Heather gave her on the shiny black-speckled granite and they both stare at it.
‘Are you sure it’s her?’ Faith almost whispers.
‘I think so. I’ve been… remembering things.’
Heather didn’t think Faith could look any more shocked but she does now. ‘What sort of things?’
Heather sees the look of fear in her sister’s eyes, the fear that she’ll say something awful about what happened to her. ‘Nothing much about that time,’ she replies and sees her sister visibly relax. ‘It’s just that I went to Hastings yesterday, just to see if it jogged any memories. I found out that Patricia Waites lived there.’
Faith almost falls off her stool. ‘You were going to try and find her? Talk to her? Oh, Heather, I really don’t think that’s a good idea!’
Heather shakes her head. ‘It was an old address, a long shot at best. We knew that when we set off.’
‘But still… Don’t you think it’s better not to go down that route? I mean, it could stir up things you don’t want to remember.’
‘It already has,’ Heather says quietly. ‘But I can’t give up now.’
Faith nods. She’s not happy with this development, Heather knows, always preferring to keep her sister under tabs, but she understands. That’s the most Heather had been hoping for when she’d set off this morning.
‘Hang on. Where did you get the photo from? I’ve never seen it before.’
‘I found it in one of Mum’s old photo albums.’
Faith looks even more confused then, and Heather realizes she’s made a mistake. ‘But it wasn’t in the two you showed me,’ Faith says. ‘I thought you said that’s all that was left.’
Heather makes herself maintain eye contact. ‘I lied,’ she says simply. ‘There’s more stuff left. A lot more stuff. I’m sorry. I… I just couldn’t face sorting through it all.’
Faith opens her mouth, closes it again, and shakes her head. ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I’m upset you lied to me, but under the circumstances… I get it.’
This takes Heather aback. She was expecting much more of a reaction than that. She’s not going to say anything, though. She might shock her sister out of this unusually understanding mood.
Faith goes back to studying the photograph. ‘But if this was in Mum’s album, that means… that means…’
Heather nods. Yup. Faith is just about reaching the point where Heather was when she first found the photograph. She finishes the sentence for her sister. It feels nice to be the one to help for a change. ‘It means that our parents knew her. That she was someone who was possibly a friend.’
‘Or even a relative!’ Faith exclaims. ‘After all, Mum always talked about a gaggle of cousins they lost contact with. Maybe there’s a reason they became strangers?’
‘Maybe,’ Heather says, aware she feels oddly calm at the moment. ‘I remember this red coat being at the seaside. I always thought it was Kathy, but when I saw that woman standing there at the railings, it was as if everything that had been fuzzy and wrong all these years suddenly came sharply into focus.’
Faith forgets completely about making tea and comes and sits back down. ‘What railings?’ she says, her voice quite loud now. ‘You mean you saw her? Yesterday?’
Heather nods, then shakes her head, then shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I think so. It was the weirdest thing.’
She knows she’s not doing a very good job of this, that she’s dropping o
ne bombshell after another on her sister, but that’s the problem with keeping everything to yourself – she’s never really learned how to do this sort of thing properly.
‘She saw me too. And then she just… ran.’ Heather lets out a long breath. ‘We chased her but she just disappeared into the crowds.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Faith slumps on her stool and stares into space. ‘So what do we do now?’
We. That one word is the reason for Heather’s journey here. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘That’s why I knocked on your door this morning.’
Faith stops looking bemused and smiles at her. She knows the silent request Heather is making, and is pleased. It marks new territory between them.
‘Thank you for helping,’ Heather says softly.
‘Thank you for letting me help.’ Faith leans across, both of them still sitting on the breakfast stools, and gives her a loose hug. It feels odd. But nice. ‘You know it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, don’t you?’ she says, her voice cracking a little. She goes very still, and Heather knows her sister is fighting back tears. She doesn’t budge until Faith takes a shuddering breath and begins to move again, rubbing Heather’s back just once with the flat of her hand.
‘I know,’ Heather says, and she realizes she does know this. She supposes that on some level she’s always known that when the chips are down, Faith is the one person she can count on to be there for her.
All this openness, this vulnerability, gets too much for Heather then and she returns to an upright position on her stool and pulls the photo towards her again, sliding it over the granite counter.
‘This was taken outside our house, wasn’t it?’ Faith says after they’ve both been staring in silence at the photograph for some time. ‘I recognize the big bushy fir tree at the corner of next door’s garden.’
Heather nods. ‘That’s what I thought too.’
‘And you say you’ve been having memories from that time, that going back to Hastings helped jog something?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then there’s only one thing I can think of doing that might help.’
