The Memory Keepers (5 page)

8

‘I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s definitely sprained. Hold on. Let me feel for fractures. This might hurt.’

‘What have you done so far that
hasn’t
?’

Alba and Dolly were on a bench at the back of the herb-house, a medi-kit open between them. Rows of plants filled the building in a rush of textured green. Moonlight glittered through the glass ceiling and walls, dappling the floor with shifting shadows. The air was heavy with the smell of plants; a clean, fresh scent that helped ease Alba’s nausea at the pain of her injury.

Gently running her fingers along the skin of Alba’s wrist, Dolly inspected the extent of the damage. Little needles of pain sprung up everywhere her handmaid touched, making Alba grit her teeth.

‘It’s only a sprain,’ said Dolly, laying her hand on the bench as she spread some cooling gel from the medi-kit across her wrist. ‘That’s lucky.’ She caught the look in Alba’s eyes and said quickly, ‘I didn’t mean –’

Alba forced a smile. ‘I know.’

Dolly got up and disappeared between the rows of plants. She returned a few minutes later with a pestle and mortar in one hand and a bunch of plants and herbs in the other. ‘Northers underestimate the power of natural remedies,’ she explained, ‘but I was born in the country. I know how effective they can be.’ She worked the leaves in the mortar, smudging the lumpy, pungent-smelling paste onto Alba’s skin. ‘Arnica, aloe and black seed for pain and inflammation.’

‘If it looks as good as it smells,’ said Alba, wrinkling her nose, ‘then I’m definitely going to be cured.’

Dolly smiled. ‘See? Sarcasm. You’re feeling more like yourself already.’

When she was finished with the paste, she wiped her hands, her voice softening. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Alba looked away. She took a shaky breath. ‘What is there to say? My own mother hates me. She thinks I should be grateful to her and Father for keeping me in this cage, protecting me from the world. But they forget that it’s trapping me too.’

‘You’ll get out soon,’ Dolly said, lacing an arm round her shoulders. She pressed her cheek to the top of Alba’s head. ‘There’s more for you than this, Alba. A lot more.’

Is
there?
Alba thought, but instead she smiled and said, ‘I hope so.’

Dolly squeezed her. ‘Well, I
know
so.’

That night, Alba lay awake for hours. Dolly’s herbal mixture had helped with the pain and nausea, but without them to distract her she couldn’t avoid thinking about what had happened earlier. She replayed the blow from her mother’s back-hand over and over. She did this every time her mother hit her, making herself live through what had happened again and again, hoping perhaps to catch a lost opportunity or moment where she could have defended herself, or avoided it all in the first place.

But more than anything, Alba wanted to understand
why
.

What had she done to deserve this? Why did her mother turn into this monster, when other times she could be so kind and loving it almost made Alba forget about when she wasn’t?

Sighing, Alba rolled onto her side. Dolly’s outline was dark against the bleached boards where she lay asleep on the floor. She’d insisted on staying with Alba that night in case she needed anything, even though Alba had promised her she was fine.

Tears pricked Alba’s eyes. She couldn’t imagine what she would do without Dolly. It terrified her to think what her life would have been like if Dolly hadn’t taken a job with the Whites.

Then she felt a slap of self-disgust.
How selfish can you be?
she thought. It’s not as though Dolly had never experienced Oxana’s anger for herself.

Alba wondered sometimes why Dolly didn’t leave. Was it the same reason none of the other servants left? Fear for their reputation, of not finding another job to provide for their families? But Dolly didn’t have a family. She didn’t even have a boyfriend (despite half the male servants in the house being hopelessly in love with her). Alba didn’t like to admit it, because it made her feel horribly guilty, but she knew the truth.

That Dolly stayed for
her
.

Too restless to stay in bed, Alba got up, stepping carefully around her handmaid’s sleeping figure. She padded barefoot across her room and opened the door to the hall, cradling her bandaged wrist to her chest.

The landing was thick with that special past-midnight silence Alba loved. This time of night always felt magical to her, as though another world had settled on top of her usual one, making everything silver-edged and new. Starlight spun through the hushed air. She went down the hall towards the main staircase and headed upstairs.

The top floor of the house had beautiful views over the grounds of Hyde Park Estate. On nights like this when she couldn’t sleep, Alba loved to sit in an armchair by the window in the drawing room at the very back of the house and read a book by candlelight. She’d gaze out at the view, and it helped remind her that her life wasn’t so bad.
Look at all you’ve got
, she’d tell herself.
You have no right to feel unhappy.

She’d imagine the teenagers living in South. Many of them probably had parents far worse than hers,
and
they lived in South. She was lucky, she’d remind herself. Luckier than most.

Tonight, however, nothing seemed to be helping. She had lit a candle in a glass lamp, set it down on the table beside the comfy armchair she was curled up in, book open in her lap. Usually she’d be feeling better by now. But not tonight. For some reason, today’s incident felt different to the ones before: worse, somehow.

And suddenly, in a flash, Alba realised what it was.

I’m done with you.

She heard the words as though her mother were right here whispering them into her ear. Not the most hurtful or threatening words she’d ever spoken to her, but powerful in their simplicity. Alba felt flung aside like a piece of trash. Was she really so unwanted? Did she really mean that little to her mother?

Feeling sick, she dropped her book and scrambled up, pacing restlessly round the room.

I’m done with you.

Alba couldn’t escape those four little words. They followed her, a shadow, a coldness creeping at her back. The fear, the hurt she felt started to boil into anger (it always did in the end). She ran the fingers of her uninjured hand along the spines of the books in the tall shelves lining the walls.

I’m done with you.

Then just leave me alone!
Alba wanted to shout. A hot, red fury was taking over her body, burning every vein. She moved quicker, pressing her fingers harder against the books.
That’ll be just fine with me. I don’t need you. I’m sick of this cage you and Father have trapped me in. If I really mean that little to you, then why don’t the both of you just SET ME FREE!

In her anger, she slammed her hand against the bookcase she was striding past –

And it gave way, a panel opening up under her fist.

Alba froze, shocked still, waiting to see if anyone had heard the sound of her hand slamming into the bookcase. Nothing happened. She relaxed a little, though her heart was still thrumming, as quick as an insect’s wing-beats. Running her hand along the edge of the bookcase, she realised with a stomach-flip of excitement just what it was she’d uncovered.

A doorway.

Sixteen years Alba had lived in this house. She thought she knew everything about it. But here was a secret, hidden doorway, like something out of a book or a dream.

Alba pushed the panel in the bookshelf open further. It opened into shadows and darkness. Crossing back to the armchair where she’d been reading, she snatched up her lamp. The wet flame of the candle licked across the room as she hurried back to the doorway, held the light out in front of her and went inside.

‘A memorium,’ she breathed, knowing immediately what the hidden room was.

Memoriums were people’s own private memory rooms. Alba had never been allowed anything to do with memory-surfing. Her parents said that until she was eighteen and a legal adult, she hadn’t earnt the privilege to try it herself: just another of their ways to keep her from experiencing the world. Heavens forbid she see anything that made her question the life they’d created (
curated
, more like) for her in North. They kept Alba away from the boutiques and memory-houses in North offering sessions with memory-machines to its customers, and she’d only once caught a glimpse on a school trip years ago of one of the plush rooms the banks had for their customers to sample memories.

This secret room was big and windowless, and smelled of old wood. Grand mahogany cabinets lined the walls. In the centre of the room was a desk. Instead of a normal seat behind it though, there was a large, sleek-looking metal thing –

A memory-machine.

Alba shut the door behind her. Feathers of excitement tracing her spine, she set her lamp on the desk to inspect the machine.

It was open at the front with a cushioned seat built into it, made from a soft, spongy material that moulded round her hand when she pressed it. Clasps stuck out of the armrests. At the top was a rounded cap on an adjustable slide. A logo was printed on the back of the machine – a pair of black wings, spread wide as if in flight – and there was writing underneath:

SONY LIFE-FLIGHT v7.8.

Alba was just reaching out to touch the logo when a noise behind her made her heart stop.

9

The girl turned slowly, as if in a daydream. Her mouth fell open and her hands curled into fists at her sides, but apart from that she looked surprisingly
unsurprised
to see Seven standing there. In fact, he thought, she even looked a little guilty herself.

Seven decided he disliked her immediately. He’d seen the girl before on observation trips to the house, but up close she was far too pretty. Rich and beautiful and well fed (she was chubby – you didn’t get that way without plenty of food).

Some people had it so
easy
.

Scowling, he took in her pink cheeks, her cascade of dark red hair. The white nightdress she wore shimmered in the low light, skimming across her milky skin, which was as soft and pale as moonlight.

Seven wondered why he wasn’t running away. Instead, he was just standing there dumbly. They were
both
just standing there dumbly, staring at each other.

Perhaps if she had been an adult he’d have tried to escape. But this girl looked not much younger than him, and utterly harmless. She seemed like the kind of girl who was weak, soft, and more likely to huddle up and cry if you annoyed her than throw apples at you.

Eventually, the silence made Seven so uncomfortable he had to say something.

‘Er  … ’ he began. He rubbed the back of his neck and attempted a grin. ‘Well. This has never happened before.’

The girl blinked. She had wide green eyes, deep and soft, the same colour as fresh grass or the water of the Thames at sunrise. They flitted to the door behind Seven, which was still half-open.

She’s gonna scream
, he realised, heart thudding, fear at being discovered finally hitting him as the shock of finding her in the room wore off.

Carpenter’s voice sounded in his head.

You need to be on your best tonight for this job, S. It’s not one you –
we
– can afford to mess up.

The girl glanced at the door again. Suddenly she spoke in a rush of tumbling words, her voice clipped with the poshest North accent he’d ever heard. ‘If you’re not planning to rape or kill me, could you please just shut the door?’

Seven stared. He had to have misheard her.

‘Oh,’ she breathed when he didn’t move. She shut her eyes and stepped back, grasping the table behind her, letting out a little puff of air. ‘You
are
planning to rape or kill me –’

‘What?’ Seven gasped. ‘No!’

Without really knowing why (he could have closed the door with himself on the
other
side of it, surely?), he pushed the door shut. The girl watched him, head tipped low, a curtain of hair fallen over her shoulder and half-covering her face.

‘What
are
you here for, then?’ she asked, jutting up her chin and pushing off the table. A steely undercurrent sharpened her voice. ‘I’ve had a bad enough day without having to deal with you too, so if you could just get whatever you’re planning over with and leave me in peace, that’d be wonderful. Thank you very much,’ she added, as though remembering her manners.

Seven gestured round the memorium. ‘Well, I kinda need to use this room.’

‘You need to use this room?’ she said warily. ‘Why?’

‘To steal something.’

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. But then again it was pretty obvious what he was here for, him being a complete stranger and having broken into her house in the middle of the night.

He coughed. ‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, what’re
you
doing here?’

The girl’s nose wrinkled. She took a quick huff of breath. ‘You don’t ask someone why they’re doing something in their
own house
.’

Seven shrugged. ‘Just seems kinda odd, you being here in the middle of the night. Getting me to shut the door ’cause you’re scared someone in the house will hear us and find you here.’ He forced down a grin. He kind of wished Loe was here to high-five him. She would have appreciated that.

The girl looked guilty again for a moment, before rearranging her expression into anger. ‘Oh, I could tell on you. Don’t think I won’t. My father certainly won’t be very happy to see you here. Do you know who he is?’

Just like that, Seven’s heart began hammering away again.

‘I’ll give you a clue,’ she went on. ‘His last name begins with a W.’

Seven eyed the girl, wondering whether he could bring himself to punch her. If he could just knock her out, he’d be able to steal the skid and go. But she was a
girl
. It wouldn’t be right to hit her. Besides, she’d seen his face: she’d be able to tell her father exactly what he looked like.

He ran a shaking hand through his hair. The way he saw it, he had two choices. Either he ran away and hoped to effing hell Alastair White couldn’t be bothered to dirty his shoes in South to find him, or he told his daughter exactly why he was here.

The girl pursed her lips. ‘Well? Shall I call for Father? I should warn you – he will
not
be happy being woken at this hour.’

Seven scowled, doing a quick mental calculation. Face the girl’s father? Certain death. Face the girl  …  living was a decent probability.

He’d take those odds.

‘I’m a skid-thief,’ he told her, ‘and I’ve come to steal one of your father’s memories.’