The Memory Keepers Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Eleven Hours Earlier

  1: Seven

  2: Alba

  3: Seven

  4: Alba

  5: Seven

  6: Alba

  7: Seven

  8: Alba

  9: Seven

  10: Alba

  11: Seven

  12: Alba

  13: Seven

  14: Alba

  15: Seven

  16: Alba

  17: Seven

  18: Alba

  19: Seven

  20: Alba

  21: Seven

  22: Alba

  23: Seven

  24: Alba

  25: Seven

  26: Alba

  27: Seven

  28: Alba

  29: Seven

  30: Alba

  31: Seven

  32: Alba

  33: Seven

  34: Alba

  35: Seven

  36: Alba

  37: Seven

  38: Alba

  39: Seven

  40: Alba

  41: Seven

  42: Alba

  43: Seven

  44: Alba

  45: Seven

  46: Alba

  47: Seven

  48: Alba

  49: Seven

  50: Alba

  51: Seven

  52: Alba

  53: Seven

  54: Alba

  55: Seven

  56: Alba

  57: Seven

  58: Alba

  59: Seven

  60: Alba

  61: Seven

  62: Alba

  63: Seven

  64: Alba

  65: Seven

  66: Alba

  67: Seven

  68: Alba

  69: Seven

  70: Alba

  71: Seven

  72: Alba

  73: Seven

  74: Alba

  75: Seven

  76: Alba

  77: Seven

  78: Alba

  79: Seven

  80: Alba

  81: Seven

  82: Alba

  83: Seven

  84: Alba

  85: Seven

  86: Alba

  87: Seven

  88: Alba

  89: Seven

  90: Alba

  91: Seven

  92: Alba

  Three Weeks Later

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  To Nicola, for making it happen

  ‘Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.’

  Haruki Murakami

  2.30 a.m., Hyde Park Estate

  Seven bit back a curse as his fingers slipped on the balcony ledge. One hand lost its grip and swung free, his body smacking against the building he was scaling (completely illegally, of course). He only just managed to cling on with the other. In front of him, the wall rushed down in a hard, shining waterfall of polished white. He was only three floors up. Land on lawn from this height and you’d get away with just a few broken bones. But this house was ringed by a marble patio –

  One slip and he’d be a goner.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Seven grabbed the edge of the balcony with both hands again and pulled himself up. His arms were aching by now. He’d already scaled the five-metre fence to get into Hyde Park Estate, and that was before starting the slow climb up the side of the house, which had annoyingly tall floors.

  ‘Why the eff do rich people need such big houses?’ he muttered through gritted teeth. Of course, if he had millions of pounds to his name, he would probably buy a house twenty times the size of this one, just because he could. But that wasn’t the point.

  The balcony was small, with twisted iron bars fashioned to resemble a rose bush and painted white to match the walls. Once he’d pulled himself safely up onto it, Seven crouched in the shadows. He caught his breath, pushing back the sleeves of his top and ruffling his messy black hair with one hand. He checked his worker boots were done up securely – undone laces were the downfall of many a skid-thief – with the ends of his slim blue trousers tucked in.

  The glass doors which led out onto the balcony were dark, no lights on in the room beyond. Seven strained to see through the layers of net curtains drawn across the doors, but all he could make out was the shadowy depths of the room, the sense of space and height.

  A few minutes passed as Seven waited.

  Leaves rustled around him in the darkness. An owl hooted from somewhere nearby, and rabbits scampered in the bushes, but for the most part it was quiet. The private estate was set within the huge grounds of what had once been Hyde Park. There were only five houses scattered within. At this late hour, even the near-constant purr of traffic and building work in the city had faded away to a thick, sleepy silence.

  Seven had been observing this house long enough to know its residents’ rhythms. They should all be in bed by now, including the servants. Still, you could never be one hundred per cent certain, and it was better to be safe than sorry. Seven didn’t really fancy his chances with the death penalty.

  Finally confident no one was around, he took out a lock-pick from the utility belt slung round his hips. He slid it into the doors’ keyhole and eased it round in the lock.

  Seven’s heart hammered. A tight, anxious feeling wound its way up his chest as he worried, like he did every time, that this wasn’t going to work, before – exhale, relief – there was the softest of clicks and the lock released.

  ‘Thank you, gods,’ he whispered with a grin. Not that Seven believed in any gods, of course. If there were any, they’d clearly forgotten to look out for him so far. But prayers were free (unlike pretty much everything else in London).

  Pushing open the door, Seven slipped inside.

  The first thing that hit him, as it always did, was the smell of the room. Clean air, papery and musty from the books lining the shelves, and most definitely not containing any of the following scents: puke, piss, shit, garbage, cigarette smoke, factory fumes, hashish, weed, or any of the million other stinks that filled the streets near his block of flats back in South.

  Stretching his arms above his head to ease the knots in his muscles, Seven breathed in deep. The pungent scent of flowers filled the air. As his eyes adjusted to the moonlit darkness, he saw whole bunches of them in vases throughout the room, overflowing in clouds of pearly white. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. That was another thing he hated about rich people; they were so arrogant with their money, they threw hundreds of pounds at things that not only smelled awful, but would only die a few days later.

  Creak.

  A sound from the landing beyond the room. Breathless, Seven pressed back against the wall, melting into the shadows. Sweat prickled his neck. Finally, when no further sounds came from the landing, he peeled away from the wall.

  ‘Straight to business, then,’ he mumbled.

  Seven was so used to thieving jobs he usually took his time, browsing the shelves, running his fingers up and down the spines of books. He even helped himself to food when it was left out. But tonight he couldn’t afford to go about it so casually.

  This was Hyde Park Estate, the most expensive area in North.

  This was the White family’s residence.

  The White family.

  This was the home of the man who handed people like him straight into the arms of Death himself, and smiled while doing it.

  Moving as lightly as he could, Seven went out into the hall, which disappeared at both ends into darkness. Directly ahead was a broad, curving sweep of stairs leading down three floors to the base of a huge entrance hal
l. A circular window painted with intricate swirls took up most of the wall above the tall front doors. Moonlight filtered through the glass, recreating the window’s pattern across the marble floor, like a ghostly tangle of vines.

  It was without doubt the grandest house Seven had ever been inside, but he wasn’t the slightest bit impressed. Scowling at the view, he turned away and headed down the hall.

  The room he was looking for – the memorium – was at the back of the east wing of the house, tucked away behind a secret doorway in the least used of the family’s eight drawing rooms. Seven had learnt these details on his observation trips. Though the memorium didn’t have any windows, so he couldn’t be completely sure, he’d seen the same layout in other houses he’d stolen skids from. Plus, he’d spotted figures disappearing into the bookshelf on the far right of the room. Unless he was going mad (a possibility – it was a side effect of hunger), then that had to be where the Whites’ memorium was hidden.

  There was always a secret doorway. After all, memories were powerful things. You didn’t want them getting into the wrong hands.

  ‘And guess what these are?’ Seven grinned, raising his hands and giving a little wave as he reached the drawing room.

  He only had to scan the bookshelves lining the far wall once before spotting the edge of a doorway etched into the wood, moonlight catching on the ridge. He tiptoed over. Heart quickening as it always did in this moment – his second favourite part of a thieving job – Seven pressed his hands against the wood to one side of the shelves. For a few seconds, he hesitated. If the door was locked, he’d come all this way for nothing. But, reminding himself that Northers rarely locked their memoriums, he slid his fingers into the grooves of the hidden doorway and pushed.

  It opened, its weight gently giving way under his hands.

  Seven relaxed, a grin sneaking its way to his lips.

  And then his stomach plummeted.

  There was a light on in the room, a flickering lamp set on a desk, and the door swung wider to reveal a girl inside. Her glossy curtain of auburn hair rippled in the firelight as she turned towards him. He saw it all as though in slow motion; her pretty eyes widening, her mouth dropping open, hands balling into fists at her sides.

  For some mad reason, Seven didn’t run. He could have. He might just have made it out. Instead, he was rooted to the spot. All he could do was stare stupidly at the girl, his lips still twisted in a half-grin, thinking how annoying it was that this time he wouldn’t get to experience his number one favourite moment of a skid-thieving trip –

  Getting out of the house with the stolen memories, having not been caught.

  Eleven hours earlier

  1

  SEVEN

  It was the room at the back of the flat. Past the living room and kitchen, the three small bedrooms and the grimy bathroom (the flat was being rented by three grimy teenage boys, after all), and behind a door Seven always kept locked.

  There was no sign on the door. Not one suggestion of what lay behind the peeling paint. Still, Seven liked to think you could feel the power of what the door hid, like a pulse, a heartbeat, a soft touch behind your eyeballs that made you pause as you walked past. He imagined his flatmates Sid and Kola wondering, What the eff is in there? whenever they went by. Then they’d probably forget all about it as soon as they looked away.

  But Seven didn’t need to wonder, and he never, ever forgot what he kept hidden inside the blue filing cabinets behind the door.

  Sometimes, before he even went into the room, Seven knew exactly what he wanted from it. A few of the cabinet handles were smeared with his mucky fingerprints from being opened frequently over the years. And, though he wouldn’t admit it, even if anyone did know about the room, on top of one of the cabinets was a broken mug in which he kept his favourite pieces of the collection. Those pieces were like friends to him; were his only friends, really. He knew them entirely, and they were always there whenever he needed them.

  Other times – like today – Seven would simply walk into the room and ask it, ‘Surprise me.’

  The room was small and windowless. Blue metal filing cabinets lined each wall. Tucked into one corner was a strange-looking machine, tall and skinny, just like Seven. The place was nothing like the grand memoriums of the rich people’s houses he stole from, all dark, polished wood and marbled floors, but it was his, and there weren’t a lot of things he could say that about.

  After locking the door with the key he wore on a thin chain round his neck, Seven stepped into the centre of the room. He swiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand. It was just as hot here as the rest of the flat. South was stifling in October, with its cramped streets and tall tower blocks and smoggy air choked with smoke from the factories. Thankfully, in just a few minutes, he’d be far away from here.

  Closing his eyes, Seven flung open his arms and launched into a tight spin on the spot. Seven turns later (that was his little joke, though it always saddened him there was no one who knew about the room to appreciate it) he stopped, stumbling slightly with dizziness. He savoured the moment, eyes still shut, a deep, rushing excitement spiralling through him as he wondered what the room had to offer him today. Then he opened his eyes.

  His outstretched arm was pointed at a cabinet labelled: Fear, Desperation and General Wetting-your-pants Kind of Stuff. Not the world’s most sophisticated labelling system – the banks and memoriums went by date – but it worked for Seven. He knew instantly what he was going to get.

  ‘Good choice,’ he told the room, grinning. ‘You want to give me a little adrenalin shot, huh? Or maybe I’m getting fat and you’re trying to tell me to do some exercise?’

  Seven looked down at himself. Through his faded grey shirt, he pinched the flesh that ringed his belly. It was barely enough to hold between his thumb and finger.

  Nope. That definitely wasn’t it.

  Not that he minded being so scrawny. Thieving would be pretty hard with a great big belly getting stuck in every window he sneaked through. So Seven told himself that he was glad of his size, that he had to keep himself that way. He pushed away the thought that always hovered at the edge of his mind: Still not eating enough.

  Besides, he’d learnt to feed himself with something other than food.

  Opening a drawer of the filing cabinet at random, Seven rifled through the small square DSCs – Digital Storage Clips – inside. They rattled and clinked, their metal cool against his skin.

  ‘Today’s dish du jour’, he announced to no one in particular, in a French accent he’d picked up from the fish-houses by the river, ‘is a petit helping of heart-stopping terror, followed by a mouthful of très tasty pant-pooping.’

  He pulled out a random DSC. Marked in red ink across its label were the words:

  10.04.2143, R.L.S., 27 Radcliffe Court

  Seven labelled his collection by the piece’s date, owner’s initials, and where he had stolen it, but he never said what its actual contents were. Apart from the DSCs in the mug, whose contents he knew by heart, he liked rediscovering pieces in his collection. That way he could almost believe they were his own memories, made so long ago he’d forgotten about them, and each time he came across one he’d surfed before it was like finding his way back to a home he never knew he had.

  Clutching the DSC in his palm, Seven went over to the machine tucked in the corner of the room. Twists of cables curled round it like the ivy clinging to the concrete walls of his block of flats. At its top was a rounded cap of metal. This was Seven’s pride and joy: a Memory Butler 3S. He had borrowed (well, stolen) the machine from a run-down skid-surfing emporium by the river years ago. It was an old model, not nearly as sophisticated as the ones in the banks and memoriums, but it did the job.

  He powered up the machine and dragged it into the centre of the room. Sitting on a stool beside it, he strapped the wristbands dangling on cables to each arm – these controlled your heart-rate with electropulse technology to achieve the best conditions for skid-
surfing – and placed a cap, also attached to the machine by cables, onto his head. It clipped itself in place with the blunt-ended pincers round its rim.

  Seven winced. ‘A pleasure as always, Butler.’

  Next, he plugged the machine’s feed cable into the DSC. He watched as the bar on the control screen filled, loading the contents of the clip. As soon as it was full he jabbed the ACTIVATE option. He held his breath as, for one moment of delicious excitement, he wondered just what it was he was about to experience, what new world he was about to discover.

  What new person he was about to become.

  At first, there was nothing. Just the continued hum of the machine’s vibrations and its arrhythmic clicks. The muffled cooing and wing-beats of pigeons in the courtyard on the other side of the wall. Distant city sounds as London went about its afternoon. Then the machine’s humming grew louder, joined by a sharp, high-pitched keening sound, and there was a sudden flash of light that made Seven screw his eyelids together and bite down on his lip –

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

  Seven opened his eyes.

  The world had turned black. Silent. Still. It was like floating in nothingness. He reached out a hand and felt the ripple of memory-air, its honeyed warmth tickling his skin.

  ‘OK,’ Seven muttered, rolling back his shoulders and looking round at the darkness, searching for a sign as to why this memory was filed under Fear, Desperation and General Wetting-your-pants Kind of Stuff. He grinned. ‘Do your best, R.L.S., or I’m coming for a refund.’

  2

  ALBA

  Afternoon lessons were the worst. Especially around four p.m. It was the hottest, stuffiest, muggiest time of day, when Alba’s ears felt like they were blocked with cotton wool and it was physically painful to keep her eyes open. Four p.m. was a time for daydreaming and naps. Lazy walks around the grounds in Hyde Park Estate. Reading a novel in the overgrown meadowland that stretched along the northern curve of the Serpentine.

  It was most certainly not a time for Modern History lessons with Professor Nightingale, which were to lessons what four p.m. was to afternoons –