The Memory Keepers (6 page)

10

Throughout their exchange, Alba had been convinced someone in the house would hear them. The whole time she’d been imagining what her parents would do if they found her here in their memorium, and with a boy, no less.

It wouldn’t be pretty.

Somehow, she’d managed to fudge confidence and bluff well enough to convince the boy she might call for her father (if only he knew). It was all rather ridiculous, Alba thought. He was the one who’d broken into
her
house, but it was
her
that was in the real danger.

Now she knew what the boy was here for, a strange sense of peace filled her. All he wanted was some stupid memory.

Let him have it
, she thought. Anger flared in her chest.
Good riddance. I wish he could go into my mind and take away some of
my
memories, too.

‘Which one are you here to take?’ Alba asked, fiddling with the hem of her nightdress, trying – unsuccessfully – to tug it lower over her legs. She was really regretting her decision not to wear a dressing gown. The boy’s eyes kept drifting to where the dress skimmed the top of her thighs.

‘Like I said – one of your dad’s,’ said the boy.

Alba was too busy studying him to take this in at first. His features had an exotic edge to them that she couldn’t place. Perhaps he was part Japanese? Dark, messy hair fell into slim grey eyes. His mouth was small, and he spoke with it twisted up at one side. He was certainly weird looking (he was so tall and lanky Alba felt like a hippopotamus just being in the same room as him) but there was something strangely attractive about him too. Perhaps it was his smooth, tanned skin, or how he smelled of mint and sweat and
boy
, an enticing, sweet mixture of scents she’d never come across before.

Alba blinked, dragging her thoughts back to the moment. ‘What do you want with my father’s memories?’ she said warily.

The boy shrugged. ‘Dunno. My crew leader wants it.’

‘Crew leader?’

‘All skid-thieves are part of a crew,’ he said with an impatient huff, as though she were an idiot for not knowing. ‘The leader’s the one that organises our jobs, what skids we’re gonna steal. That sorta thing.’

Alba frowned. ‘You keep saying
skid
.’

A lopsided grin flashed across the boy’s face. ‘You haven’t heard of memories being called skids before?’ Laughter teased his words. ‘It’s after skid-marks. You know, when you go to the loo and –’

‘Yes!’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ve got it now, thank you very much.’

Alba’s cheeks were hot. She couldn’t believe she was here, talking to a boy about
toilets
. It was strange enough to be talking to a boy in the first place; the Knightsbridge Academy only encouraged male and female students to mix at social events. It was unheard of to be talking to one in the middle of the night in her family’s secret memorium (
about toilets
).

‘So that’s your job?’ she asked. ‘Memory-thieving?’

He smiled proudly. ‘Yep.’

Alba didn’t know how to respond. The boy didn’t seem to care that his job was a crime punishable by death. Despite his casual attitude, she felt a shiver of unease. This boy was a criminal. The type of person her father sent to their death every day. Memory-thieving was the highest form of betrayal, her father had said at dinner. And here she was talking to a memory-thief as though they’d just bumped into each other in the street!

The irony was that Alba was more afraid of her parents finding her here with this boy than she was of the boy himself. She couldn’t let them discover him. He’d be arrested in a heartbeat. She would send him to his death, and sentence herself to a life even more caged than it was now. If her parents knew a memory-thief had been in their house – had even come into contact with their own daughter – they’d never let her out of their sight again.

None of it was fair, and thinking about her parents made Alba angry more than anything. This boy seemed so
free
. He came and went into people’s houses and lives and memories as he pleased. How wonderful it must feel to be able to slip away from your own life whenever you got sick of being you.

Alba bit her lip. ‘What do you do with the memories you’ve stolen?’

‘Well, the skids go to my crew leader, and he trades them on the black market.’

‘Do you ever  …  ever surf them first?’

The boy laughed. ‘Yeah. Course. Every time.’

He didn’t have to say it; Alba could just see it in the way his grey eyes were shining. Surfing memories was clearly what he lived for.

Suddenly it seemed as though all of today’s events had been leading to this. Why had Alba discovered the memorium tonight? After sixteen years of living in this house, she just happened to be here at the very same time this boy came to steal a memory.

She and this boy were destined to meet. She was sure of it.

Alba drew a shaky breath. ‘Can you show me how to do it?’ she asked, touching the curving back of the Sony Life-Flight. Excitement sparked through her. ‘Show me how to memory-surf, and I’ll let you steal the memory you came for without my father ever knowing you were here.’

‘Now? With that?’ The boy pointed at the machine, scowling. ‘No way. I wanna get out of here as soon as possible. And the Life-Flights keep a record of every session. I’m not leaving behind any clues I was ever here.’

That was her opportunity to back down. But Alba wasn’t ready to give up on the promise of freedom yet. Not when this boy who could give it to her had walked right into her life as though sent from a god, on the very night she needed him most.

She stepped towards him and looked straight into his eyes, fiercely, daring him to object. ‘Then take me back with you,’ she said. ‘Take me surfing on
your
memory-machine.’

11

He woke late the next day from a dream about pirates and an endless ocean. Loe had been there, laughing as they’d jumped off the side of a ship into glittering, sun-drenched water. It had been a good dream (not because Loe was in it, he might add). Seven just liked dreaming of the sea. All that open water made him feel clean and free; two things he never felt living in South.

Eyes still closed, Seven lay in his bed, content. Warm sunlight fell across his blankets. For a while, his mind wandered with bland, everyday thoughts. And then he remembered –

The girl.

Last night.

What he’d promised her for
this
night.

‘Oh, effing hell!’ Seven groaned, swinging upright.

Last night’s events came back to him in a flash of images: the White girl’s fingers curling into fists as she turned; the way her pretty green eyes widened as she saw him; her silk and lace nightdress (and what was – barely – underneath).

How she’d stepped closer to him, the sweet, floral smell of her skin unfurling in the air, and said fiercely,
Then take me back with you. Take me surfing on
your
memory-machine.

What could he have said? No effing way? Seven wasn’t really in a position to argue, what with the girl’s father being, oh, you know, just
Alastair White
.

Anyway, one skid-surf seemed a small price to pay for getting away with the job. It was too much of an important one to mess up. Carpenter never had to know it hadn’t gone quite as smoothly as they’d planned. He’d have his memory. That was all that mattered.

But still. It was
insane
.

The trip to Hyde Park Estate felt like one long, crazy dream. Surely, Seven was about to wake up again any second. He couldn’t have made a promise to take that stuck-up North princess back to his flat for her to try out Butler.

He
couldn’t
have.

‘Well, you
did
, you complete idiot,’ he groaned, dropping back onto the mattress and covering his head in his hands.

12

School finished early on Saturdays, which was both good and bad for Alba. Good, as it meant, well, less school, obviously. But bad, because it also meant more time in the house, and more opportunities to incite her mother. After yesterday’s events, Alba actually found herself wishing her last lesson would never end.

This time, she didn’t run to meet Dolly outside the school gates when classes finished.

‘Hi,’ she said sullenly, slipping her uninjured hand through her handmaid’s arm.

Dolly smiled. ‘How were your lessons today?’ Her face turned serious as she noticed Alba’s mood. ‘And how is your wrist feeling?’ She lifted her arm and inspected her wrist, which she’d bandaged afresh this morning before school. ‘Still painful?’

‘Not even a bit,’ Alba replied, forcing a smile.

She felt a guilty twinge as she lied, and not just about the pain. About the fact that she had said she’d slept well when Dolly asked her this morning, instead of telling her the truth about the boy and the memorium. She hated lying to Dolly, the one person she felt she could truly trust and confide in. But this might be just a bit too much. Alba couldn’t think of a way to explain what had happened without sounding like a total lunatic.

Oh, well, last night while you were sleeping I made a complete stranger – from South, no less – promise he’d take me back to his home tonight to surf memories he’s illegally obtained. I
do
hope that’s all right.

None of it felt real. Alba wished she’d thought to ask the boy his name, something to anchor him to her reality so he didn’t feel so much like a half-remembered dream, or a ghost slipping away in the night.

Dolly touched her arm, the corners of her lips tucking up into a proud smile. ‘That’s my little fighter.’

Little
liar
, more like
, Alba thought grimly.

But no matter how bad she felt about keeping all of this from Dolly, she couldn’t ignore the excitement that had been racing through her all day. It was truly terrifying, the thought of leaving her house in the middle of the night with a boy she hardly knew the slightest thing about, especially as the things she
did
know – that he was from South, that he was a memory-thief – weren’t exactly reassuring. And she didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if her parents caught her. Yet alongside the fear was a giddy, rebellious thrill.

Alba had finally found a way to defy her parents. For the first time in her life she was clasping her hands round the metal bars they’d built around her, years and years of towering walls, and was pushing them apart.

13

He headed along the riverside path towards the pub where he was meeting Carpenter to give him the White memory. It was another sunny, cloud-blushed day, the afternoon air thick and claggy, making Seven sweat in his trousers and faded T-shirt. Overhead, birds circled in noisy clusters. Their keening caws cut through the air as they darted down to snap at the dead fish washed up on the bank (South’s, of course – North’s riverside was pristine, cleaned twice a day by South workers).

The path curved along the Thames up towards Vauxhall and Lambeth, shunted in on one side by the river and by grimy buildings on the other. Across the river – busy that afternoon with water-taxis, ferries and huge container ships from the factories – North’s promenades and glass-fronted offices shone golden in the sunlight.

As he neared a bridge, Seven’s heart began to thud a little faster. Traffic was at a standstill on the bridge, vehicles waiting for the London Guardmen in their red jackets to check their passes. This was the only way to cross between the two halves of the city (the only
legal
way, anyway). Southers had to have a pass for work or personal reasons, signed off by officials, but Northers’ IDs allowed them to move across the border in both directions without question.

Sweat pricked Seven’s palms. Even though they had no reason to stop him, he still felt as though the London Guardmen knew what he’d done. As though his boots were leaving behind glowing footprints on the dirty pavement, revealing somehow where he’d been last night.

Seven hated the London Guard, the men who ruled the city under the Lord Minister’s control. He hated everything they stood for, running the city as though their only job was to keep North protected from South scum like him. But he also feared them, and hating and fearing were pretty much the same thing in his world.

Just then, one of the guards turned.

He had a hand raised to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun. His gaze caught Seven’s, something snapping between them before Seven dragged his eyes away, heart stuttering. He stumbled on, not realising he’d been holding his breath, until he reached the pub and let out a hard puff of air.

The Bespectacled Wizard was a dark, stuffy place smelling of river-water and rotting wood. It slumped low on the bank beside the water, clinging to the underside of a small bridge. The river rushed by just metres away. Despite the blazing sun, the wide, low-ceilinged interior was grey with shadows, the windows so grimy they barely let any light through.

Seven moved further in, looking for Carpenter. He spotted him in a corner, sloped in a seat set into a bay window, looking out at the river. The cut through Carpenter’s eyebrow was more pronounced in the murky light of the pub. Today it made his expression seem a little threatening, as though the secret joke that usually amused him had turned sour.

Carpenter looked round as Seven sat down.

‘S,’ he said. He pushed a glass of beer at him, honeyed liquid slopping onto the already-sticky surface of the table.

‘Thanks,’ Seven muttered, though he didn’t touch it. Beer reminded him of the boys from his block of flats, the reek of cheap alcohol on their breath as they cornered him, goaded him, laughed and shouted into his face. It was the taste of their punches and kicks.

Carpenter leant back, one arm slung across the back of his seat. ‘So. You got it?’

Seven glanced nervously over his shoulder. ‘I got it.’

The pub was full, their voices swallowed under a rolling tide of rough voices and laughter, but Seven was still tense. He was just about to get out the DSC on which he’d copied Alastair White’s skid last night when the door to the pub slammed open, the crack of the old wood smashing into the wall like a gunshot ricocheting through the noisy room.

At once, the place fell silent.

Seven swallowed. He didn’t need to look round to know who’d just entered. There was only one thing that could quieten a busy South pub so quickly –

The London Guard.

‘IDs out,’ growled voices from the doorway.

Boots, heavy footsteps sounded as the guards moved deeper inside.

Of all the times for them to be doing an ID check
, Seven thought,
it’s now, when I’ve got a stolen skid from Alastair effing White tucked down the front of my pants.

He must have been acting as skittish as he felt, because Carpenter leant across the table. ‘Easy now, S,’ he said quietly, before swiping up his glass and leaning back, taking a long drag.

Seven didn’t know how he did it. Carpenter made everything he did seem as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Picking up his own pint, Seven took a sip, then slammed it back down a second later, coughing as the liquid went down the wrong way.

‘IDs,’ came a voice behind him.

Seven had been coughing so loudly he hadn’t noticed the thud of boots drawing closer. Jumping at the voice, he dug into his trouser pocket, scrambling for his identification card, while Carpenter calmly handed his card over. There was a high-pitched beep as the London Guardman swiped it through one of their checking devices, indicating it as valid.

The guard tossed Carpenter’s card back. ‘Now yours.’

Seven started again at the guard’s voice. This was why he loved night-time, why he loved thieving: it was just him and the darkness. At night, he felt like the master of the world.

In the daytime, he just felt exposed.

‘Oh, er, yeah,’ he spluttered. ‘Here –’

He was cut off as the guard grabbed his card the second he’d raised it.

A heartbeat moment of terror. Then –

Beep
.

Seven sagged in relief, taking his card back as the guard moved off to check others. The card was a fake one Carpenter had organised for him when he’d first joined his crew, with a false name, address and work details. It hadn’t ever failed him (yet). He slipped it back into his pocket.

‘You need to work on that, S,’ Carpenter said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Act suspiciously and they’ll think you’ve got something to hide.’

Seven grinned shakily. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He pointed at himself. ‘I’m the
king
of not-suspicious. The
model
of calm.’

‘And the master of bullshit,’ Carpenter added.

Seven laughed, but he didn’t relax until the London Guardmen left the pub a few minutes later, the noise and chatter rising up again. He waited a while longer to be sure the guards weren’t coming back before pulling out the DSC from its hiding place in his pants and handing it to Carpenter under the table.

As it left his fingers, Seven hesitated. He felt a strange pang of unease, as though there was something terrible inside they should have left buried in the darkness of White’s memorium.

‘You know I keep my crew safe, S,’ Carpenter said, sitting back, the DSC already hidden somewhere on him.

Seven nodded. ‘Yeah, I know.’

And he did. He wasn’t lying about that. The trouble was, he also knew that nothing Carpenter did to look after the members of his thieving crew mattered if the London Guard found just the slightest break in their protection. They were criminals – the lowest even of those – and if Seven was caught, no amount of prayers to non-existent gods would save him.

Almost every skid-thief he’d seen caught over the years had been convicted through fast trials. Fast trials were only used if the prosecution obtained memories explicitly showing the suspect as guilty. Half the time these skids were confessions, freely given by the suspects. Well, not freely given exactly. Seven didn’t want to know what prosecutors like White did to obtain them.

There was only one outcome of fast trials: a guilty verdict. And there was only one outcome of a guilty verdict for a crime like skid-thieving.

Execution.