The Museum of Forgotten Memories by Anstey Harris

Author:Anstey Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2020-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I get up at 6 a.m. on the day of the Pretend Re-opening: there is so much to do. I have been giddy for the last three days, swapping texts with Patch last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Every other moment has been spent recruiting and advertising, posting on social media and booking tours. I know Araminta disapproves, that she thinks the evils of social media leave us open to all and sundry but, frankly, that’s what we need. She came to me the day before yesterday, clearly worried.

‘I was talking to Rosemary in the garden . . .’ She didn’t make full eye contact.

‘Rosemary?’ I was going through the galleries, trying to find the highlights to add to our new profile pages, thinking of every last thing I could use to pull people in.

‘One of the volunteers. Older lady.’ That doesn’t help at all: all our volunteers are at least retirement age.

‘She saw a news item – about a party that someone posted on the internet. 500 people turned up – the house was almost destroyed.’

I sighed and turned to face her. ‘Kids, Araminta. Those things are always kids.’ I could picture the echo chamber of the two old women, exaggerating and scare-mongering, layering on the doom of every internet rumour, every small-town fright. ‘It’s not the sort of thing that happens at a museum.’

I noticed the single capuchin monkey hanging upside down in the diorama behind her: an animal that Colonel Hugo discovered himself, one of quite a few species named after him. I made a note in my phone to add some details about it.

‘Sorry, Araminta. I have to write these things down while I think about them.’ I pointed to the monkey. ‘Otherwise all memory of it will be gone in ten seconds’ time.’

She pursed her lips, stared at me. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But at least we’ve had this conversation. At least you know my thoughts.’ She nodded, once, at me and returned to whatever duties she was carrying out back in the box office.

‘Please succeed,’ I said to the empty gallery, in an effort to feel brave. If I’d been in the library, at least I’d have had the echo to help me believe.

The email that waits on my phone when I wake up today is the last thing I expect to read, and sent with the worst of timings.

From: Simon Henderson

To: Cate Morris

Subject: A Lot of Time to Think

Mail: I’m back from a two-week expedition and there’s no word from you. I hope you don’t think I was ignoring you – there’s no signal where I’ve been and clinging on to the side of Mount Cook kept my hands full.

Did you miss me? I did, actually, really miss you – and Leo, of course. Maybe it was the silence and the mind-space at the top of the mountains, but it made me yearn for home. I think it’s all that vast immovable rock, the life clinging to it and the secrets trapped inside it – and the unbelievable quiet – puts things in perspective.

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