Victoria woke early the next morning to catch up on some work with the Book. The previous evening she had been too preoccupied by Holly’s absence to get anything done. She’d constantly wondered how her date was going and debated how insane she’d seem if she texted Holly to ask if she was okay. Dickens had eventually come to her salvation and kept her entertained, well, distracted, until Holly had returned.
But now it was time to work.
Especially after the unwelcome dream last night. She was a firm believer in using work to suppress one’s feelings. For years, Victoria had reaped the benefits of burying herself in work as an avoidance tactic.
Of course, she enjoyed her work and was incredibly proud of what she had achieved during her time at Arrival. But she had noticed parallels between her life and her work output. She could catalogue most of her life events through Arrival issues, layouts, trends, models, revenue, and circulation numbers.
Most people would remember the death of a parent by the year. Victoria remembered her father’s death as the sixteen-page spread on sixties revival haircuts, shoes, and hemlines. The birth of her son Hugo was marked by the launch of the new website. Her daughter Alexia by the new font for the iconic headline. The death of her marriage was marked by the worst advertising revenue month in history. Poetic, in a way.
She tried to throw herself into her work now, but she found it difficult. Her mind was unfocused. It was taking longer than ever to go through the Book. Her wastepaper bin was overflowing with screwed-up Post-It notes that marked where she changed her mind.
Eventually she threw her pen down and gave up. She looked at her watch. It was a mere forty-five minutes before they were due to leave for the storage locker. She sighed and removed her glasses. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, trying to gather her thoughts.
She wondered what the storage locker would hold. According to Gideon, Holly had just broken up with her girlfriend before leaving for Paris. There was a chance that a wealth of memory-evoking materials was hoarded away in the locker.
She found herself wondering about Holly’s memory of Izzy. Why did she remember the dog? It wasn’t like they had spent a lot of time together. There was the time Victoria had sent her to the vet after Izzy had eaten an entire bowl of fruit and contracted chronic diarrhoea. She didn’t want to see her pet in pain, but she also didn’t want to accompany her as she knew it would be a messy job. Sending Holly, who she had been punishing at the time, seemed like a good compromise all around.
She supposed that was something that wouldn’t easily be forgotten. Then again, she’d also taken Izzy to be groomed on several occasions and had claimed to have enjoyed it.
Was Izzy a good memory or a bad one? Did memory retrieval work like that? She had no idea.
She smiled smugly to herself. In the whole of New York, Holly had only recalled Izzy to date. There was a small sense of satisfaction. Holly had remembered something close to Victoria, and that was something to be happy about.
“Victoria?”
She opened her eyes and saw Holly standing in the doorway.
“I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
“Not at all,” Victoria replied. She sat forward and pulled the Book towards her to at least pretend she had gotten some work done.
“How did you sleep?” Holly asked.
Victoria hoped her blush wasn’t visible. “Well, yourself?”
“I was awake most of the night,” Holly admitted.
“Oh? Any particular reason?”
“I think I’m nervous about what I’ll find today.”
You and me both, Victoria thought. “I’m sure it will be fine. How about some breakfast to settle your stomach?”
Holly tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “That would be nice. Join me?”
Victoria meant to say no, but somehow found she was already on her feet.
The journey to the storage unit was made in silence. Holly was nervous and didn’t know what to say. She could also detect a strange mood in Victoria. She was desperate to not have another disagreement, they had started to get back to normal and she didn’t want to make things worse.
She’d managed to convince Victoria to eat breakfast with her, but that, too, had been a silent affair. She just didn’t know where she stood with the elusive woman, and she longed for the Victoria she first met in Paris to return.
Luckily, it didn’t take long before they were pulling into the parking lot of the large storage facility.
“Wow, I hope they don’t expect me to remember the unit number,” Holly mumbled as she looked out of the window.
They walked into the lobby, which was a cramped area selling boxes, tape, and an assortment of moving equipment. Behind the desk was a tall man with a scruffy beard. He wore a bright red T-shirt and baseball cap, both emblazoned with the company logo.
“Hey, long time, no see,” he said when he saw Holly. “You cut your hair. Looks awesome.”
“Er, thanks,” Holly said hesitantly as she approached the desk.
“We thought you’d vanished. Normally we would have sold it off, but the boss said he had a feeling you’d be back. Carter, isn’t it?”
Holly nodded. “Yes, Holly Carter.”
The man smiled warmly and started to type on a computer.
“Carter, Carter… yep. Here we are. All right.” He picked up a calculator. “That’s twelve months, minus your initial payment and deposit, plus the tax, plus the security, and then the lost key.” He looked up. “I presume you don’t have your key?”
Holly shook her head apologetically.
“Plus the lost key, a new key, a month up front.” He continued to tap on the calculator. “Right, that will be two thousand, six hundred and forty-three dollars. Oh, and eighty cents.” He turned the calculator around so Holly could see the eye-watering amount.
“W-what?”
He leaned forward to look at the calculator. “Two thousand, six hundred—”
“Yes, I heard. Wow. Um. I… I don’t have that money. Well, I do but it would wipe out my savings,” Holly admitted. “I was in an accident, amnesia. I had no idea I had this storage locker and I think my entire life is in it… I really need to see it.”
He nodded in sad understanding. “Yeah, but it’s been twelve months since the last payment. You said you’d be back in two weeks, so we put you on a rolling plan in a long-term unit when you didn’t show. There’s an admin charge and a moving charge for that. Our long-term units have twenty-four-hour security to protect your belongings. And you lost your key, so there’s a fee for that, and a fee for a new one.”
“Look, I literally just got out of the hospital—”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give you access until the account has been paid up.”
“Can I… can I set up a payment plan or something?” Holly tried.
An American Express black card was slapped down onto the desk.
“Pay the account. Get me the key. Chop chop,” Victoria said.
“Is she with you?” he asked, looking from Holly to Victoria.
Holly ignored him and looked at Victoria. “You don’t have to do this. I can figure out another way—”
Victoria ignored Holly. “Yes, I am with her.” She peered at his name badge. “Charge my card and get me the key, Terry.”
Terry grabbed the card and started to input data into his computer.
“Victoria, please, I already owe you so much…” Holly said.
Victoria looked at Holly, her expression softened. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Holly licked her dry lips. “I do, I owe you… everything.”
“That’s not how I see it,” Victoria said.
“Unit seventy-two.” Terry placed a key on the desk with a large wooden block attached to it.
Victoria picked up the key and eyed the wooden block with distaste.
“Out of the doors, go left, second on your right, and then fifth on the left. Everything is signposted.” Terry held out Victoria’s card.
They worked their way through the maze of corridors in silence. Holly was mentally calculating how much money she must owe Victoria by now and wondered what organs were worth on the black market.
They stopped outside unit seventy-two. Victoria handed Holly the key and looked down to the industrial-strength padlock. Holly took a deep breath and bent down. She unlocked the padlock, released it from the catch, and pushed the door up. The noise echoed loudly down the empty corridors.
She stood up and peered into the dark room. She saw a lit-up button on the wall and pushed it. A bright fluorescent tube sprung to life, flickering a few times before finally illuminating the room.
“It appears,” Victoria murmured as she looked around, “that you are a hoarder.”
Holly nodded her agreement.
Inside the room were countless boxes, black sacks, and a scattering of furniture.
“There was a part of me that worried there would be nothing in here,” Holly confessed.
“Well, you can safely put that fear to bed.”
Holly took in the sight. The boxes looked hastily packed. Some were not taped shut, and some had things sticking out of the tops of them. The sacks and carrier bags looked like someone had packed in a hurry and run out of boxes. Nothing was labelled. She looked around in shock, realising the enormity of the task.
“Well, what now?” Victoria asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t take all of this back to your house. It would take twenty trips, and it would fill your house!”
“Then I suggest we start looking through everything and decide what you would like to take back with you today and what can stay for another time.”
“Yeah… yeah… okay.” Holly walked a little deeper into the unit, her mind racing. “He remembered me.”
“Sorry?” Victoria questioned.
“The guy in the office, he remembered me,” Holly said.
“Yes, he did.” Victoria stepped into the room and started to look around.
“I wonder why?” Holly asked.
Victoria laughed. “Oh, yes, such a mystery.”
“You don’t think so?” Holly asked. “Surely he sees hundreds of people?”
Victoria sighed and turned to face her. “Holly, you are a beautiful woman. Of course he remembers you.”
Holly felt her cheeks blush. “Oh, I’m not. I’ve seen your magazine, I’m not beautiful. Those models on the pages of Arrival, they’re beautiful.”
Victoria put on her leather driving gloves and flipped the lid off of a box. “Models exist to be as plain as possible so the clothes get all the attention. Of course, some of them are pretty, if you appreciate a lack of muscle structure and the façade of a face. But, on the whole, no… models are not beautiful. They serve a purpose. They are hangers. Glorified clothes hangers. Well-compensated hangers, but hangers nonetheless. You are a fine example of beauty.”
Victoria peered into the box she had opened and then turned to look at Holly. “This box appears to contain old issues of Arrival, you certainly don’t need them at my house.”
Holly stared at Victoria in complete shock. “T-thank you, Victoria. That means so much to me. Coming from you, of all people.”
Victoria looked utterly confused. “Well, of course, I have all the back issues of Arrival.”
Holly stepped forward and threw her arms around Victoria, encasing her in a hug. Slowly, Victoria brought her own arms up and wrapped them around Holly. Holly smiled, it was clear that Victoria had no idea why she was being hugged. The editor didn’t know that her softly spoken speech on what constituted beauty was just what Holly needed to hear.
Something caught Holly’s eye sticking out of the top of an opened box. She pulled away from Victoria and gasped with excitement.
“Photo album!” she announced. She picked the album up and held it in the crook of her elbow. She leafed through the pages, memories suddenly hitting her like a shockwave. Not memories as such, but knowledge.
“I remember these people, I remember these photos,” she shrieked happily. She turned and threw her arms around Victoria again, this time with the photo album tightly gripped in her right hand.
This time Victoria was quicker to return the embrace and held Holly tightly.
Holly let go and flipped back to the front page of the album. She angled the book to show Victoria. “This is my mom. And that’s my maternal nana.”
“You remember them?” Victoria breathed.
“Sort of… not everything. Just a sensation of memory. I know I’ve seen these photos before, I can tell you who these people are, I know… I know some of it. The rest is just out of reach, but I feel like I have a loose thread to pull on.”
She flipped through the pages. “I can’t believe I couldn’t remember these people, my family.” She looked up at Victoria with a big smile and tears tracking down her face. “But I remember them now. Bits and pieces anyway.”
“It’s a start,” Victoria told her. “Don’t rush it. Clearly your memories are there. Give it time, they will come.”
Holly looked down at a photo of herself posing with her parents. Their cheeks were pink, and they all held mugs. She remembered the picture so well, it was taken Christmas. She was fourteen, and it had snowed. They’d made hot chocolate in the evening after spending an hour outside making the best snowman in the world.
“My parents died a while ago,” Holly said. “Neither of them had any siblings, and I was an only child, too. So that was that, no family. That’s why no one came looking for me, I suspected that was the case, but now I know it.”
“Do you need some time alone?” Victoria whispered. She placed a comforting hand on Holly’s shoulder.
“No, I’m glad you’re here.” She sniffed and closed the album. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
Half an hour later and they had managed to arrange a lot of her possessions into piles. Holly had pushed the furniture into one corner and put all of the sacks and bags of clothing into another. She was taken aback by the amount of clothes she owned. Victoria seemed bewildered that some of those expensive clothes had been consigned to black sacks.
Holly’s love of reading had been well and truly confirmed. Many of the boxes contained books. She’d heaved them against a wall, there was no way she would be taking them to Victoria’s home as there were enough to fill a modest library.
Luckily, she’d managed to find, and hide, the embarrassing music collection that she just knew she’d possess. Victoria had offered a smirk when she quickly pushed a box of boy band music out from under her probing eye.
The boxes left contained personal items, photographs, a digital camera, a laptop, and an extraordinary number of journals. All of the journals were handwritten by Holly and seemed to document most of her life. If time had been no object, she would have sat down and read them all cover to cover immediately. But she was aware that one of the most important women in publishing was assisting her and probably eager to get home.
“There are more in here,” Victoria sounded astonished. She had kicked the lid off of a dusty box with the tip of her heel, and now she pointed down its contents. “You must have thoroughly documented your entire life.”
Holly reached into the box and counted the journals. “Twenty-six. That’s one for each year of my life.”
“I doubt you were chronicling your existence as a baby,” Victoria said. She looked Holly up and down. “Although…”
Holly chuckled. “Well, then, I’ve just had a fascinating life.”
“Or you feel the need to write down every single thing that has ever happened to you.”
“I prefer my theory.” Holly stood up and looked at the boxes that she had decided were essential to take home immediately. “With that one, that’s six boxes.”
“All right. I’ll go and get that imbecile from the office to help us get them to the car,” Victoria said.
“I don’t think that’s his job,” Holly commented.
She heard Victoria’s snort of laughter as she walked down the corridor and towards the front desk. “I’ll be back shortly,” she said.
The moment she was gone, Holly picked up a random journal from one of the boxes. The handwriting was messy and there were hand-drawn doodles all over the page. Clearly this was a journal from her youth. She skimmed through a few paragraphs. Apparently young Holly was very excited to be a sheep in the Nativity play.
She put the journal back where she found it and picked up another. The journal was leather-bound, not a paperback like the earlier ones. She flipped through a few pages and finally caught onto the timeline. It was when she had moved to New York but before she worked at Arrival. She had a girlfriend named Kate and had aspirations to be a writer. Apparently, she was on her way to being a penniless writer, as she had been turned down for a great many positions already.
She put the journal down and picked up the next one in the sequence. She opened it in the middle. Her handwriting, which had improved in the previous tome, was back to being a mess. There were faint water splotches on the page. Holly read a few lines.
She had started at Arrival, and she was miserable. Her life was falling apart and her evil boss, Victoria Hastings, was making her life a living nightmare. She swallowed and closed the book.
There was one last book in the box, presumably the one she had used before she went away. She picked it up and noticed that there was a bulge from a pen in the middle. She opened the page, gasped in shock, and slammed the book closed again.
She felt her cheeks flare up with heat. She rushed to the corridor to check that no one was around. When she was satisfied that she was alone, she slowly opened the book again. On the page staring up at her was a hand-drawn image of Victoria. Completely naked. She stared at the image and then swallowed hard.
She checked the corridor again. She peeked at the page. She had obviously drawn the picture, but she had no idea if it was from fact or fiction. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. At some point, she had drawn an erotic picture of her boss. Her boss whom she hated just in the last journal. She found herself staring at the image. She licked her dry lips.
She was too shocked to process what she was seeing. And too turned on. It was a vision she hadn’t expected, but one she couldn’t tear her eyes from.
She heard Victoria’s heels clacking down the corridor. She slammed the book closed and buried it under the other journals in the box. She stared at the box for a moment before putting the lid onto top. And then sitting herself on top of the box for good measure.
“He’s bringing a cart,” Victoria said as she entered the unit. She frowned. “Are you all right? You look flushed.”
“I-I’m fine,” Holly said quickly.
“Have you done too much? Are your memories retu—”
“I’m fine, just… hungry,” Holly lied.
Victoria’s eyes narrowed as she tried to ascertain if Holly was unwell or not.
“We’ll be home soon, I’m sure we can find you a snack,” Victoria offered.
The sound of a trolley rolling in the wrong direction caught their attention. Victoria rolled her eyes and stormed out of the unit.
Holly put her head in her hands.
“Oh, shit,” she murmured.