I was around nine, my sister was around five and we were walking home from school one day. (This was the eighties, so that’s not as alarming as it now sounds.) Our flat was in view. I remember looking forward to Round The Bend and Count Duckula so it must have been a Tuesday.
An old lady came out of the green grocer’s shop to my right. I remember the sheet of metal on the pavement that was covering a missing paving slab, I remember her winter coat buttoned up and the smile she gave me. I remember her lying flat on the floor, so suddenly that I didn’t have time to see her foot catch the uneven edge of the metal sheet. A wet pink tooth had skittered from her mouth and across the pavement.
I remember my terrified sister, flying off as fast as she could to find our dad. I remember squatting down, utterly unequipped, next to the old lady. Because she had smiled at me, I felt a kinship or obligation. As she lay, toothless and crying, I said, “Are you okay?” She did not have time to answer me because the green grocer had run out to help, and an off duty fireman. Maybe my dad by then. For the next thirty years I would, from time to time, torture myself about asking such a stupid question. She was very obviously not okay and she needed help, not polite inquiries.
There are other memories from that era, of arguably more significant events, that I have forgotten even though I know from family or public record that they occurred. Memory does not work like a zip drive, it’s more a lucky dip bucket. I should remember crucial events affecting our family or our country, but I remember the smile, coat, tooth and shame. I still felt the shame.
But, when I checked just now, I can see I got some details wrong. There was no green grocer’s shop. So the man I remember in a green tabard, helping, was probably not really there. I also realised that the off duty fireman I remembered helping, had actually helped with a completely different incident during a school trip. Someone helped the old lady but all I really know is that it wasn’t me.
I have no idea if it was even a Tuesday. Count Duckula and Round The Bend were my favourite shows and I probably have other clear memories of racing home to watch those, which I’ve folded in. I don’t remember racing home to watch Blue Peter because I didn’t. It was boring.
My sister and I had not discussed this experience since 1989 but when we finally talked about it recently, she remembered it just as vividly. But she did not remember it exactly the same. And by comparing our memories we dropped some incorrect details, confirmed others, and a clearer picture developed. And when I squirmed in my shame, she said, “but you were nine”. She’d been there too, and she had not thought I’d done anything wrong and then, suddenly, maybe I hadn’t.
Memories feel unshakable, we can see them in our minds and watch them over again like a video. They feel concrete because they are ours, like documents in our mental filing cabinet. And so, when evidence comes along that those memories are flawed, incomplete or even entirely false, that’s pretty terrifying.
We deny it. “I was there, I know what I saw”.
Or we rationalise it. “You think that because you were further away/drunk/short sighted”.
Or, and this is the most unsettling of all, we accept that our memories were wrong in this case. And if these memories are wrong, what other memories might we remember incorrectly? Can we ever trust our memories, our brains, ourselves?
Not really, says Elizabeth Loftus, a leading expert on memory. In her 2013 TED Talk How reliable is your memory, Loftus says that rather than a “recording device”, memory is “constructive” and “reconstructive". She likens it to a Wikipedia page. “You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.”
Crime fiction loves to play with memories. A crack in the psyche is rich compost for unease and fear. What is more frightening than not even trusting yourself?
Some of the biggest crime books of the last decade feature protagonists battling memory issues. From SJ Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep to Paula Hawkins’s The Girl On the Train to In The Woods by Tana French. Fear of our memories failing us, or painting us the wrong picture, is a universal concern.
In The Short Straw, I wanted to play with childhood memories and the long tendrils they can have. My three main characters – adult sisters - have contrasting and confusing childhood memories of a particular day that appear to show one thing and then - when finally put together - tell an altogether different and more sinister story. It takes them returning to an abandoned mansion they have not seen for thirty years, for the memories to surface fully. And when they do, they realise they are in terrible danger.
But I also wanted to give the sisters what my sister gave to me. Reassurance and forgiveness. Look, I was there too, and it wasn’t your fault. You were nine.
We can often feel like we are our memories. But maybe, more importantly, we are a combination of perceptions. Our own and other people’s, the documented evidence and the nebulous anecdotal evidence of how we made others feel. Maybe this is why it is so important, so valuable, to share memories with each other. Maybe, without sharing, we will never be able to see the full picture.
The Short Straw by Holly Seddon (Orion Publishing) Out Now
Three troubled sisters find themselves lost in a storm at night, and seek safety at Moirthwaite Manor, where their mother once worked. They are shocked to find the isolated mansion that loomed so large through their childhoods has long been abandoned. Drawing straws to decide who should get help, one sister heads back into the darkness. With the siblings separated, the deadly secrets hidden in the house finally make themselves known and we learn the unspeakable truth that will tear the family apart.
More information about Holly Seddon and her work can be found on her website. You can also find her on X @hollyseddon on Instagram @hollyseddonauthor and on Facebook.
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