Remember Me
by Charity Norman
December 2023
An extract from Remember Me by Charity Norman, winner of the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel.
Prologue
17 June 1994
‘I envy you,’ she says.
She doesn’t. Why would she envy me? She’s Dr Leah Parata, five years older and infinitely, effortlessly superior. Everything about the woman screams energy and competence, even the way she’s twirling that turquoise beanie around her index finger. She’s tall, light on her feet, all geared up for back-country hiking in a black jacket—or maybe navy blue, as I’ll later tell the police. Waterproof trousers, walking boots with red laces. Hair in a heavy plait, though a few dark tendrils have escaped.
‘I really do,’ she insists. ‘You’ve bought your ticket to Ecuador. What an adventure.’
‘Hope so.’
‘I know so.’ She grabs a bar of Cadbury’s from the display and holds it up to show me. ‘Got a craving.’
‘I didn’t know you were a chocoholic.’
‘Just when it’s cold. This should keep me going all the way to Biddulph’s.’
I’ve only once managed to haul myself up to Biddulph’s bivvy, a ramshackle hut on the bush line, built about a hundred years ago for professional rabbiters. They must have been hardy people. As I count her change, I peer out at the weather: standing water on the petrol station forecourt, raindrops bouncing high off the mustard-coloured paintwork of her car. The ranges are smothered in charcoal cloud, as though some monstrous creature is breathing out giant plumes of smoke.
‘Seriously?’ I ask. ‘You’re heading up there? Today?’
She takes a casual glance at the cloud cover. It seems to delight her. ‘Lucky me, eh? Perfect weather for finding Marchant’s snails. The first wet days after a dry spell bring ’em out. I’ve got a happy weekend ahead of me, crawling around in the leaf litter.’
I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to tramp through those rain-soaked forests and uplands, but then I’ve never been a mountain woman. Leah is, of course. She took her very first steps in the Ruahine Range. To her, that wilderness is home. She’s going on and on about her snails while I smile and nod.
‘They’re this big!’—holding up her fingers to demonstrate. ‘Carnivorous.’ She catches me blanching at the image of a giant, flesh-eating snail. ‘Okay, maybe not the sexiest of our native creatures. But their shells are works of art, they’ve been around for millions of years, and now they’re in trouble because everything preys on them. Possums, rats, pigs.’
Blah blah blah, I think, because I’m twenty-one, and empty headed, and I’ve been jealous of Leah for as long as I can remember. Her teeth are a bit crooked. She has a high forehead, a small mole on her left cheekbone and a permanent concentration crease, a vertical line between her eyebrows. Yet somehow, these imperfections add to the hypnotic effect. I can see why my brother Eddie’s had a crush since he first clapped eyes on her, swimming her horse in the Arapito stream. They were both eleven then, and he was a scrawny kid from Leeds, but he still hasn’t given up hope.
Just as she’s opening the door to leave the shop, she drops her chocolate—oops—and swiftly stoops to pick it up again, flashing a wide, warm smile at me.
‘Ecuador! Good for you, Emily.’
‘I’ll see you before I go,’ I call after her.
I’m not sure she’s heard me. She’s striding across the flooded forecourt, pulling her beanie onto her head. The turquoise looks vivid even through rain-streaming glass. She checks her watch before getting into the car. I bet she’s already forgotten our conversation. She’ll be thinking about her snails, about what she’s got to achieve over the weekend.
Her brake lights flicker at the exit. Now she’s accelerating away, water rising in sheets as her wheels bounce through the flooded hollows.
•
They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth.
Extracted from Remember Me by Charity Norman. Published by Allen & Unwin. Out now.
