The Imposter, Anna Wharton [romantic story to read TXT] 📗

just a job. But it already feels much more than that to Chloe. After everything she’s been through, she – more than anyone – understands. She just wishes she could help.

Chloe reads on until the inky words swim in front of her eyes and her back aches from lying on the carpet. She flicks back through her notebook; five filled pages, not bad. For now.

She folds all the cuttings away carefully, putting them back inside the brown envelope and tucking it into Nan’s sideboard alongside the photo albums overnight. She makes a vow to reopen the case in the morning.

Chloe and Nan have been visiting the cemetery every weekend for as long as she can remember, but dementia has changed everything. With a disease like that, old routines must give way to new ones. Except, Chloe doesn’t like change. She scratches at her arm as she squeezes the last of the toothpaste from the tube, an itch inside she can’t reach. Toothpaste is another thing to add to the shopping list, and, she decides, another reason she can’t go to the cemetery this morning.

She takes the Angela Kyle file with her when she leaves home, company for the bus journey to the supermarket. When she arrives she wanders aimlessly between parents pushing screaming toddlers in trolleys or scolding older children taking a ride on the end of them. Those are the types of families she can stomach; the ones who walk together in neat little sets, pushing the trolley in sync, make her aware of even the skin that covers her. She wriggles uncomfortably within it. Every time.

In the cereal aisle, a little girl in stripy dungarees is trying to persuade her mum to buy a brightly coloured packet of princess cereal. Chloe stands, her basket suspended on her arm, as she watches them. She thinks of Maureen Kyle. What she would give to have a similar argument with her daughter given her time again? Surely she’d let her have her way. As the little girl pleads with her mother, Chloe is tempted to remind the woman that life is short – what does a box of cereal matter? But the woman has now answered her phone, tucking it between her neck and her ear, and she’s turned her back on her daughter. Chloe shakes her head and thinks of the split second Patrick turned around. The girl starts to wander as her mother runs through her shopping list with the person on the end of the line. Chloe follows her. The little girl picks up more colourful boxes of cereal. She calls to her mother to show her, but her mother barely notices. Chloe steps forward, just an inch or so. She looks around her. If only someone had intervened when they saw Angela on her own, might the Kyles’ story have ended differently? The little girl wanders further from her mother, towards packets of multi-coloured corn loops. Chloe traces her footsteps, looking back at the mother every few seconds. Under her arm she feels the weight of the Kyle file in her bag. For all this mother knows, somebody could be watching this little girl now. They could be stalking her, ready to pounce when they’re sure her mother is distracted enough not to notice.

‘Mamma,’ the little girl calls. She picks up a box of cereal, turning it upside down and shaking it, delighting at the sound.

Chloe quickly takes a step back from the girl as her mother turns around in time to see the mess she makes as it pours out of the box. The woman sighs into her phone, exasperated, and hangs up. Then strides over to her daughter and chastises her. Chloe takes some Weetabix from the shelf and moves on with her basket. Another parent who doesn’t realize how lucky she is.

Chloe continues shopping, aware of the lone figure she cuts among all the others with their loaded trolleys. In the cosmetics aisle she is still thinking of the little girl. Distracted, she throws a tube of denture paste into her basket. It’s only when she finally reaches the checkout that she remembers she doesn’t need to buy it anymore.

‘I picked this up by mistake,’ she explains.

The cashier nods without speaking.

Chloe is about to tell her about Nan, to explain, but then she notices her name badge: Sharon Kyle.

‘Kyle,’ Chloe says. ‘That’s an unusual surname.’

The woman looks up. ‘Is it?’

Chloe can’t help herself.

‘Are you related to a Maureen and Patrick Kyle?’

The woman puts a bunch of bananas on the scales and looks up to the ceiling. ‘Nope, no relation.’

‘Oh, OK, I just thought . . .’

Chloe carries on packing her shopping in plastic orange bags.

She tries again: ‘They had a daughter, Angela?’

The woman shakes her head.

Chloe pays and leaves, convincing herself that they must be related somehow. She asks herself again what might have happened if this were a detective show? She stops still on the pavement, even thinks of going back. Surely a detective wouldn’t have let a lead like that go? If she’d been a relative, Chloe could have told her that she was revisiting the case for new clues; the woman might even have offered to help, perhaps given her an interview.

As she walks to the bus stop, she has a fantasy of her name appearing alongside a newspaper article. She goes over the headlines in her mind, before settling on a triumphant Angela Kyle reunited with parents. She’s smiling as she gets on the bus. She arranges her shopping at her feet, and wonders whether the police interviews of the time extended to wider family and friends. Aren’t most missing children taken by someone they know? She’s sure she’s heard that before. She takes out her notepad from her bag and makes a note to look up that statistic. She swaps her notepad and pen for a cutting from the Angie file. She opens it out on her lap.

WE’RE STILL WAITING FOR ANGIE

Below it two faces, weathered by a decade of grief, Patrick