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

other end of the office, Chloe begins to file away the stories she’s gathered, the thick pile of envelopes thinning out in her hand until there are none left.

It’s late, black licks at the windows, and the tinny sound from the cleaner’s headphones edges closer. Chloe returns to her desk and switches off her computer. Today’s newspaper is a skeleton now, picked of flesh. She pushes it deep into the recycling bin.

TWO

On the walk home she thinks of Nan. She’s tired and all she wants is sleep. She hopes she won’t find her clawing, cat-like, at the door.

When Nan misses Stella, it stirs the ache inside Chloe. It reminds her every time that she is the last one left to love. She pulls a photo from the breast pocket of her coat. It’s her favourite, a black and white one of Nan and Stella. Nan must be around thirty, Stella is only six; she has white-blonde curls and she’s missing two front teeth. They’re on a beach in Cornwall, the shadow of St Michael’s Mount looming behind their shoulders. This picture anchors Chloe on the days when she feels lost. She likes to imagine Granddad watching them through the viewfinder, nose pushed up to the camera’s black leathery body, teasing them to say ‘cheese’ the way he always did. Not that she remembers.

There’s something about that photograph that she loves: ghosts of the past looking out at the future, a sunny day on a sandy beach, the way Nan’s hand grips Stella’s shoulder. She runs her finger across them, the picture-perfect family frozen in time. She smiles as she slips the photograph carefully back into her pocket.

She fishes her phone from her bag. Three missed calls. She recognizes the number – social services. She dials her voicemail then decides against it and quickly hangs up, ignoring the messages.

She likes walking in the dark, as if threat wraps her in a safety blanket rather than strips her bare. Children are meant to be afraid of the dark; she never had much choice other than to find comfort in it.

She knows these streets, the houses that fail to pull their curtains at night, with their own families tucked up safe inside – on bad days it has felt to Chloe as if they are goading those like her, the ones on the other side of the glass. On good days she stares in, and it isn’t difficult to find something she envies. Tonight, though, she doesn’t need to linger; she’s tired and she wants to get home.

She turns the corner, and moments later her key is in the door. The house is still inside, just the shuffle of her footsteps moving on the Axminster carpet in the hall. Too tired to eat, she takes the stairs, pulling herself up on the rail installed for Nan.

She opens the door to her own room slowly, wincing as the carpet shifts underneath it. She can’t bear that voice calling out in the night for Stella, to ask again who Chloe is and why she is there. She needs one night of no questions, no explanations already made a hundred times before and instantly forgotten.

The next morning, Chloe finds Nan standing in the middle of the kitchen. Every cupboard door is open again, the contents cover the worktops – cans of rice pudding, dozens of them. She looks up and sees her.

‘Oh Chloe, dear, I’m glad you’re here, I can’t seem to find the teapot.’

It’s then she smells it, an odour of waxy burning plastic. She rushes into the kitchen in time to see the electric kettle begin to melt on the gas stove.

‘Nan!’

She opens the window, coughing, while Nan starts emptying more cupboards.

‘Nan, stop!’ she says. ‘We’ve got teabags. Sit down, I’ll make you a cuppa.’

‘Teabags?’ Nan says, shrugging. She wanders off into the living room.

Chloe cleans up the kitchen and boils a pan of water on the stove. She goes outside and dumps the burnt kettle in the bin on top of the last one.

She takes the cup of tea in to Nan in the living room and sits down beside her, fingers wrapped around her own warm mug.

‘Lovely,’ Nan says. ‘You look smart, where are you off to?’

‘Work, Nan.’

‘Remind me,’ she says, taking a sip, ‘where do you work?’

‘At the local newspaper.’

‘Oh, a reporter! That’s it.’

Chloe considers explaining the archive again, telling her of the cuttings system that the reporters rely on, of how she dissects the local newspaper each and every day, filing lives away into drawers. But instead she says, ‘Yeah, that’s right, Nan.’

‘Stella would have loved that.’

Chloe takes a sip of her own tea. Nan has buried Stella again while she slept. She’s better today. Chloe thinks of the missed calls from social services. She and Nan are managing just fine. They don’t need anyone else.

She cooks Nan’s porridge and gets her washed and dressed, handing her a toothbrush on which she’s squeezed a small slither of white and blue striped paste.

‘You did the same for me when I was little,’ she says.

‘Did I?’ Nan replies, frothy toothpaste dropping down her chin and into the sink. She spits and rinses and Chloe gently pats her face dry.

Downstairs she sits her down in front of the TV, fills her flask with tea and hands her the remote control.

The clock on the wall makes her think of the note Alec left on her desk. But this morning, everything is going to plan, she’ll even make it to work on time. She dots a kiss on Nan’s forehead.

‘Where are you going?’ Nan asks.

‘To work, Nan, I told you. I’m going to be late.’

‘But you can’t, not today. Not when someone’s stolen my greenhouse.’

By some miracle, she manages to arrive at work on time. She’d walked Nan out into the garden, and it was only as they stood among the plastic terracotta pots and the earthy smell of dried compost that she was finally persuaded that her glasshouse was still there.

At the