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

lipstick and dabs at her bingo card.

‘Would you like us to see if she’s around to speak to you?’ the nurse, Sam, asks.

Chloe is aware of the pause that stretches between them down the phone line. Is there any point? Will Nan even know who she is today?

‘No, it’s OK, just let her know I called.’

‘Of course.’

She thanks him, trying to imitate his cheeriness as she hangs up, then returns to the quiet of her empty bedroom.

She checks the time; she’s arranged to meet Hollie this afternoon. But she has time to drop in on one other person before she’s due to meet Hollie.

There are a few people in the cemetery when she arrives, mostly those kitted out with gardening gloves and secateurs – a routine to fill the empty days retirement leaves.

She enters via the gate on the far side today and walks beside a freshly dug grave, earth churned up, waiting patiently for a new guest to lie in its soil bed. From this entrance she turns right towards Stella’s grave and from the path she can just make out her headstone and the daffodils she’d left here two weeks ago, their dull heads bent solemnly now. She walks over and crouches down towards Stella, feeling the coolness of the earth rush to greet her.

‘Hello, Mum,’ she says to the air, and then looks around, but of course there’s no one there to hear. This isn’t a TV drama, she reminds herself, no one is watching.

She touches the stone and feels its cold penetrate her palm, then she leans back into the ground and reads the headstones either side of Stella’s: son, father, brother, sister, mother, daughter. Labels. Who really are we if we don’t belong to someone else? She feels guilty then. She puts it down to the daffodils, their browning petals making this grave feel unloved, enough space made for guilt to slip in. She pulls them from the short vase and hears her knee crack as she gets up off the grass. She regrets now not bringing more flowers to replace these.

She takes the path down towards the watering shed and inside dumps the daffodils in the compost bin. But as she turns to leave, she sees it, the same black granite stone she’d come across the other day, and the same matching single daffodil standing up in the vase. That one needs replacing too. Only as she goes to take it, she has a closer look at the stone, and this time she notices the name – it can’t be. She blinks, making sure her eyes aren’t playing tricks on her. But it’s there, for all to see: Angela Kyle. She can barely believe it.

Slowly, she crouches down, removing the old daffodil and laying it down on the gravel path beside her. She takes her thumb and rubs it across every bronzed letter scored into the stone, still incredulous at her discovery.

Angela Rose Kyle, aged four,

taken from us 27 October 1979.

Always loved, never forgotten.

We pray for the day when we will meet again.

Mummy and Daddy

She pulls her hand away from the stone and examines it, as if somehow it had provided a direct link between her and the Kyles. As if somehow this shared touch was all the confirmation she needed that fate was at that moment encouraging them towards one another. And somewhere deep inside, the emptiness she had been feeling since she had packed that pathetic box in her office lifts ever so slightly.

She steps back from the stone and checks her watch. She’d better leave now otherwise she will be late for Hollie. But as she walks further away, she is aware that she’s actually nudging closer – although to what, she doesn’t know.

‘So you just stumbled across the grave?’ Hollie says, stirring her coffee and frowning into her cup. ‘Just like that?’

‘Well, it is a cemetery, Hollie. I just feel so sorry for the parents.’

Hollie nods, but Chloe knows this look. She’d expected it. Chloe doesn’t understand why Hollie doesn’t feel more sorry for them. She had hoped she might ask more questions. But she can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it, and now inside Chloe feels that familiar sting of shame for even mentioning it.

‘And that’s all you’ve been up to?’ Hollie says.

Chloe tries not to sound too disappointed at the change of subject. ‘Oh . . . well, this and that.’

‘Like?’

‘Well, like I said . . .’

Hollie nods and puts down her teaspoon. Chloe hopes she’ll ask her more about them now.

‘Isn’t there something you can do? Appeal or something? Have you contacted HR? I mean, they can’t just fire you.’

‘I know, but it’s different – on a newspaper, I mean. Different rules apply; it’s like kitchens.’

‘What about kitchens?’

‘Well, chefs and stuff, nothing’s done by the book. You do something wrong once and you’re out. It’s the same in newsrooms.’

‘But there are procedures, Chloe, you need to speak to HR. You can’t just get sacked for taking time off, you’re meant to get warnings. And Nan was missing, for God’s sake, the police were involved, and it’s not like you didn’t let them know. How can they be so uncaring?’

‘I know but—’

‘It’s against the law. Do you want me to have a word?’

‘No.’ Her eyes quickly meet Hollie’s.

Her friend looks affronted.

‘I mean, no, no thanks,’ Chloe adds.

There’s a pot of brown sugar on the table between them, a silver spoon sticking out of it. On the end of the handle is a picture of a yellow beach and blue sea, Jersey written underneath. Chloe picks up the sugar on the spoon, letting the granules drop back into the pot, grains of sweet sand. She’s back on a Cornish beach, conjuring up a memory of sand pouring through her tiny fingers, building sandcastles with Granddad, Nan and Stella, just like in that photograph, shoulders turning pink in the sun, knees in warm sand, donkeys walking up and down the beach beside them. Is it any wonder people want