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

to escape their lives every summer? Pretend to be someone else, if only for two weeks?

She looks up at Hollie. ‘Can we talk about something else?’ Chloe says. She wonders whether Maureen and Patrick ever took a holiday with Angie. She can’t remember reading anything in the cuttings. If Hollie wasn’t sitting here, she would take out her notepad and pen and write down a reminder to have a look.

‘Of course, but I hope you’ve signed up with some job agencies. Even if you just got some temp work while they sort all this out, it’d be better than hanging around in ceme—’

‘Can you imagine it, though? Losing a child?’ Chloe interrupts.

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, just never knowing what had happened to her. It was OK for me, in a way, because even though Nan didn’t come home, I know where she is, I know she’s safe, that she’s alive, but the Kyles . . . they just have to live in this limbo, this not knowing.’

Chloe picks more sugar up with the spoon, watching the granules fall slowly off the edge.

Hollie dips her hazel eyes into Chloe’s eyeline and reaches for her hand. She lowers her voice when she speaks.

‘It’s awful, Chloe, it really is, but don’t go taking on the worries of the world right now, you’ve got other things to think about. Seriously. Like getting a new job.’

Chloe nods in a way she hopes will reassure her friend. ‘I guess.’

‘So you’ll sign up with some job agencies? Today?’

She nods again. Hollie starts putting on her coat and scarf.

‘Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t got more time, but Phil’s taking me out tonight. It’s the anniversary of our first kiss.’

‘Do people celebrate that?’

Hollie shrugs. ‘We do.’

‘I just can’t help thinking how empty their lives must have been all these years. I mean, imagine—’

Chloe looks up towards her friend, but Hollie’s picking the skin around her thumb. When she looks up again, it’s like she never even heard Chloe.

‘Did I tell you we’re going to Lanzarote by the way?’

Chloe looks up. ‘Wasn’t it Fuerteventura?’

‘Oh yes, it was, but you get more for your money in Lanzarote. We’re staying in a five-star spa hotel.’

‘Oh,’ Chloe says. But she’s looking at the teaspoon. She has never been to a spa hotel, and she would bet the Kyles haven’t either – it’s not really their style.

‘Chloe,’ Hollie says, putting her hand on her friend’s arm.

She looks up.

‘Give up this silly fantasy. Please. Find yourself a job, that’s what you need right now, a healthy distraction.’

Chloe puts the spoon down and starts pulling her coat on. She loves Hollie but sometimes she wishes she would mind her own business because all it does when she doesn’t is stir up all those old feelings.

‘Do you want a lift? I’m only parked down the road,’ Hollie asks.

‘It’s OK, I’ll walk. It’s not like I’m in a hurry anywhere.’

‘OK, good idea, you’ll pass a couple of recruitment agencies on the way home. Pop in.’ She checks her watch. ‘It’s not even five yet.’ She rolls her coat sleeve back down, then leaves a kiss on the top of Chloe’s head. ‘Call me soon, yeah? And promise me you’ll speak to HR.’

After she closes the door behind her, the waitress carries over a tray rattling with empty cups and takes theirs from the table.

‘Can I get another one of these?’ Chloe asks, pointing at her empty cup and beginning to remove her coat. She picks up the spoon again, studying the little beach on the end of it. She wonders if Maureen and Patrick ever took Angie to Jersey.

THIRTEEN

Everyone at Park House has lost something. For some it’s an item of jewellery. One lady, three doors down from Nan, has been searching for months for a pearl necklace she last wore in 1947. Chloe watches her sometimes, rifling through magazines, boxes of backgammon with torn corners, or down the backs of sofas, gathering nothing but crumbs under her fingernails. The other residents are used to her; they sweep their feet out of the way, or pick up their cups of tea and knitting without even breaking conversation. She mutters to herself while she’s searching, telling tales of the times she wore it to no one in particular, taking herself all the way back to pre-war dance halls and their parquet floors, and never catching sight of the beads. It’s an unwritten rule in the care home that everyone exists in their own time frame. Some residents sit alongside each other separated by decades, each as real to them as the year their neighbour finds themselves occupying in the seat next door.

Another thing people lose is time – that’s very common. Yesterday, Chloe was making a cup of tea for Nan when a man started talking about politics; he was furious about something, gesticulating wildly, so much so that one of the nurses asked him to keep his voice down.

‘Well, of course it’s all the Prime Minister’s fault, it’s all down to Edward Heath,’ he protested, in case he could persuade the nurse that the ex-PM himself was the reason residents were struggling to hear Countdown.

Nobody corrected him.

Time is mostly misplaced, which often makes the communal area one big waiting room: for news; for a visit; for a loved one to return from a war that ended more than half a century ago. And that is the most painful thing that people lose – family. This morning Chloe heard one lady ask at least a dozen times where her husband was, the nursing staff gently reminding her he had died five months before. Every explanation wet her cheeks with fresh tears.

‘Terrible for these old folk,’ Nan says suddenly, looking round from their game of rummy. She leans in closer. ‘Some of them are a bit . . .’ Her finger draws circles at the side of her ear until she’s sure Chloe understands.

Chloe nods – she is the cleaner today.

‘It’s marvellous they let you have a little break now and then,’ Nan smiles. She’s wearing a