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

Kyle; Amanda

Kyle; Norman

Kyle; Sharon

Kyle; Patricia

Kyle; Angela.

Bingo. She pulls it out, it’s more creased than she remembered, but when she peers in, she can see all the cuttings are there, packed away in a tight weave.

The nearest photocopier is outside the editor’s office. She presses the standby button and wills the machine to life. It clunks and clicks, waking dozy from slumber.

‘Come on,’ she whispers to herself as she taps the top of the machine. ‘Come on.’

She counts the seconds until the green light on the ‘ready’ button flashes and when it does, Chloe empties the cuttings onto Sandra’s in-tray. Then she starts unfolding them one by one, smoothing out the creases, putting one under the scanner at a time, watching, satisfied, as copy after copy appears in the tray beneath.

‘Come on,’ she says again to no one but herself.

She curses when she has to pause to refill the A4 paper tray.

She goes on and on like this, the pile in the tray getting thicker, stopping only to feed the machine more paper. One eye on the door at the top of the office which is once again plunged into darkness.

As the pile grows so does her excitement. She takes one copy from the stack at random; the photographs aren’t perfect, some emotion in the faces of Maureen and Patrick has been replaced with inkjet splodges, but the rest is there: the words, the detail. That’s exactly what she needs.

In the silence of the office, the machine spits out copies into the tray, a rhythmic mechanical beat.

And then something else. A bleep at the other end of the office. The release of the door. A cough. The click as half a dozen ceiling lights flicker on above the reporters’ desks. Chloe ducks behind a tall spider plant perched on Sandra’s desk and watches as a late-shift reporter heads towards her desk. Chloe freezes. Wincing now at the copier, glancing between the machine and the file. She has just a few cuttings left. She makes a quick calculation. Could she manage without them? No, she needs every cutting, every detail. Any missing part of this jigsaw might be the most vital.

Chloe sticks her head out from behind the plant. The reporter is typing away at her computer, oblivious to her hiding outside the editor’s office. The light above Chloe has gone off now, but she knows the second she moves it will flicker back into life, alerting the reporter. And then what? Could she be arrested? Charged with breaking and entering? Is it even stealing if she’s only copying?

A huge wad of cuttings waits in the copier tray, at least half a packet of A4. She pictures someone finding them in the morning. Surely that would pose more questions? No, she’s not leaving without them, or the rest of them. She has to finish.

She takes a deep breath, though her heart is pounding. She steps out from behind the plant with the last few cuttings in her hand, willing a pretence of confidence into her stature. She doesn’t look back towards the reporter’s desk, not at first. She just carries on, telling herself she’s working overtime, making it look like that too. She even dares to hum a little to make it feel more realistic – if only to convince herself.

Finally, it’s done, the machine spits out the last sheet of A4 and Chloe scoops them up quickly, pushing them into her handbag. She winces at the creases that appear in the paper – it’s hard to erase that archivist in her – but she has to hurry.

She returns the file to the archive, takes one last look at her old desk, and then, with as much confidence as she can muster, walks down the long carpet of the office. Her hand grips the strap of her bag on her shoulder; underneath it, she feels her heart is hammering inside. As she gets closer she sees the reporter is wearing earphones as she types. Perhaps she’ll even be able to slip right by? She’s level with the newsdesk now; just a few more feet to go until she reaches the doors. She looks straight ahead, fixes her eye on her target.

But then:

‘Hey.’ She hears a call. She ignores it, increases her pace a little. Then again: ‘Hey.’

Chloe freezes, her elbow pressing her bag tight under her arm.

She turns in time to see the reporter removing the earphones from her head. She’s a young girl, the one who arrived to replace the guy who left, whatever his name was. She’s got short blonde hair and the smell of cigarettes and a cheap burger sits in the air between them.

‘Bloody council meetings,’ the reporter says, coughing. ‘Why is it they always leave the one thing that you’re there to report on until the end?’

Chloe isn’t sure if this is a question she’s meant to answer. She shrugs. She looks at the door. She wants to go.

The reporter looks her up and down. ‘You’re working late,’ she says.

Again, Chloe isn’t sure whether this is a question. But at least this reporter still thinks she works here.

‘Yeah, we’re preparing for the new electronic filing system so . . .’ Chloe tilts her head towards the archive and shrugs and the reporter turns back to her computer screen. She knows other people don’t find the archive as fascinating as she does. She feels a sadness then in her chest. Chloe starts to walk away. Just two more feet and she’s out the door.

‘Wait,’ the reporter says.

Chloe freezes again. The reporter gets up from her desk and walks over. Chloe is sure she catches her glance at her bag.

‘You don’t have any change, do you?’ the reporter asks.

‘Sorry?’

‘I could kill for a coffee, but I’ve only got notes.’

‘Oh . . . oh yeah, sure.’

She quickly – too quickly? – takes her bag from her shoulder, conscious not to open it in front of the reporter. She goes over to the picture desk to fish out her purse. The reporter looks pleased when she hands