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

‘Oh, thanks so much, I owe you one. I’ll give you it back tomorr—’

‘Forget it,’ Chloe says quickly. The last thing she needs is this reporter asking for her at the archive. ‘Honestly, don’t even think of paying me back.’

‘OK, I’ll buy you a drink next time there’s a leaving do. In fact, isn’t Sam on Subs off this week?’

Chloe shuffles her weight between her feet. ‘I . . . er . . . I don’t—’

‘Yeh, drinks at the Tut, I think. I’ll buy you a drink, I couldn’t get through tonight without caffeine.’

Chloe pauses for a moment, long after the reporter has returned to her computer. No one in the office has ever offered to buy her a drink at a leaving do. No one has even asked her if she’s going to one. She looks at this girl with her bright pink nails and her black leather handbag, a celebrity magazine peering from the top of it. Might they have become friends if she hadn’t been fired? She’d never had a friend at work.

The reporter has turned back to her screen.

‘See you tomorrow then,’ the reporter calls without turning round.

Chloe hauls her bag back onto her shoulder, the weight of it replacing a sudden emptiness. She heads towards the door, the brightness of the hallway beyond like a beacon to safety. She’s out the doors, down the stairs, out into the street.

It’s only then that she allows her breath to return to normal.

She’s done it. She’s got the file.

Her hands are still shaking when she gets back to Nan’s house. She rummages through Nan’s bureau for some Blu-Tack then runs upstairs to her room. She shakes the photocopies onto her bed, and they land on the eiderdown with a satisfying thud. Then she gets to work.

She starts by removing a couple of pictures from the wall, then the pins that had held them there. They leave faint smoky outlines of themselves, but she’ll soon cover them. She flicks through for the earliest cutting from the pile, dragging a stool from Nan’s dressing table so she can reach up to the top left-hand corner of the room. She works from left to right, up and down on the chair until her thighs burn, but she won’t stop. She tacks each copy up with four tiny bits of pale-blue putty, and once she’s done the top two rows it’s easier, faster, not having to mount the stool. She works without stopping, a need to see what she’s had in her mind all day.

An hour and a half later she stands back and there it is, the whole story of the Kyles covering three walls of her bedroom – just a few leftover cuttings creep around the next corner. It irritates her that they don’t all fit, but she would never have left them. No, here she has everything.

She shrugs her shoulders a few times, massages the knots that have appeared in them. She’s tired and it’s nearly 3 a.m. She gets into bed, lying on her right side, an arm stretched under her pillow, so she can study this new newsprint wallpaper. She squints ever so slightly and the words blur to grey and, just for a second, it’s as if the photographs of Maureen and Patrick have been chosen from her own family album. Just like that, she has her very own archive. And under its gaze, she sleeps.

FIFTEEN

The phone ringing on the floor by her bed wakes her up. Chloe answers it still half asleep.

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t wake you, did I?’ Hollie says.

‘It’s OK,’ Chloe answers with a yawn. She rubs her eyes and watches the room come into focus. She smiles to herself. Hollie is chatting away on the other end of the line, but Chloe lies back on her pillow, satisfied with the wallpaper that greets her. Now she wakes and sleeps inside the story of the Kyles.

‘So, how come you’re so tired? . . . Chloe?’

‘Oh, I . . . Sorry, I was miles away. I had a late night.’

‘Oh?’ Hollie says. ‘Doing what? Did you go out?’

Chloe glances about the room guiltily.

‘Reading?’ she says, wishing she hadn’t made it sound like a question.

‘Oh, I love getting lost in a good book like that. Phil bought me a new one the other day. Now, what’s it called . . .?’

Chloe’s eyes wander back to the wall. Her gaze honing in on one cutting. She reads the headline from her own pillow:

Did police waste time to find Angie?

She feels proud of herself, and, if truth be told, she would like to tell Hollie. But she knows too well what she would say. The same as she always does.

‘. . . so I was just ringing to say that I’ve got you an interview.’

‘What?’ Chloe sits up in her bed.

‘Yes, at Phil’s firm. I was telling him what had happened and apparently his place are looking for an admin assistant at the moment. It’s just filing and stuff . . . well, I don’t mean just filing. But you know what I’m saying, it would be perfect for you.’

Chloe thinks of the envelopes in the archive and everything and everyone they contain. That isn’t just filing. And this, a job, this isn’t what she has planned. Her hand already feels clammy round the phone.

‘Filing what?’ Chloe asks. Not that she cares.

‘I don’t know, insurance records, what does it matter?’

It matters, Chloe thinks.

‘Anyway, give Phil a buzz, he’s waiting for you to call. I think he said they could see you Friday. I’m so excited for you. Imagine, Phil could be your boss.’

Chloe winces inside as Hollie does a little excited squeal. She hangs up, promising Hollie she’ll call Phil. She turns back to the cuttings. No, starting a new job is not how she has pictured this playing out.

She throws the phone to the floor and instantly forgets the call. She leans back on her pillow and admires the Kyles, trying to decide how she will spend the day, which part of their story she will study, because she’s already got a new job now, or