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

the kitchen. The garden is bathed with sunlight now. Maureen looks at her washing and tuts. ‘S’pose I could chance putting it out again.’

‘Would you like a hand?’ Chloe says. ‘I really wouldn’t mind.’

Maureen stares at her a moment. Was that too much?

‘Thanks, Chloe, but you must have so much you’ve got to get on with.’

‘Honestly,’ she says, ‘it’s no bother. In fact, I’d like to.’

Chloe climbs into bed around ten. The journey back from Low Drove was quicker than she had anticipated. It’s always the same on the way back from somewhere – the city seemed to arrive too quickly. She missed the openness of the countryside then, the stillness of the landscape, the big sky. Perhaps that’s what had attracted the Kyles to the Fens. What had felt isolated and exposing when she’d arrived now seemed in hindsight the ideal place for a new start.

She’d called the care home to check on Nan when she got home. When they told her she was sleeping, she felt relieved. She’d made herself a salad with pilchards for dinner. Nan used to eat them on toast for breakfast; she couldn’t stomach the smell in the morning, but you get used to the different habits of people when you live with them. She wondered what irritating habits Maureen and Patrick might have? She hadn’t noticed anything while she was there, in their home.

She pushes herself deeper down under her duvet, turning this way and that, the mattress feeling too soft now compared to the one she’d briefly sat on at Elm House. She screws her face up, turns over on her pillow, again, and again, imagining how much more comfortable she’d be in the Kyles’ spare room.

She closes her eyes and tries to picture herself there, and she can, she can see herself sleeping in that room, eating breakfast with the Kyles each morning round that small pine table, calling goodnight to them as she got ready for bed. She opens her eyes, reminding herself it’s nothing more than a silly fantasy. Isn’t it?

She can’t sleep, though. Not with all this going through her mind. Instead she sits up and turns on the light. She takes her pale blue notebook and finds a pen beside her bed, and sits there, deep into the night, writing down everything she can remember from Elm House – even down to the little wooden hope sign in the kitchen window.

TWENTY-ONE

‘Packing to go where?’

Chloe cradles the phone in the crook of her neck, trying to zip up an overstuffed weekend bag with one hand, then two. The phone slips. She scoops it up from the peach eiderdown.

‘Hollie? You still there?’ she says, slumping down on the bed.

‘Yes, I was just asking you where you’re going? I mean, what you’re packing for.’

‘Well, I didn’t mean packing . . . more just having a sort-out . . . I was thinking of going away for a few days, well, weeks . . . well, I haven’t really decided. I . . .’

She scratches the back of her neck, cursing the unzipped bag, the clothes spilling out of it, wondering why she’d even mentioned it to Hollie. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be having to answer any of these questions. The bag stares at her from the end of the bed.

‘Really?’ Silence. ‘Go away where?’

‘I don’t know . . . maybe the coast, just . . . I don’t know . . . a change of scenery.’

She shakes her head to the air. It’s the best she can come up with.

There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

‘You don’t have to keep doing this, Chloe. You could come and stay with me and Phil . . .’

Chloe rolls her eyes.

‘Chloe? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here.’

‘I mean, well, if you’re feeling a bit lonely. I’ve told you before, we’ve got our box room and—’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, perhaps too cheerily. She curses her own mistake. She tries again. ‘I’m fine.’

‘We’ve just done up the box room, I got this lovely duvet cover and matching lampshade from . . .’

Chloe thinks then of the blue and green duvet in the Kyles’ spare room. She can imagine Maureen picking it out, making the bed, ironing out the creases with her hand and standing back to admire her work.

‘. . . and you don’t want that happening again, do you?’ Hollie is still talking.

‘Sorry, what?’ Chloe says.

‘I was just saying, about the last time and all that trouble wi—’

‘Hollie, I’ve just got another call waiting, can I call you back?’

‘Yes, yes, of course, I’ll sp—’

Chloe hangs up and flops back on the bed. Her phone slips out of her hand onto the floor. She started packing this morning as an experiment – just playing with the idea of moving to Low Drove. She wasn’t really going to go, of course she wasn’t. She just wanted to see what it felt like, being Maureen and Patrick’s lodger. The whole thing is ridiculous. She stands up and starts taking the clothes out the bag, just like she has done several times that morning. She can’t move to Low Drove. She pauses. Can she? Chloe returns the clothes to the bag. But moving there, that’s not the same as simply investigating. No, it’s much more intrusive, deceitful even. She takes the clothes out again. But how can it be? It’s not like she’s there to do harm to the Kyles. Quite the opposite. She wants to help them.

Anyway, however hard she tries she can’t escape how it felt to be there, in the Kyles’ home, how natural it had seemed. By the second cup of tea she had with Maureen, after they’d put all the washing out on the line, she’d felt so at home. Even Patrick didn’t appear to notice her there, as he walked in and out of the kitchen between races. And the thing is, she could actually see herself there, living with them, waking up in that bedroom every morning, sitting on those little white wooden chairs each night for dinner. It felt right. And suddenly this room – with its giant built-in white wardrobes – feels small somehow, like she’s outgrown it,