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

‘You could have a lovely perfumed rose bush here,’ the old man continues, ‘or annuals, lots of bright colours. You could plant them every summer and then . . . whoop, up they’d come in spring. Cheer the place up a bit. And don’t matter about nature, worms keep the soil aerated, birds eat the greenfly, only thing you don’t really want are ants’ nests – millions of them you’ll have, all those tiny creatures hard at work underneath, yet never a good look crawling all over the soil. My Irene can’t stand the things – can’t say I blame her. Anyway, talking of Irene, she’ll be wondering where I got to. I’d better stop chatting and get off.’

Chloe watches him cross the garden to pick up a trowel he’d left by Katy’s grave. He pats the top of the stone as tenderly as if it were his lost granddaughter’s own warm head, then follows the gravel path out towards the exit, lifting his arm as if he knows she’s watching.

Chloe turns back to the stone then. She takes one daffodil and trims the stem with her fingernails, leaving it inside the vase, then hurries back up the gravel path towards Nan.

She turns left at the top, retracing her steps, just as she had taken them a few moments before. Only something is different. Her eyes scan the cemetery, quickly, then frantically. She spins on the spot, looks behind her, in case she had taken a wrong turn. But she knows this place. She wouldn’t make a mistake. But then, if she hadn’t, something is missing. That’s the moment when the dread begins to swell inside, starting in the soles of her feet and spreading right up to the top of her head, collecting with it her blood, the sound of which bangs inside her eardrums.

‘Nan!’ she calls out to the empty cemetery. She is nowhere to be seen.

Chloe spins this way and that. She squints, staggering between the headstones, sure that she’ll see it, that flash of navy – Nan’s parka – but there is just grass and stillness, the odd petal that has blown in from the latest floral tribute.

‘Nan!’

She runs back the way she came; perhaps Nan has gone looking for her. But the path is empty. Her heart thudding now, she runs back, all the way to Stella’s grave, as if by some miracle Nan is small enough to be hiding behind it. Of course not. But that’s when she notices it, a copse at the back of the cemetery, an opening just large enough for Nan to squeeze through, yet the trees are knitted together too tightly to get a look in from here. She runs over to it, hesitating at the entrance. Surely Nan wouldn’t have gone inside. But now she’s had that thought she can’t leave it unattended. She takes a first step in, dry leaves crunching underfoot; a twig from underneath her own step causes Chloe to start.

‘Nan, please,’ she cries.

Silence answers her.

She goes further into the undergrowth. There is no path in here and so she kicks at bushes, hearing the sound of berries and leaves dropping within each footprint she leaves behind. The deeper she goes, the denser it becomes. A mossy, damp, earthy smell fills her nose.

‘Nan?’

She looks back. She can’t see the cemetery now. What if Nan has reappeared? What if she’s looking in the wrong place? She can’t think when she panics. Instead she goes deeper, dipping and ducking under branches; she snaps several in two to pass, scanning the undergrowth for a swatch of Nan’s white hair. Perhaps she’s slipped. Perhaps she’ll find her hurt. The thought flashes more panic through her veins. She walks, she calls. Sometimes, where tendrils have stitched themselves together, she almost has to crawl to make a path through, bending and folding herself under low-slung branches, pushing on through the bramble.

‘Nan?’ she calls, and stops. Was that her voice? She scrambles to turn around, to listen, and a thorny bush nips her skin, tearing the flesh in a neat, straight line. She’s tangled now, in brambly twine, nature’s own barbed wire. She fights to free herself, pushes back through the bush until she sees the light and she hopes – no, she prays – that Nan will be waiting where she left her.

She emerges to the stillness of the cemetery, bleached grey headstones and the odd tumbled-earth grave. But no Nan. She sinks to the ground. She’s gone.

FOUR

The hard plastic chairs at the police station are pinching the back of Chloe’s thighs. Finally, an officer opens the door into reception and calls her name.

‘I hear you’d like to report a missing person?’

‘Yes . . . yes,’ she says.

He leads her down a long corridor to a small room. They sit each side of the table, upon which there is a recording device – not that he switches it on. But Chloe’s eyes quickly dart around the room and she slides her hands underneath her legs.

‘I hear your grandmother went missing at the city cemetery?’ the officer says, flicking through a small black notepad.

‘Yes, that’s right. I was just getting some water and . . . well, when I went back . . . I mean, I searched, everywhere, I even went into this little wood at the back of the—’

‘And you say she has dementia?’

‘Alzheimer’s, yes. She was diagnosed two years ago.’ Chloe taps the top of the desk quickly. ‘I mean, I don’t know how she just disappeared like that. She can’t even walk that well . . . I only turned my back for a second.’

‘And you’re her primary carer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she have a social worker’s contact details that we could take?’

Chloe hesitates. She knows what this will mean. She sits forward in her seat.

‘Look, can’t you just get out there and find Nan?’

The officer sighs and takes his notepad in one hand. ‘Chloe, officers have already been given a description of your grandmother and they’ll be keeping a good eye out for her. I’m sure they’ll find her safe and sound soon enough. In the