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

surface, just for a moment as part of this long goodbye they are living.

Miriam nudges her. ‘She wouldn’t be without you, my love,’ she says.

The lies we tell ourselves to live with ourselves, Chloe thinks. They even do it here, in this place, the last stop.

‘She talks a lot about Stella,’ Miriam says. ‘Was that your mum or was your mum—’

‘Mine,’ Chloe says quickly. Too quickly.

‘Oh, I see, I’m sorry,’ Miriam says. ‘And was it a long time ago, that she . . .’

‘We don’t really . . . I mean, it’s not something I find easy to talk about.’

‘No, no, of course not, Chloe. How silly of me to ask.’

Chloe feels hot inside her clothes suddenly. She crosses the room and kisses Nan goodbye. She needs to get back to Low Drove.

THIRTY-SIX

Chloe walks through the back door of Elm House and finds Patrick in the kitchen. She stops still, reticent now to shut the door behind her. He’s sitting on a kitchen chair, leaning over some newspaper at his feet, a black leather shoe in one hand, a rag black with polish in the other. He looks up when she walks in, then quickly down again. He starts rubbing at the shoe while Chloe’s insides twist. If she could go back outside, she would. But she’s already in. She closes the door behind her. The rest of the house feels quiet, still somehow.

‘Where’s Maureen?’ she says.

Patrick looks up, wipes his hair from his eyes. ‘Gone to Josie’s,’ he says. ‘The two of them are catching up with some old neighbour.’

‘In Chestnut Avenue?’

Patrick looks up as if he hadn’t expected Chloe to remember the name of the street where they lived.

Chloe continues: ‘I mean, I didn’t know that Josie had been a neighbour of yours.’

He goes back to working polish into the shoe.

‘Yes, neighbours for nearly thirty years.’

‘Is she still there? In Chestnut Avenue, I mean.’

It had never occurred to her that Josie – that anyone – could have been watching that day when Chloe had knocked on the door. What if she told Maureen that she’d seen her before? What if she’s telling her right now?

Patrick shakes his head. ‘Moved a year before we did,’ he says, sighing as he gets up. He fills the kettle with water. ‘You want one of these?’ He holds up a cup.

Chloe looks down the hall, in the hope perhaps that Maureen might appear. It is still light despite the fact that it is nearly six o’clock, a reminder that the sunnier days are just around the corner. She wants to say no, but something – curiosity? – makes her nod her head instead.

‘Yes, that’ll be good, thanks.’

She pulls a chair out at the table while Patrick asks whether she prefers tea or coffee.

‘Tea?’ she says. She hadn’t meant for it to sound like she was answering a question with a question. She puts the chair at an angle, further away from the table than she might ordinarily sit.

Chloe watches him as he moves about the kitchen, more confidently, she notices, without Maureen here. This is her domain, everything has her stamp on it, right down to the way that the tea towels are folded and left on the side of the sink. Chloe realizes she’s never actually seen Patrick do so much as make a cup of tea here. When Maureen is around, he is passive, fussed over by her. It’s strange to see him so out of context in his own home. He’s not working today, and he’s wearing jeans and a knitted burgundy jumper. He looks like he’s had a trim, his curls less unruly, which make him look younger, less wild. She’d seen Maureen cutting his hair in the kitchen once not long after she arrived. He’d sat on a chair on the middle of the lino while Maureen snipped at his neck, pieces of hair falling onto the towel she had put there. She shifts in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs as the kettle reaches boiling point on the worktop. Should she start a conversation? She looks around the kitchen for inspiration, for something to say. Patrick interrupts her thoughts.

‘Sugar?’ he asks.

‘Two, please.’

‘Need sweetening up, eh?’ he says, stirring in the milk. He smiles as he puts it down in front of her and Chloe swallows though she hasn’t yet taken a sip. He pulls out a chair nearer to her than the one he had been using, and sits down. She coughs, shifting her chair back a little as she does.

Patrick takes a long sip of his tea, watching her over his cup. She looks down into her own drink.

‘Too hot for you?’ he asks.

‘Yes, I add a bit of cold in the top usually.’

‘Ah, so you do. Maureen would have known that,’ he says.

Chloe nods.

‘She likes to spoil you, eh?’

Chloe looks up at him, unsure how she is meant to answer, or if it’s even a question.

‘Yes, that’s my Maureen, not happy unless she’s fussing over someone.’ He smiles as he says it. ‘She’s been the same since I’ve known her – thirty-six years this year.’

‘Wow,’ Chloe says.

‘You’d get less for murder,’ he says.

Chloe looks down at her tea.

‘She was the last of her brothers and sisters living at home,’ Patrick says, ‘big Irish family like mine. You can just imagine it, can’t you? She would have rather them come to live with us than leave, but then we had Angie and we got that little house just round the corner. Life goes on, doesn’t it?’

Chloe tries her drink now, and nods.

‘She’s not very good with change, Maureen,’ he says. ‘Wasn’t good leaving her mammy and daddy, and she found it hard at first, what with a new babby . . . Still, she was a good little mam – doted on our Angie she did. That kid wanted for nothing.’

Chloe listens, afraid to put her mug down, to break the spell. This is the most Patrick has ever spoken to her.

‘Maureen was lost when she . . . when Angie . . . well, you know, when she went missing,