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

police – to his wife – for decades. This is not the time to be filling out paperwork for social services. She shakes her head and takes another sip of her drink, then pulls her coat around her. She doesn’t want to get in that car.

She’d forgotten her watch that morning, so now her phone is off she can’t check the time. She looks around, towards the glass lift and the open staircase which criss-crosses the atrium. A wall of plants rises the entire way up to a few square metres of blue sky above them. Chloe can’t help thinking they must attract flies in the summer. When she pictures Phil coming here every day, she thinks of her own desk back at the newspaper. She still catches herself sometimes, walking through the archive in her mind, mapping the aisles made up of metal filing cabinets; she can even feel the old blue carpet tiles underneath her feet. She pauses to pull open drawers. She can still conjure up the scratch and squeak of their runners, see the spines of envelopes that lie inside. That had been home, among those files, those people. She had been happy there. Perhaps she’d even imagined a file being opened up for her if she’d solved this case. She’d even thought for a while that by bringing Angie back she could save the archive, that it would be a huge news story that she had reinvestigated the files – bigger even than the local news – and then perhaps it wouldn’t just be her archive that would be saved, but so many others at newspapers up and down the country, that people would see just how vital that human touch is to a story, just how seriously archivists take their jobs, that they’re not just caretakers of stories, but vital gatekeepers of them. But that’s all fantasy now.

She’s startled by a voice at the top of the staircase. A navy suit begins its descent down the steps. Chloe is sure she recognizes the same dark hair. She can’t risk bumping into Phil again. She grabs the newspaper from her bag, opens the page at random and buries her head in the stories. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the newsprint which instantly calms her. She has missed this.

A few moments later, she peers over the top of the newspaper. It is another man, not Phil. She replaces the paper in her bag, and looks up in time to see Patrick’s blue car rounding through the car park. She gathers up her bag and leaves the KitKat wrapper and can of Coke on the table. She’s aware of the receptionist watching her as she walks across the atrium and out through the revolving doors.

Patrick leans across the empty passenger seat to open the door for her.

‘Good day?’ he asks when she gets in. She puts her bag between her feet and turns around to check the back seat. She’s relieved to see there is no gun.

‘Yes, thanks,’ she says, pulling on her seat belt and plugging it in at her side. ‘Busy.’

She checks the seat again, and then her eyes flicker further back – could it be in the boot?

‘All set?’ Patrick asks. ‘Better not forget those fish and chips on the way, Maureen would murder us.’

They don’t speak as they leave the city; instead the radio fills the space between them in the car. The DJ makes cheesy jokes and Patrick laughs quietly, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel. When Chloe feels him look at her, she smiles back, though in reality she has no idea what the DJ just said. When Patrick watches the road, she watches him, his big hands on the wheel.

Traffic queues to get out of the city at rush hour. She taps her feet, aware of the extra time she’ll have to spend trapped in the car with him. She reassures herself that the A47 becomes a dual carriageway at the next roundabout, but still she sinks a little into her seat. In her lap, she picks the skin around her fingernails, not watching the road, willing this journey over.

Patrick drums his hands on the steering wheel and turns up the sound on the radio. But at the next roundabout, Chloe feels them take a left. She looks up – they’re heading away from the traffic that’s starting to move up ahead. This isn’t the usual route home. She looks at Patrick quickly, but he doesn’t return her gaze. Instead he pushes his foot on the accelerator, and as she feels herself pressing into the passenger seat, she grips the sides of the leather upholstery with both hands. Patrick’s eyes flicker down to the handbrake. Chloe moves her hand back into her lap.

‘Bloody traffic,’ he sighs.

She looks straight ahead. The windows have started to steam. Chloe looks to her left, but the fields beyond them are hazy. She skips ahead on their route – one mile, two – then remembers they are picking up fish and chips.

‘Is this the way to the fish and chip shop?’ she asks.

The sports results are on the radio and Patrick turns up the volume before answering.

‘I need petrol,’ he says after a moment. ‘There’s a place just up here.’

‘Oh right.’ Chloe tries to allow her body to sink into the leather of the upholstery.

Ahead, at the next roundabout, is a large village, and just before it, the petrol station Patrick had mentioned. He pulls onto the forecourt, and gets out of the car. Chloe sits, frozen, the sweet smell of benzene floating into the car when he opens the door to get his wallet. She watches him cross the forecourt. Just an ordinary man to everybody else. There is a long queue to pay inside, and Chloe makes the most of a few moments alone in the car. Her eyes flicker around, and she checks the back again, behind Patrick’s seat, just in case the gun is propped up