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

the wake. She knows Maureen will be looking out for her. It is true that she has been there more than most these last few months. She just hopes this one lasts. She always hopes they will, that this time it will be enough.

Chloe stands and folds her coat over her arm. She kisses the top of the gravestone so tenderly, it could almost have been Nan’s very own head.

‘Sleep tight, Nan,’ she says. ‘You were one of the very best.’

She knows her way out of the cemetery from here. There are, after all, several of Chloe’s nans, grandmas and grannies dotted around. Grace was the first with dementia, though, and that had made things a lot less complicated. Who would question the sudden appearance of a granddaughter who had arrived to take care of her confused grandma? It might even sound sinister if she’d had anything to gain except the company. A family to call her own, for a while. An invented history more palatable than the one she had lived, waiting for parents who never came, a life spent in foster homes, never properly putting down roots.

She leaves the cemetery and walks back to town to the bus station. Maureen won’t mind her being a little later than the others; she knows she can rely on her, after all. Or as much as you can rely on anyone living.

She waits outside the bus station, and there beside it is a newsagent’s. She arrives in time to see a new bound batch of the local weekly newspaper arrive. Advertising is down so much they’ve dropped it from its evening circulation. She’s heard that half the reporters have been made redundant, so it wasn’t just the archive that had to go. She hands over seventy pence to the cashier in return for a thinning copy of her once beloved newspaper. She flicks through as she waits for the bus; it’s more adverts than news now. Although there is one story that catches her eye:

WIDOW’S PLEA: DON’T TAKE MY ALLOTMENT

The old woman looks sweet in the photograph. A curly-haired grandmother with kind eyes and a pearl necklace. She hasn’t a soul left in the world. The only pleasure she gets is growing her tomatoes, she tells the reporter. Chloe feels that familiar tug at her heart.

She folds the newspaper just in time for her bus to pull up, and soon blends in among all the other passengers. As the city passes at the window, she sees that old lady in her mind’s eye. She has always fancied an allotment of her own – and a grandma just like that.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This novel would not have been possible without a whole bunch of people behind both it and me. My name may appear on the cover, but publishing a novel is in fact a huge team effort.

First thanks go to Sue Armstrong, my extremely kind agent who waited five patient years for this book to be delivered, offering positive affirmations and encouragement throughout – especially when I wanted to give up. I am so pleased I didn’t.

Thank you to my editor, Sam Humphreys – I feel very lucky to have had you championing this book. Thank you to Josie Humber, Rosie Wilson, Elle Gibbons, Kate Tolley, Samantha Fletcher, Holly Sheldrake and Siân Chilvers – you have all done magnificent work in helping this book into the world. Thanks also to those in the UK Sales, International Sales, Finance, Operations, Contracts and Digital teams at Mantle who have all worked hard to do the very best for this book, as well as all those behind the scenes at C&W Agency.

When it comes to personal thanks, I will be forever indebted to many friends for their enthusiasm, endless patience, advice and often hours sacrificed to reading various drafts. In particular, I would like to thank: Veronica Clark, Joanne Kurt-Elli, Lee Knight, Greg Buchanan, Jon Elek, Jane Gould, Dyfed Edwards, Sarah Salway, Jo Schneider and Wendy Mitchell. Thanks also to my fellow students in my workshop groups at UEA who helped me untangle this story, and to ever-encouraging tutors Giles Foden, Henry Sutton and Philip Langeskov.

Mum, thank you for spending hours on the end of the phone listening to me witter that I couldn’t or wouldn’t ever finish this book. And special thanks must go to Gracie, my daughter, who is eight years old as I write this, but was two when the idea of this novel was conceived, and to whom this book is dedicated. All those hours watching cartoons so Mummy could work did not go unappreciated. Thank you.

THE IMPOSTER

ANNA WHARTON has been a print and broadcast journalist for more than twenty years, writing for newspapers including The Times, Guardian, Sunday Times Magazine, Grazia and Red. She was formally an executive editor at the Daily Mail. Anna has ghostwritten four memoirs, including the Sunday Times bestseller Somebody I Used To Know and Orwell Prize-longlisted CUT: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today. The Imposter is her first novel.

First published 2021 by Mantle

This electronic edition first published 2021 by Mantle

an imprint of Pan Macmillan

The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR

EU representative: Macmillan Publishers Ireland Limited,

Mallard Lodge, Lansdowne Village, Dublin 4

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-5290-3742-5

Copyright © Anna Wharton 2021

Jacket Images © Nilufer Barin/Arcangel Images

Jacket design by Lucy Scholes, Mantle art department

Author photograph © Julia Mortimore

The right of Anna Wharton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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