The Imposter Anna Wharton (e novels to read .txt) 📖

and above it, a blue tit clings to a bird feeder. The two women sit in silence for a while and that feels like enough to Chloe, enough just to be next to her. To imagine their hearts beating in time.

There is no way of telling how much time passes like that before Nan turns to her.

‘Chloe, dear,’ she says, ‘how long have you been sitting there?’

‘Not long,’ she replies.

‘Have you had a cup of tea yet? I’d love a cup of tea.’

Chloe glances at the full cup beside her, cold now, of course, tan already staining the porcelain.

‘Shall we go and have one in my room? I’d love to show you all my pictures.’

Chloe is happy to have her back. She helps her out of the armchair and they shuffle slowly together to her room. Chloe forgets how much she slows down when she’s around Nan and suddenly feels sad that even these last few days have stripped some memories from her. Goodness knows what they’ve stolen from Nan.

Inside her room, Nan sits down on the bed. She picks up the photograph of Grandad taken just before he died. He’s sitting on the beach at Sheringham eating chips with a wooden fork.

‘Do you remember that day?’ Chloe asks her.

She nods. ‘Is that Hughie?’

‘Yes, that’s right. We all went to the seaside together, do you remember?’

‘Were you there too?’ Nan asks.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you say your name was again?’

‘Chloe.’

‘Chloe. I don’t know a Chloe.’

‘Nan, you . . .’ She sighs. ‘Don’t worry, let me go and get that cup of tea.’

‘Lovely,’ Nan says as she leaves. ‘I just fancy a cuppa.’

Chloe leaves the room for the kitchen a few doors down. She doesn’t have the energy today to go over the same story she has told a dozen times or more before: the day they went to Sheringham, the seagulls that swooped down and pinched chips right out of their hands. She’d been careful every time to patiently colour in as much detail as she could think of. It’s frustrating always having to start at day zero. She boils the kettle and pours water over two teabags. Some days she wishes Stella was still there, to back her up, to persuade Nan too. But it would be different then, it wouldn’t be just the two of them. Nan would have to share the love, and although there are days when Chloe misses a mother’s touch, at least she has Nan all to herself.

She heads back a few moments later with two cups of hot tea.

‘There you go, Nan.’

She smiles at her – that flicker of recognition; Chloe captures and pockets it. That’ll have to do today. She takes a sip.

‘I’m waiting for my daughter Stella to come home from school,’ Nan says. ‘It’s nice to have a cuppa – a bit of a breather – before they’re home, isn’t it?’ She laughs.

Chloe nods, drinking from her cup. She tastes the resentment in her mouth. Stella never erased from Nan’s mind, and yet Chloe instantly forgotten while she makes a cup of tea.

‘How old is your daughter?’ she asks.

‘Six,’ Nan says, ‘little terror. Good job I’ve only got the one.’

Chloe nods again. She’s not tempted to explain any more, she’s happy to leave Nan back in 1956. Because if Stella is six, then Chloe doesn’t even exist.

TEN

7 November 1979

PETERBOROUGH ADVERTISER

MOTHER’S PLEA: ‘GIVE BACK OUR ANGIE’

THE mother of missing city girl Angela Rose Kyle has made an emotional plea for her daughter to be returned and told for the first time of the last few hours she spent with her.

Four-year-old Angela – or Angie, as her parents call her – disappeared from a play park in Ferry Meadows a week ago.

Her devastated mother, Maureen Kyle, made the appeal through this newspaper for her safe return: ‘I’m begging, if there’s anyone out there who has our little girl, please, please give her back. We just want her home where she belongs.’

Mrs Kyle, supported by her husband, Patrick, spoke to this newspaper from the family home at 48 Chestnut Avenue.

‘It’s the details you worry about as a mother. If someone has taken her, I wonder if they are doing the little things, the tiny things you do on automatic as a mum: brushing her teeth at night; tucking her in with a blanket; rubbing her tummy when she’s not feeling very well; stroking her head if she has a nightmare and can’t get to sleep. Angie has nightmares sometimes about wolves in her bedroom – do they know that? Does whoever have her know that she wakes in the night sometimes seeing wolves in her dreams? Will they know what to do when she cries, and what if she cries for me? Did she call for me when they took her?’

Chloe looks up from the floor of Nan’s front room. She’s been reading for the last hour, cross-legged on Nan’s Axminster, the cuttings spread out around her. Many are still folded; some are opened, scattered headlines making a path between the sofa and the carpet-covered pouffe. She reads on:

‘That last morning was so mundane, just like any other day, and yet it’s still so vivid and I don’t want to forget a single moment of it. Angie had a bath with her favourite Mr Men bubbles. I washed her hair and made it stick up on her head with the foam, just like I always do. I can still hear her giggling. I wish more than ever I could still smell those bubbles on her skin . . .’

Chloe pauses to look at the photograph of Maureen. She must be about thirty years old, but the prettiness of her has been swallowed by grief. In the photograph she clutches a screwed-up tissue in one hand, Patrick’s fingers wrapped around her other one, his head leaning on her shoulders, although it’s unclear who is propping up who. She pulls the cutting closer to her nose, to get a better look at these two. At these perfect parents. Finally, she discards