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

lady sitting opposite him, I haven’t seen them before.’

‘Haven’t seen them where?’

‘Here, Nan.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Park House, Nan.’

‘What about it?’

‘That man and that lady?’

‘Who?’

‘Those two, there . . .’

‘What about them?’

Chloe sighs. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

She stands up and picks up both mugs to put them back in the kitchen. One of the care assistants is washing up. Chloe throws the two mugs into the bowl.

It gets dark early that afternoon, the sun never having quite managed to cut through the thickest cloud that day. Chloe gets up from her chair just before three. Hollie is back from Lanzarote and they’re meeting for coffee.

‘I’ll come again soon, Nan,’ she says, kissing her goodbye.

She is about to leave Park House when Miriam calls her back.

‘Chloe, did anyone give you the message from Claire Sanders?’

She tenses inside her coat.

‘No?’

‘She’s been trying to reach you, apparently she’s left lots of messages – she wondered if you’d changed your number, but it’s the same one we have here, isn’t it?’ She peers her head into the office and runs her finger down a chart on the wall. Chloe had seen it once, a wall with every next of kin’s emergency contact number. Her name fitting neatly among all the others.

‘Ends in 248?’

‘Yes, that’s it, I haven’t changed my number,’ Chloe says, pulling her phone from her pocket, ‘but there’s not a great signal where I’ve been working, so maybe that’s why her calls haven’t been getting through?’

Miriam nods. ‘How’s it all going?’

Chloe shuffles her feet on the coarse matting in front of the door. She had been almost out of there when Miriam had called her back.

‘Didn’t you say that you had to go away for work?’ Miriam says. ‘I haven’t seen you around as often.’

‘Oh that, yes, it’s going well.’

‘Good,’ Miriam says. ‘I know your grandmother is really proud of you, well . . . during her more lucid moments. How did she seem to you today?’

The automatic doors open and close as Chloe shifts on the carpet in front of them, stuck between Park House and the outside world.

‘Yes, she seems good. I mean, forgetful but . . .’

‘Yes, well, you know that inside she knows you still. They say that even though people with dementia might not recognize you or remember your name, they still remember the love they feel for you and still feel the love you have for them.’

Chloe nods. The doors close behind her.

‘Grace has been wandering again, she likes the bottom of the garden for some reason. I don’t know what attracts her to the copse but the builders are moving into that area now so we’re going to need to cordon it off somehow. Perhaps it’s the lake she wants to get to. The staff walk out with them sometimes, but it’s not the same as being able to go for a walk whenever you like, is it?’

Chloe shakes her head. She’s going to be late for Hollie.

‘You should take her sometime, she’d like that,’ Miriam says. ‘You don’t have to always be stuck in here with all these old folk.’

‘Oh yes, I will, I’ve just got to get off now.’ She points to the doors which open on cue.

‘Of course, I didn’t mean now. Anyway, it’ll be dark soon. I’ll let you go, but see you soon, OK? Remember that your grandmother remembers you in here.’ She pats her chest and Chloe feels the urge to roll her eyes because it’s such a cliché, but of course she doesn’t.

‘And don’t forget to give Claire a call. I think it’s something to do with selling the house; she needs your signature on something.’

Chloe nods and walks out of Park House towards the bus stop. She takes her phone out of her pocket as she sits down on the bus, scrolling through dozens of missed calls, the voicemails stacking up. She deletes one after another and instantly feels better to see them disappear from her inbox.

The bus weaves its way through the streets back into the city. Chloe glances from the top deck down into living room windows illuminated one by one in varying shades of indoor afternoon glow. In some, children, still fresh from school, sit cross-legged on sofas and floors in their uniforms, the blue light of the television flickering across their faces. There would have been a time when Chloe resented them this, being the other side of the glass to her. But now she has Maureen’s living room, and she knows that if someone peered into her back room – the brown swirl of the carpet, the teak sideboard, Chloe and Maureen sitting beside each other on the sofa – it would look just as natural as these.

The bus slows to let passengers on. Chloe looks down the side of the window, at the tops of heads – the odd child trailing home late in their school blazer. Her phone buzzes inside her pocket. Hollie.

Where are you? We did say four, didn’t we? xxx

Chloe taps out a reply, tells her she’s on her way. She’s concentrating, staring at her phone, so much so that she doesn’t notice the woman who sits down in the seat opposite, though intuitively she moves her legs to make way for her shopping bags. It’s only when the woman says her name that she looks up.

‘Chloe?’

If Chloe’s face looked blank for a second, she only wished she’d kept it that way. Because when she looks up, the recognition is immediately apparent. The mask slips. She feels it.

The old woman’s hand flies to her mouth.

‘I thought it was you.’

Chloe thinks fast, but it’s far too late to strip the recognition from her face. It’s much easier the other way round, to paint an expression on. Chloe knows that face opposite hers, of course she does. She would never forget the way her pink lipstick bleeds into the fine lines around her mouth, she can still remember all the gold rings adorning her fingers – the fascination she once faked in the stories behind every single one of them. The old woman’s face