The Imposter Read online

  ANNA WHARTON

  THE IMPOSTER

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For Gracie

  ONE

  She treads carefully through the carnage. Plates and pans litter the kitchen floor, and rice has been scattered from upturned bags across the pretend parquet. On the counter, pointing towards the microwave, lies a banana – half peeled and turning brown. She presses the door of the little oven and it springs open, revealing a bowl welded by porridge to the small, transparent plate inside. She pulls the sculpture out and it separates in her hands as she does, crashing to the floor. Cold lumps of porridge splatter up Chloe’s trouser legs.

  ‘Is that you, Stella?’

  A voice from the living room.

  She checks the clock on the wall. 5.09 p.m. She should still be at her desk. She sighs.

  ‘It’s me, Nan. Stay there, I’ll be through in a minute.’

  Chloe bends down and picks up the bowl. Making a cup of her hand, she scoops the porridge back into it.

  ‘Stella, is that you?’

  ‘Wait there, Nan—’

  ‘Stella?’

  Stella has been dead for years. Nan rarely remembers. Chloe plays along with her, knowing the world she’s in now is as real to her as this one is to Chloe. A world where her imagination has won and her daughter is still living.

  Nan appears in the gap between the two rooms. Chloe looks up to see her standing there. She tries hard to picture this place when it still had doors and hinges. It feels impossible now. So much has changed. There have been different carpets over the decades, ones she only knows now from photographs. The years have drawn new curtains at the windows, new units in the kitchen, new furniture carried in and out through the hall. But Nan has always been a constant. She is Chloe’s constant. She is everything.

  ‘You’re not Stella. Who are you? And what have you done to my kitchen?’

  ‘You left your porridge in the microwave again, Nan,’ Chloe says. ‘And why are all the cupboard doors open and the cans on the worktop?’

  Chloe sits back on her heels. She pushes her hair behind her ears, only remembering the gloopy mixture on her hands when she feels it stick to her cheek. ‘Oh, for God’s s—’

  Nan has that look she knows. Chloe’s good at reading faces – she’s had a lot of practice. Nan’s face now looks like a lost little girl. She knows that one too well.

  ‘Who are you? Why have you messed up my kitchen? Where’s Stella?’

  Chloe looks down at the lino floor and sighs at the mess.

  ‘Stella?’ Nan calls over her shoulder, and then to Chloe, ‘Get out of my kitchen.’

  Her face is full of panic. Chloe stands up and walks towards her.

  ‘Nan,’ she says. Then louder: ‘Nan.’

  Nan covers her ears and starts to cry. ‘Stop shouting at me. Where’s Stella? I want Stella.’

  Chloe glances at the kitchen clock. 5.13 p.m. She pictures her empty seat at her desk. The same desk her boss thinks she’s sitting at right now. The same one with mounting paperwork. Nan’s face crumples and Chloe looks around the only home she knows. She sighs, pulling Nan into her chest. Porridge clings to her shoulder, but Chloe holds her until Nan’s body relaxes into her own.

  ‘Stella hasn’t been here for months,’ she sobs. ‘When is she going to visit?’

  ‘Soon, Nan,’ Chloe says and places a kiss on the top of her head because, at times like these, that’s what she knows she’s meant to do.

  Twenty minutes later Chloe closes the door behind her, feeling the safety of the key clicking inside the lock. The hallway has disappeared behind a thick curtain that guards the door when she’s not there. Not against intruders, but against Nan wandering out.

  Nan is tucked up in bed now, a ham sandwich on her bedside table, tea in her flask. Chloe has reattached the note above the cooker reminding Nan not to turn it on, hidden the lead to the kettle and promised her she’ll be home again soon.

  She makes her way back to the office in the dusk, through back streets, up and down kerbs – six minutes’ walk by shortcuts others are too afraid to take. Luckily she’s always felt more at home in the dark than the light.

  Orange street lamps illuminate different patches of path. A group of teenage boys jeers from the swings. One throws an empty can at her as she passes.

  She walks through the underpass, takes the stairs two at a time, pushes through the double doors. The daytime buzz of the office has made way for a hum now; computer screens are black and lifeless; coats lifted have left the backs of chairs naked. A note from her boss, written in angry spidery handwriting, waits on her desk:

  That’s the third time this week you’ve done one of your disappearing acts.

  She screws it up and pushes it deep into the rubbish bin. Beside her a tower of filing wobbles a polite reminder. There is still porridge on her shoes. She doesn’t know where to start. She never does.

  After a few moments, her screen falls back to sleep. She checks the time – nearly six. They’re being replaced by machines; this newspaper archive is moving into the new millennium and finally switching to digital. Chloe can’t afford to miss any more time off work, she’s already in competition with a motherboard for the only job she’s ever known.

  The day’s newspaper lies open on her desk just as she left it: two gaps in the top right-hand corner, her scalpel filling the place where the stories once sat. She grips the small knife and turns the page.

  As the hours pass, the sky darkens outside. A beep from the end of the office signals the arrival of the cleaner. He bundles in, knocking his Henry hoover against filing cabinets that protest with a metallic yelp. The rustling starts, the emptying of bins, and ceiling lights dozing behind frosty panels flicker into life to keep him company. At the other end of the office, Chloe begins to file away the stories she’s gathered, the thick pile of envelopes thinning out in her hand until there are none left.

  It’s late, black licks at the windows, and the tinny sound from the cleaner’s headphones edges closer. Chloe returns to her desk and switches off her computer. Today’s newspaper is a skeleton now, picked of flesh. She pushes it deep into the recycling bin.

  TWO

  On the walk home she thinks of Nan. She’s tired and all she wants is sleep. She hopes she won’t find her clawing, cat-like, at the door.

  When Nan misses Stella, it stirs the ache inside Chloe. It reminds her every time that she is the last one left to love. She pulls a photo from the breast pocket of her coat. It’s her fa
vourite, a black and white one of Nan and Stella. Nan must be around thirty, Stella is only six; she has white-blonde curls and she’s missing two front teeth. They’re on a beach in Cornwall, the shadow of St Michael’s Mount looming behind their shoulders. This picture anchors Chloe on the days when she feels lost. She likes to imagine Granddad watching them through the viewfinder, nose pushed up to the camera’s black leathery body, teasing them to say ‘cheese’ the way he always did. Not that she remembers.

  There’s something about that photograph that she loves: ghosts of the past looking out at the future, a sunny day on a sandy beach, the way Nan’s hand grips Stella’s shoulder. She runs her finger across them, the picture-perfect family frozen in time. She smiles as she slips the photograph carefully back into her pocket.

  She fishes her phone from her bag. Three missed calls. She recognizes the number – social services. She dials her voicemail then decides against it and quickly hangs up, ignoring the messages.

  She likes walking in the dark, as if threat wraps her in a safety blanket rather than strips her bare. Children are meant to be afraid of the dark; she never had much choice other than to find comfort in it.

  She knows these streets, the houses that fail to pull their curtains at night, with their own families tucked up safe inside – on bad days it has felt to Chloe as if they are goading those like her, the ones on the other side of the glass. On good days she stares in, and it isn’t difficult to find something she envies. Tonight, though, she doesn’t need to linger; she’s tired and she wants to get home.

  She turns the corner, and moments later her key is in the door. The house is still inside, just the shuffle of her footsteps moving on the Axminster carpet in the hall. Too tired to eat, she takes the stairs, pulling herself up on the rail installed for Nan.

  She opens the door to her own room slowly, wincing as the carpet shifts underneath it. She can’t bear that voice calling out in the night for Stella, to ask again who Chloe is and why she is there. She needs one night of no questions, no explanations already made a hundred times before and instantly forgotten.

  The next morning, Chloe finds Nan standing in the middle of the kitchen. Every cupboard door is open again, the contents cover the worktops – cans of rice pudding, dozens of them. She looks up and sees her.

  ‘Oh Chloe, dear, I’m glad you’re here, I can’t seem to find the teapot.’

  It’s then she smells it, an odour of waxy burning plastic. She rushes into the kitchen in time to see the electric kettle begin to melt on the gas stove.

  ‘Nan!’

  She opens the window, coughing, while Nan starts emptying more cupboards.

  ‘Nan, stop!’ she says. ‘We’ve got teabags. Sit down, I’ll make you a cuppa.’

  ‘Teabags?’ Nan says, shrugging. She wanders off into the living room.

  Chloe cleans up the kitchen and boils a pan of water on the stove. She goes outside and dumps the burnt kettle in the bin on top of the last one.

  She takes the cup of tea in to Nan in the living room and sits down beside her, fingers wrapped around her own warm mug.

  ‘Lovely,’ Nan says. ‘You look smart, where are you off to?’

  ‘Work, Nan.’

  ‘Remind me,’ she says, taking a sip, ‘where do you work?’

  ‘At the local newspaper.’

  ‘Oh, a reporter! That’s it.’

  Chloe considers explaining the archive again, telling her of the cuttings system that the reporters rely on, of how she dissects the local newspaper each and every day, filing lives away into drawers. But instead she says, ‘Yeah, that’s right, Nan.’

  ‘Stella would have loved that.’

  Chloe takes a sip of her own tea. Nan has buried Stella again while she slept. She’s better today. Chloe thinks of the missed calls from social services. She and Nan are managing just fine. They don’t need anyone else.

  She cooks Nan’s porridge and gets her washed and dressed, handing her a toothbrush on which she’s squeezed a small slither of white and blue striped paste.

  ‘You did the same for me when I was little,’ she says.

  ‘Did I?’ Nan replies, frothy toothpaste dropping down her chin and into the sink. She spits and rinses and Chloe gently pats her face dry.

  Downstairs she sits her down in front of the TV, fills her flask with tea and hands her the remote control.

  The clock on the wall makes her think of the note Alec left on her desk. But this morning, everything is going to plan, she’ll even make it to work on time. She dots a kiss on Nan’s forehead.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Nan asks.

  ‘To work, Nan, I told you. I’m going to be late.’

  ‘But you can’t, not today. Not when someone’s stolen my greenhouse.’

  By some miracle, she manages to arrive at work on time. She’d walked Nan out into the garden, and it was only as they stood among the plastic terracotta pots and the earthy smell of dried compost that she was finally persuaded that her glasshouse was still there.

  At the office, the same as every morning, Chloe follows the path that has been worn into the pale blue carpet tiles all the way down to the archive. Alec is waiting there, arms crossed over his bony chest. He makes a point of checking his watch.

  ‘Alec, I—’

  ‘Save it, you can explain to Malc. I’ve asked Sandra for an appointment for us to see him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Like I said, save it.’

  She slumps her bag down on her desk, the buckles making an angry riposte.

  ‘I hope you got all that filing done last night?’ Alec says.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, that’s one good thing,’ he says, limping over to his desk and returning with a pile taller than the one that had taken her until ten the night before. ‘You can do mine now too.’

  She spends the morning buried deep in the archive, keeping out of Alec’s way and working through his pile of files. It’s easy to hide there, among the filing cabinets that stand buttressed together, three in a row, back to back as if checking which is the tallest among them. There are four rows like that, each of them labelled A to Z with tales of the city. Everything is there, from the waggiest tail competition winners at village fetes to the secrets those names on the front would rather keep hidden: drink driving bans, domestic assaults. Chloe has read and filed it all. Most citizens of this city have no idea they’ve left a Helvetica trail of crumbs creating a picture of their lives, starting with their birth announcements and running all the way through to their own death notices. The archivist is the guardian of all that’s happened over the years, the first stop for reporters on deadline to write a story. No one knows this city and all its stories better than Chloe.

  She surveys the archive, across the tops of the grey filing cabinets, up to the tomes containing back copies of every newspaper they’ve ever printed. It’s all going to be gone soon. Replaced with two computers. Just two. But what’s an archive without that human touch?

  At lunchtime, Chloe stands in line for a coffee. On her phone she finds another missed call from social services. It makes her stomach turn over inside her coat and she quickly pushes her phone deep inside her bag. In front of her in the queue, a woman laughs loudly into her own phone. The woman has long blonde hair and, when she turns around, a perfect smile with teeth straight out of a toothpaste advert. She smells of a musky, confident perfume that Chloe would never think to wear.

  The barista calls out her name – Amanda – and the woman steps forward for her coffee, still laughing loudly into her phone. Amanda doesn’t worry about answering her phone. Amanda has only good news from her phone. This makes Chloe think of social services again.

  The cafe is busy, packed with bodies, and Chloe could say with all honesty that she didn’t see Amanda turn around so quickly, that she hadn’t realized she’d stepped straight into her path as she did. She could say she only realized what had happened when she saw the stain spreading across Amanda�
�s perfect camel coat.

  ‘Look what you did!’ Amanda says.

  She’s not laughing anymore. Staff fuss around her, mopping at her coat with paper napkins instantly dyed tan.

  Chloe steps past the chaos; she’s forgotten all about social services. Instead, with a smile, she orders her latte.

  ‘What’s the name?’ the barista asks, standing poised with a cup and a black marker pen.

  Chloe watches the woman leave, now swearing into her phone. ‘Amanda,’ she says.

  The barista scribbles it onto the side of the cup without question.

  Alec leaves early to take his wife for one of her hospital appointments. Chloe has never asked him what’s wrong with her. It grates that he can take so much time off.

  Once he’s gone, she starts sifting through the pile of cuttings that need to be scanned to the new system. She opens the flatbed scanner on her desk. Bright white light shines through the fine newsprint; she places the lid down again, clicks the icon on the screen, and watches as the image appears seconds later.

  DOCTORS DIDN’T BELIEVE I HAD CANCER

  Chloe enlarges the story, zooms in once, twice, and then starts reading.

  FOR thirteen years, Karen Stanmore was fobbed off by doctors who believed she was making up stomach pains.

  Chloe reaches for her own stomach.

  The thirty-five-year-old city woman even convinced herself that her pains and tiredness were psychosomatic, but after being admitted to hospital with suspected appendicitis, surgeons found a cancerous tumour that had been growing inside her for more than a decade.

  Chloe reads on as the office thins out around her. At the back of her mind nags a vague memory of a collection, talk of leaving drinks. Perfume spritzed at desks travels the length of the newsroom towards her, tangling together in the air around the archive. She hears a cork popped, plastic cups passed around. One appears at the edge of her desk filled with something pale and fizzy she hadn’t asked for. She doesn’t look up, too engrossed in the story about Karen Stanmore and her stomach cancer.

  It’s almost 6.15 p.m. by the time she’s finished googling the rare cancer the doctors finally found. She ticks off all of the symptoms until she’s satisfied there’s nothing black growing inside her. The office is quiet when she next glances up, but there are still another five or six files to get through. The phone rings on her desk. Without thinking, she snatches the receiver from the cradle.