The Imposter Page 9

  Her melamine desk has now become a dumping ground for boxes; even her swivel chair has three lever-arch files stacked on it. She stands, paying a moment’s respect to the graveyard of her working life. Suddenly, from the other end of the room, she hears a click, a rumble. She jumps, ducking down before realising it’s the coffee machine. But it reminds her, she needs to work quickly.

  Chloe heads into the archive, quickly finding the drawer marked KR–LA. She pulls it open, the scratch of metal tearing through the silence. She finds the Kyles.

  Kyle; Amanda

  Kyle; Norman

  Kyle; Sharon

  Kyle; Patricia

  Kyle; Angela.

  Bingo. She pulls it out, it’s more creased than she remembered, but when she peers in, she can see all the cuttings are there, packed away in a tight weave.

  The nearest photocopier is outside the editor’s office. She presses the standby button and wills the machine to life. It clunks and clicks, waking dozy from slumber.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispers to herself as she taps the top of the machine. ‘Come on.’

  She counts the seconds until the green light on the ‘ready’ button flashes and when it does, Chloe empties the cuttings onto Sandra’s in-tray. Then she starts unfolding them one by one, smoothing out the creases, putting one under the scanner at a time, watching, satisfied, as copy after copy appears in the tray beneath.

  ‘Come on,’ she says again to no one but herself.

  She curses when she has to pause to refill the A4 paper tray.

  She goes on and on like this, the pile in the tray getting thicker, stopping only to feed the machine more paper. One eye on the door at the top of the office which is once again plunged into darkness.

  As the pile grows so does her excitement. She takes one copy from the stack at random; the photographs aren’t perfect, some emotion in the faces of Maureen and Patrick has been replaced with inkjet splodges, but the rest is there: the words, the detail. That’s exactly what she needs.

  In the silence of the office, the machine spits out copies into the tray, a rhythmic mechanical beat.

  And then something else. A bleep at the other end of the office. The release of the door. A cough. The click as half a dozen ceiling lights flicker on above the reporters’ desks. Chloe ducks behind a tall spider plant perched on Sandra’s desk and watches as a late-shift reporter heads towards her desk. Chloe freezes. Wincing now at the copier, glancing between the machine and the file. She has just a few cuttings left. She makes a quick calculation. Could she manage without them? No, she needs every cutting, every detail. Any missing part of this jigsaw might be the most vital.

  Chloe sticks her head out from behind the plant. The reporter is typing away at her computer, oblivious to her hiding outside the editor’s office. The light above Chloe has gone off now, but she knows the second she moves it will flicker back into life, alerting the reporter. And then what? Could she be arrested? Charged with breaking and entering? Is it even stealing if she’s only copying?

  A huge wad of cuttings waits in the copier tray, at least half a packet of A4. She pictures someone finding them in the morning. Surely that would pose more questions? No, she’s not leaving without them, or the rest of them. She has to finish.

  She takes a deep breath, though her heart is pounding. She steps out from behind the plant with the last few cuttings in her hand, willing a pretence of confidence into her stature. She doesn’t look back towards the reporter’s desk, not at first. She just carries on, telling herself she’s working overtime, making it look like that too. She even dares to hum a little to make it feel more realistic – if only to convince herself.

  Finally, it’s done, the machine spits out the last sheet of A4 and Chloe scoops them up quickly, pushing them into her handbag. She winces at the creases that appear in the paper – it’s hard to erase that archivist in her – but she has to hurry.

  She returns the file to the archive, takes one last look at her old desk, and then, with as much confidence as she can muster, walks down the long carpet of the office. Her hand grips the strap of her bag on her shoulder; underneath it, she feels her heart is hammering inside. As she gets closer she sees the reporter is wearing earphones as she types. Perhaps she’ll even be able to slip right by? She’s level with the newsdesk now; just a few more feet to go until she reaches the doors. She looks straight ahead, fixes her eye on her target.

  But then:

  ‘Hey.’ She hears a call. She ignores it, increases her pace a little. Then again: ‘Hey.’

  Chloe freezes, her elbow pressing her bag tight under her arm.

  She turns in time to see the reporter removing the earphones from her head. She’s a young girl, the one who arrived to replace the guy who left, whatever his name was. She’s got short blonde hair and the smell of cigarettes and a cheap burger sits in the air between them.

  ‘Bloody council meetings,’ the reporter says, coughing. ‘Why is it they always leave the one thing that you’re there to report on until the end?’

  Chloe isn’t sure if this is a question she’s meant to answer. She shrugs. She looks at the door. She wants to go.

  The reporter looks her up and down. ‘You’re working late,’ she says.

  Again, Chloe isn’t sure whether this is a question. But at least this reporter still thinks she works here.

  ‘Yeah, we’re preparing for the new electronic filing system so . . .’ Chloe tilts her head towards the archive and shrugs and the reporter turns back to her computer screen. She knows other people don’t find the archive as fascinating as she does. She feels a sadness then in her chest. Chloe starts to walk away. Just two more feet and she’s out the door.

  ‘Wait,’ the reporter says.

  Chloe freezes again. The reporter gets up from her desk and walks over. Chloe is sure she catches her glance at her bag.

  ‘You don’t have any change, do you?’ the reporter asks.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I could kill for a coffee, but I’ve only got notes.’

  ‘Oh . . . oh yeah, sure.’

  She quickly – too quickly? – takes her bag from her shoulder, conscious not to open it in front of the reporter. She goes over to the picture desk to fish out her purse. The reporter looks pleased when she hands her a shiny one-pound coin.

  ‘Oh, thanks so much, I owe you one. I’ll give you it back tomorr—’

  ‘Forget it,’ Chloe says quickly. The last thing she needs is this reporter asking for her at the archive. ‘Honestly, don’t even think of paying me back.’

  ‘OK, I’ll buy you a drink next time there’s a leaving do. In fact, isn’t Sam on Subs off this week?’

  Chloe shuffles her weight between her feet. ‘I . . . er . . . I don’t—’

  ‘Yeh, drinks at the Tut, I think. I’ll buy you a drink, I couldn’t get through tonight without caffeine.’

  Chloe pauses for a moment, long after the reporter has returned to her computer. No one in the office has ever offered to buy her a drink at a leaving do. No one has even asked her if she’s going to one. She looks at this girl with her bright pink nails and her black leather handbag, a celebrity magazine peering from the top of it. Might they have become friends if she hadn’t been fired? She’d never had a friend at work.

  The reporter has turned back to her screen.

  ‘See you tomorrow then,’ the reporter calls without turning round.

  Chloe hauls her bag back onto her shoulder, the weight of it replacing a sudden emptiness. She heads towards the door, the brightness of the hallway beyond like a beacon to safety. She’s out the doors, down the stairs, out into the street.

  It’s only then that she allows her breath to return to normal.

  She’s done it. She’s got the file.

  Her hands are still shaking when she gets back to Nan’s house. She rummages through Nan’s bureau for some Blu-Tack then runs upstairs to her room. She shakes the photocopies onto her bed, and they land on the eiderdown with a
satisfying thud. Then she gets to work.

  She starts by removing a couple of pictures from the wall, then the pins that had held them there. They leave faint smoky outlines of themselves, but she’ll soon cover them. She flicks through for the earliest cutting from the pile, dragging a stool from Nan’s dressing table so she can reach up to the top left-hand corner of the room. She works from left to right, up and down on the chair until her thighs burn, but she won’t stop. She tacks each copy up with four tiny bits of pale-blue putty, and once she’s done the top two rows it’s easier, faster, not having to mount the stool. She works without stopping, a need to see what she’s had in her mind all day.

  An hour and a half later she stands back and there it is, the whole story of the Kyles covering three walls of her bedroom – just a few leftover cuttings creep around the next corner. It irritates her that they don’t all fit, but she would never have left them. No, here she has everything.

  She shrugs her shoulders a few times, massages the knots that have appeared in them. She’s tired and it’s nearly 3 a.m. She gets into bed, lying on her right side, an arm stretched under her pillow, so she can study this new newsprint wallpaper. She squints ever so slightly and the words blur to grey and, just for a second, it’s as if the photographs of Maureen and Patrick have been chosen from her own family album. Just like that, she has her very own archive. And under its gaze, she sleeps.

  FIFTEEN

  The phone ringing on the floor by her bed wakes her up. Chloe answers it still half asleep.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t wake you, did I?’ Hollie says.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Chloe answers with a yawn. She rubs her eyes and watches the room come into focus. She smiles to herself. Hollie is chatting away on the other end of the line, but Chloe lies back on her pillow, satisfied with the wallpaper that greets her. Now she wakes and sleeps inside the story of the Kyles.

  ‘So, how come you’re so tired? . . . Chloe?’

  ‘Oh, I . . . Sorry, I was miles away. I had a late night.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hollie says. ‘Doing what? Did you go out?’

  Chloe glances about the room guiltily.

  ‘Reading?’ she says, wishing she hadn’t made it sound like a question.

  ‘Oh, I love getting lost in a good book like that. Phil bought me a new one the other day. Now, what’s it called . . .?’

  Chloe’s eyes wander back to the wall. Her gaze honing in on one cutting. She reads the headline from her own pillow:

  Did police waste time to find Angie?

  She feels proud of herself, and, if truth be told, she would like to tell Hollie. But she knows too well what she would say. The same as she always does.

  ‘. . . so I was just ringing to say that I’ve got you an interview.’

  ‘What?’ Chloe sits up in her bed.

  ‘Yes, at Phil’s firm. I was telling him what had happened and apparently his place are looking for an admin assistant at the moment. It’s just filing and stuff . . . well, I don’t mean just filing. But you know what I’m saying, it would be perfect for you.’

  Chloe thinks of the envelopes in the archive and everything and everyone they contain. That isn’t just filing. And this, a job, this isn’t what she has planned. Her hand already feels clammy round the phone.

  ‘Filing what?’ Chloe asks. Not that she cares.

  ‘I don’t know, insurance records, what does it matter?’

  It matters, Chloe thinks.

  ‘Anyway, give Phil a buzz, he’s waiting for you to call. I think he said they could see you Friday. I’m so excited for you. Imagine, Phil could be your boss.’

  Chloe winces inside as Hollie does a little excited squeal. She hangs up, promising Hollie she’ll call Phil. She turns back to the cuttings. No, starting a new job is not how she has pictured this playing out.

  She throws the phone to the floor and instantly forgets the call. She leans back on her pillow and admires the Kyles, trying to decide how she will spend the day, which part of their story she will study, because she’s already got a new job now, or at least a project.

  She pushes back her duvet, and pads across the room. She stands in front of one long wall covered in cuttings and closes her eyes. She sticks out her finger, swirls it in the air and dots it down at random. It lands on a story about police dogs searching Ferry Meadows. She’s already been there. She closes her eyes and tries again. This time it lands on the story about the school children celebrating Angie’s life.

  That is how Chloe will start.

  She arrives at the school just after 2.30 p.m.

  ‘Sorry, I’m late,’ she says to the receptionist. ‘I have a meeting with the deputy head at two thirty?’

  ‘Not to worry, her previous meeting has overrun anyway.’

  ‘That’s OK then,’ Chloe says.

  The receptionist asks her to take a seat. She removes her coat and folds it over on her lap. Then crosses her legs, and refolds her coat. She hasn’t been inside a school since she attended one herself. She feels conscious of her own skin on her bones. She tries to distract herself by looking at the children’s artwork. On the walls are giant red letters, each spelling out one of the school values. Chloe reads them: Empathy, Respect, Courage, Honesty. Her eyes flicker across that last one.

  Beside the words are photographs of children in their uniforms. The little girls in the pictures wear blue gingham dresses – a summer uniform Angie never got to wear. Then, along the way, tucked away slightly, not far from the receptionist’s office, is another photograph. Chloe’s breath catches inside her throat. She stands up and steps a foot closer. It’s the same school portrait of Angie that was printed in almost all of the newspapers, and underneath, in copperplate handwriting, no name, just four simple words: Always in our hearts.

  She knew she had been right to come here.

  An office door opens and a woman says her name as she walks towards her with a hand outstretched.

  ‘Naomi Taylor, deputy head, so sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ Chloe says, tearing her eyes away from the photograph. ‘I was late myself.’

  The woman wears dangly earrings and for some reason, Chloe flicks her own hair away from her shoulders.

  ‘Anyway, let’s get on with the tour,’ she says, handing Chloe a school brochure. ‘How old did you say your little one is?’

  ‘Er, four,’ Chloe replies quickly.

  ‘Right, and remind me, do you have a boy or a—’

  ‘Girl,’ Chloe answers.

  ‘OK, so as she would be entering reception, shall we start there?’

  Miss Taylor walks slowly, lingering on schoolwork on the walls, talking Chloe through the history of the school and setting out its values. Chloe longs to run her hands along the walls as they walk. She imagines Angie doing the same. If these walls could talk, she thinks. Then supposes they wouldn’t be able to give up any clues. Miss Taylor pauses outside a classroom.

  ‘After you . . .’ Miss Taylor says, opening the classroom door.

  The room is filled with noise where at least thirty children are scattered among tables and chairs, with a few lying on the carpet on their bellies, reading books, their legs bent and crossed in the air above them.

  ‘Looks like we’ve turned up at golden time,’ the deputy says, introducing Chloe to Mrs Bryant, the teacher, and her assistant. Miss Taylor talks Chloe through things like ‘Key Stage One’ and other terms she’s unfamiliar with. She makes an effort to nod and appear interested, all the time her eyes roaming the room, taking in everything from the tiny chairs to the whiteboard. Although surely it would have been a blackboard in Angela’s day? It was when she was at school.

  ‘And has this always been the reception classroom?’ Chloe asks.

  ‘Yes, ever since the school opened in 1974,’ she replies.

  Chloe nods and looks around. In the corner there is an old white butler sink that has clearly never been replaced. There’s a little plastic footstool in front of it
, and Chloe pictures Angie climbing up onto something similar to wash her hands back when she was here. There’s a doorway on the other side of the room through which sunshine spills light across the floor. She pictures Maureen and Patrick standing there each afternoon to collect their daughter, the sun dipping in the sky, an amber glow warming the tops of their heads as they waited. She smiles as she imagines Angie looking up at them from the carpet with their halos of afternoon sunshine – these two perfect parents. But then she corrects herself: no, no, it would have only been Maureen, Patrick would have been at work. Strangely, she can’t remember seeing anything about what he did in the cuttings. She makes a mental note to check. Chloe wants to imprint everything about this room in her mind, right down to the poster paint smell. It all builds up a picture. A picture that she has stepped into, that she is now a part of, and that surely brings her closer to the Kyles?

  ‘Shall we continue?’ Miss Taylor says, guiding her elbow.

  Although Chloe has already seen everything she needs.

  That night, back in her bedroom at Nan’s house, she writes down what she can remember about the school in her little notebook. On her phone there is a message from Hollie: Phil said he didn’t hear from you today. Make sure you call him. Xx

  She taps out a message saying she had come down with a migraine. It is true at least that she goes to bed early. Then she deletes the message.

  In bed, she lies underneath her duvet, wrapped up in the story of the Kyles, and when she sleeps she’ll dream of turning their heartbreak to hope.

  The church is empty and Chloe stands in the middle aisle, looking up at the huge vaulted ceiling and the dark beams that criss-cross overhead. She pictures Angie as a baby in her parents’ arms. Is this what she might have seen?

  Chloe felt sure that the priest who was mentioned in the cuttings, Father Martin Cunningham, might have something to add to her investigation. Only when she’d arrived, the noticeboard read that the priest’s name was Father Matthew Purcell. And inside the church, as she scanned the lists of priests’ names scored in gold on the ornate board on the wall, it turned out Father Purcell had only been at St Gregory’s for the last two years. She could see from a photo of him that he was young – a child himself when Angie had disappeared. There was no point in interviewing him.