BooksBarbecue
Back The Imposter
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. ANNA WHARTON
  3. Dedication page
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE
  33. THIRTY
  34. THIRTY-ONE
  35. THIRTY-TWO
  36. THIRTY-THREE
  37. THIRTY-FOUR
  38. THIRTY-FIVE
  39. THIRTY-SIX
  40. THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. THIRTY-EIGHT
  42. THIRTY-NINE
  43. FORTY
  44. FORTY-ONE
  45. FORTY-TWO
  46. FORTY-THREE
  47. FORTY-FOUR
  48. FORTY-FIVE
  49. FORTY-SIX
  50. FORTY-SEVEN
  51. FORTY-EIGHT
  52. FORTY-NINE
  53. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  54. Praise
  55. THE IMPOSTER

Chloe still has her own archive back at Maureen and Patrick’s. In fact, now she has left Nan’s, she has more of it there. In it, this morning, she had found among all the others one envelope marked Grace Hudson, and she had pulled from it a single cutting. The one where their story together had started. It only felt right to read it here today.

WOMAN THANKS BLUE WATCH FOR SAVING CAT

DINKY the tabby got more than she bargained for when she decided to steal up the drainpipe of a local block of flats.

Quick-thinking residents called 999 when they heard miaows coming from piping thirty feet off the ground.

Firefighters attended the block in the city’s Garton End Road with the turntable ladder, and under the watchful eye of residents, returned the cat to its owner, Grace Hudson.

Mrs Hudson, eighty-three, praised Blue Watch for rescuing her beloved cat. ‘I lost my daughter Stella when she was just six years old and my husband has passed, too. Dinky is all I have left in the world,’ she told this newspaper. ‘I have recently been diagnosed with dementia and so a local charity is helping me look after Dinky because I keep forgetting to feed her. She’s nineteen years old so, like me, she hasn’t got long left. We only have each other for company . . .’

Chloe pauses. She can still remember that day in the office, how her scalpel had hovered over this story before she cut it out to file it in the archive. Who wouldn’t have felt sorry for a poor old lady who had nothing in her life left except for her cat? She’d taken round some chocolates – and some cat treats for Dinky – and it turned out Chloe had lasted months longer than Dinky. At least she and Nan had each other, not that other people would have seen it like that. That’s why Chloe had to disappear. People never understand.

She will replace this cutting when she’s back home in Low Drove with all the others she has kept over the years. One day she will have a sideboard in a home of her own, and that’s where all the people who have made up her family will be kept. Family doesn’t have to be the same blood that runs around in your veins; its more what you curate over the years, the people you collect. Or that’s what Chloe likes to think. People say you can’t choose your family, but that’s where they are wrong.

Chloe sits for a while with Nan, until she remembers 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.