Chapters (55)
- Cover
- ANNA WHARTON
- Dedication page
- 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
- Praise
- THE IMPOSTER
She glances inside the box. She’d told Alec there was nothing she needed. But by the time he’d found a box, emptied it, tested its endurance, she felt she needed to find things to put in it. She looks down at the pathetic contents that sum up thirteen years at the newspaper: a few pens, an old diary she hadn’t even filled in, a calendar from two years ago, small change she’d found in her drawer and a tampon. As she gathered up her things she was already calculating how long she could afford to live without a job. With no social life, she’d accumulated decent savings, and at least she had a roof over her head.
‘I’m fine. No, not a bad time at all.’ Chloe tries to keep the emotion from her voice.
She balances the phone and the box as she listens, the phone slipping from under her ear every now and then, the traffic whizzing past, but she picks up the gist of the conversation.
‘. . . so to fund your grandmother’s care, we’re going to have to sell the house . . . Chloe? Chloe, are you still there?’
TWELVE
Chloe doesn’t go back to Park House the next day. Or the next. Instead she phones them to see how Nan is and a cheery nurse tells her she’d enjoyed bingo that morning. Nan hates bingo, not that she tells him that. In Park House Nan is different; she’s reinvented into someone who wears coral lipstick and dabs at her bingo card.
‘Would you like us to see if she’s around to speak to you?’ the nurse, Sam, asks.
Chloe is aware of the pause that stretches between them down the phone line. Is there any point? Will Nan even know who she is today?
‘No, it’s OK, just let her know I called.’
‘Of course.’
She thanks him, trying to imitate his cheeriness as she hangs up, then returns to the quiet of her empty bedroom.
She checks the time; she’s arranged to meet Hollie this afternoon. But she has time to drop in on one other person before she’s due to meet Hollie.
There are a few people in the cemetery when she arrives, mostly those kitted out with gardening gloves and secateurs – a routine to fill the empty days retirement leaves.
She enters via the gate on the far side today and walks beside a freshly dug grave, earth churned up, waiting patiently for a new guest to lie in its soil bed. From this entrance she turns right towards Stella’s grave and from the path she can just make out her headstone and the daffodils she’d left here two weeks ago, their dull heads bent solemnly now. She walks over and crouches down towards Stella, feeling the coolness of the earth rush to greet her.