“It sounds hard, being so needed,” Chloe said gently.
“It is,” Kiko said, her voice still small. Kiko had always been the strong one, the loud one, the one who had her shit together. Now Chloe felt like maybe she’d taken that strength for granted, had failed to read between the lines. She might not have known much about babies, but her best friend had one, so she needed to pay more attention.
“Tell me how it feels, being a mum, the good and the bad. I’m listening, no detail too boring, I promise,” Chloe prompted. Then she sat in the bath until the water got cold, listening to her friend try to feed her baby while telling her about the hell of cracked nipples and reflux medication. About how she missed work but then felt guilty for not enjoying every minute of motherhood. About how scared she felt by the intensity of love she felt for this tiny creature. By the end of the call, Elodie had stopped crying, and Kiko’s voice had grown bigger again.
“Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t know if I could talk to you about this stuff. I didn’t want you to think I’d got boring.”
“Kiko, you could never be boring, but also, you’reallowedto be boring. I know you’re used to being the one with all the stories, making people laugh, but you don’t have to be ‘on’ all the time. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Kiko said, sniffing on the line. “And I fully support your relationship with a prostitute, if that’s what’s right for you.”
Once she’d said goodbye, Chloe looked at the phone in her hand, then typed Sean a message.
Chloe
Hey, are you busy? Want to meet before the picnic?
He replied a few minutes later.Sure. See you at our place in ten?
She got dressed, grabbed the script from the side table, and thrust it into her bag. Whatever emotional wounds this weekend had opened, she might as well rip off all the Band-Aids at once.
15
Eleven Years Earlier
Chloe, Sean, John, and Akikowere sitting in the theater, along with a dozen other cast members, finishing the table read forA Midsummer Night’s Dream. Chloe twisted her ring, and Sean looked across and raised an eyebrow.
“So have you discovered who your Imp is yet?” he asked, giving her a knowing smile. For someone who wanted to remain anonymous, he certainly enjoyed bringing it up.
“I am forever indebted to the Imp,” she said, giving him a playful nudge. “But if the Imp wants to stay hidden in the shadows, far be it from me to haul him into the light.”
“Isn’t the Imp supposed to do mischief, rather than good?” asked Emma, twirling a strand of her wispy blonde hair around a pencil.
“Maybe the Imp deserves a chance to rewrite history. Maybe he’s been much maligned,” suggested John.
“Maybe it really was the ghost of the imp,” suggested Akiko. “You can’t live in a place this old and not cross paths with a few spirits.”
The conversation turned to superstition and legend, then too many drinks in the bar. Only when they all got back to college did Chloe realize she was without her scarf.
“Oh no, my scarf, I left it!” she said as they turned onto Turl Street.
“Want me to go back with you?” Sean offered.
“No, it’s okay. Someone will hand it in,” Chloe said, too tired to face walking back through town to the playhouse. “I’ll just get it tomorrow.”
But when she woke up the next day, her scarf was folded outside her door, with a handwritten note.The Imp doesn’t want you getting cold.She smiled, hugging the scarf to her chest.
After that, the Imp’s good deeds became more frequent. Small, thoughtful gestures appearing when she least expected it. Postcards appeared in her postbox, with lines from poets she hadn’t read before but whom she came to adore. There were original haikus too:
Bear naps in the sun.
Imp draws whiskers on his snout—
Sharp paw, Imp is gone.
These amused her in a way it was impossible to explain to anyone else. When spring arrived, she found a jam jar of snowdrops and daffodils outside her room with a line from an Oscar Wilde poem.
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
