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
And then Maureen interjects, her pitch higher, harder to decipher.
‘Please, Patrick . . . know more than anybody . . .’
Patrick’s voice cuts her off. Not that Chloe can hear what he says. Instead it’s the way he says it, a coldness to his tone. She lies there, pinned to the floor. She waits for Maureen’s response. But there is nothing, just fuzzy sound from the television. Her heart thuds against the floorboards. Should she go down? Has he hit her? Is that why she’s suddenly silent? She listens closer for the sound of crying, but she can’t pick up anything through the thickness of the oak between them. What had they been arguing about? She’s read stories about this, women controlled by angry men, shocked into silence by the fear of them lashing out. Was this Maureen’s life with Patrick? Is that how he appeared to her?
She finds a pen in her bag and writes down the date along the side of the cutting she’s holding: Patrick angry. Maureen frightened into silence.
A few minutes later she hears the click of the television going off in the living room, the soft pad of slippers mounting the stairs. She gathers the cuttings up quickly and pushes them back into their envelope. The one she’d written on is the last she puts away. She notices the headline then:
ANGIE’S FATHER IN SHOCK ARREST
She folds it up and gets back into bed. By the time she sees a pair of feet pause outside her door, she’s already turned off the light.
TWENTY-SIX
There is a change in the atmosphere in the morning, she can tell before she’s even reached the kitchen. Chloe lingers at the bottom of the stairs, listening out for Maureen and Patrick’s voices, but there is only silence. From here her eyes settle on the front room, a room kept purely for storage at the moment and one she’s never been in before. The door is still ajar, just as it was that first day Maureen showed her around. She can see through the gap in the door that it’s filled with nothing more than boxes, each labelled with a different room in the house, but as she passes, she makes a note to take a look inside when she can.
She enters the kitchen, her flat heels clapping on the black and white lino.
‘Morning, Chloe, love,’ Maureen says, quieter than usual.
Patrick sits behind his newspaper at the kitchen table, his curly hair more unkempt this morning. He rakes his hand through it without looking up at Chloe. He is reading a story about the missing fireman Chloe had overheard on the news last night. He looks up and sees her watching him and turns the page of his paper.