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Back The Imposter Save as PDF
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

She takes her phone from her pocket and sees that Claire Sanders has left another message for her. She doesn’t need to listen to the voicemail to know what it is – talk of power of attorney and deeds and paperwork and a tangle of all the things Chloe tries hard to avoid. The bits of black and white that threaten to pin her down. In one previous message that Chloe made the mistake of listening to yesterday, Claire Sanders even mentioned how she’d called her office phone and someone had told her she’d left. Chloe’s insides had twisted at the thought of the umbilical cord between her and the archive being cut so bluntly. Chloe curses herself again for ever giving Claire her office number. But that was at the beginning when none of this could have been foreseen. Back then there hadn’t been consequences, just the here and now, just what felt right on that particular day.

At the library, she heads straight for the research centre. It is housed inside a glass room in the middle of the main library floor and more often than not, it is empty. Just like the archive, Chloe knows, if people don’t use it, they’ll lose it. She’s never understood why people enjoy novels more than real life. The research centre houses an archive of hundreds of digital newspapers, census records, old telephone directories. It seems a strange irony – even to Chloe – that she’s more comfortable in fact than fiction.

She hangs her coat on the back of the chair and presses a key so the sleeping screen lights up. The research centre overlooks the children’s reading corner, and while she waits for the program to load, she watches a mother with a little girl of about three or four. The girl toddles around, pulling books with colourful spines from the shelves and scattering them at her feet. Her red T-bar shoes march over their hard covers with little respect for the stories inside. Her mother has black hair – like Maureen – tied up in a messy bun and she tidies in her daughter’s wake, trying her best to entice her over to some colourful cushions where they can read together.