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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

Maureen’s head is bent forwards, her shoulders hunched. She’s clutching something to her chest, and all around her toys from the seventies spill out of boxes: Sindy dolls, spinning tops, wooden bricks, Ladybird books and hard plastic baby dolls clothed in hand-knitted jackets. In the middle of the chaos, Maureen turns slowly on the spot, clutching what looks like a rag at first, squashed between her cheek and her neck. She buries her nose into it, taking a deep inhale. Chloe gasps as she realizes what it is, she recognizes it from the newspaper cuttings – Angie’s cloth cat, Puss. Not that she says as much. But it’s Maureen’s response to her recognition that she notices, as if a tiny circuit board has been lit inside her. Chloe knows she could tell her why she recognizes these toys, that she should tell her. But she can’t. Instead she watches as Maureen sobs into the soft cat, calling her missing daughter’s name over and over again.

THIRTY

Maureen insists that everything in the room has to be put away before Patrick comes home. The tea sits abandoned downstairs, while the two women work together in the room that has been barred to Chloe these last three weeks of living here.

Maureen packs things hurriedly, but Chloe works more slowly, each toy sparking off a different memory, from newspaper cuttings or her own childhood – she and Angie were the same age, after all, and so, quite naturally, everything blurs into one. She picks up a Ladybird book – Hansel and Gretel – and flicks through its pages. She had the exact same one.

Beside her, Maureen searches for the box the cloth cat had been in. Chloe watches her push it back down among the other soft toys – a koala bear with real fur, a polar bear with black eyes and a sewn-on nose.

‘Will you always keep these things?’ Chloe asks.

Maureen pauses, bent over a box.

‘I mean, if Patrick doesn’t like you coming in here . . .’ Chloe adds.

Maureen sinks down on a sealed box. She sighs and looks around at this museum of her missing daughter.

‘In the old house we kept everything just the way it was,’ Maureen says. ‘We never changed a thing, even the sheets on her bed, like I told you. I had to keep everything the same, just in case.’

Chloe nods, remembering the gate at the old house and its peeling paint. She had probably brought the flakes of it in her coat pocket to Elm House. It was this same loyalty Chloe had come to admire in these two shattered parents.