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
Chloe sinks down in her seat, her own eyes returning to the road. Why is he not asking more? Why is he not picking apart what she’s telling him? She knows Maureen would.
‘And I just thought, I mean, that’s where . . . well, that’s where Angie—’
‘Like I said, I don’t pay too much attention to dreams.’
He turns to her and smiles. But the smile stays too long, like a warning.
Chloe looks back at the road. They drive on in silence. Chloe twiddles her thumbs in her lap. She twists in her seat, rearranges her bag in the footwell. Then the news comes on the radio and Patrick quickly turns it off.
They drive across the city, Patrick indicating this way and that in silence. The atmosphere inside the car is thick with something, though Chloe doesn’t know what.
One after another they cross roundabouts. The bus stop up ahead is her cue to relax. Patrick indicates and pulls over. Her hand is already on the seat belt catch.
‘OK then?’ he asks.
‘Thanks,’ Chloe says, and gets out of the car.
She is about to slam the door when Patrick leans across the passenger seat.
‘And Chloe?’ he says.
She stops still, her hand on the door frame. ‘Yes?’
‘We were never at the play park the day Angie went missing.’
FORTY-TWO
Chloe stands at the bus stop for a long time after Patrick drives away. She is still on the pavement exactly where he dropped her. She hears a plane cut through the clouds above, the rushing footsteps of office workers; she inhales the thick exhaust fumes of a bus that waits for passengers to alight, and still she stands there, trying to absorb exactly what Patrick had said. She knows this case inside out, she has spent hours reading through the cuttings, she can’t have got something so vital wrong. How could Angie not have been at the play park that day when that was exactly the place she disappeared from? It doesn’t make any sense. Chloe feels, standing there, as if suddenly everything she thought she knew about the Kyles’ story is wrong. She wishes the cuttings were tucked inside her bag – she needs a reference point now to stop the world from spinning. But if what Patrick said is true, everything she knows about Angie’s disappearance is mistaken. She blinks and shakes her head, ignoring the stares of people hurrying past her, though she knows her stillness uneases them.
But more worrying to Chloe is not what he said, but how he said it, and perhaps why? It seems a rather large bomb to have dropped so casually. Too casually.
It is a while before she pulls herself together, before she crosses the road to wait at the bus stop on the other side. Patrick’s words swim around in her head.