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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

Chloe has decided to pretend she’s come home from work sick. She can already picture how Maureen will whittle, how she’ll reach a cold hand to her forehead to check her temperature, how she’ll insist Chloe needs to go straight up to her room and she’ll bring her a mug of hot steaming tea. Even this thought makes Chloe feel uneasy, of leaving Maureen down there with him, unknowing.

The bus rumbles along the potholed Fen roads and her stomach pitches up and down in time with the tyres. It reminds her of the first time she came out here – just for a look, she had promised herself. She had no idea then how things would turn out.

She stares out of the window, spotting the fields that are sown with sugar beet, the long straight lines of tiny lush green now competing with worms to push through the soil. Soon these fields will be thick with leaves, disguising the furrows that separate them by early summer. Chloe had thought she would still be here then, that she would watch this barren landscape turn technicolour with wild flowers, just as Maureen had described to her. But she knows that inside her coat she is carrying a bomb back to Low Drove. Information that will explode inside that house, maybe even further.

The bus pulls into a stop, and Chloe’s racing head stills for the time it takes to let passengers off. The doors close and the bus moves on down the road and it’s only then that she realizes. Her head has been so busy with thoughts of Patrick, for Maureen’s safety, with exposing his lies, that she hasn’t stopped for a moment to consider herself in all this. She pictures again Maureen’s concerned face when she walks in the door. She is all that Maureen has now, and this information – this bomb that she can detonate – will destroy that too. A clammy coldness creeps across her skin.

Patrick hadn’t told her as some kind of confession – why would he after all these years? No, he’d told her to make her as much of a liar as he is. He must feel confident she won’t tell Maureen. He knows that would compromise her own place in their house. She thinks he’s paid no attention to her all these weeks, but he knows her well enough to understand what she has come to mean to Maureen. What Maureen believes she could be to her. What she was convincing Chloe she may be. Now suddenly it makes perfect sense why Patrick had started to go along with it. Why he doesn’t call Maureen crazy anymore. Why he had welcomed Chloe into his home.