BooksBarbecue
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

‘Don’t you see? She’s remembering, Pat, it’s all coming back. She had a dream, she said she was at the park, with you. She described it, she . . . she described it just as it was that day. Oh Pat, our Angie.’ She squeezes his hand inside hers. ‘We’re getting our girl back.’

Patrick smiles at his wife. Chloe sees how he squeezes her hand in his fist. He reaches down, kisses it. He strokes the top of her head and gets up.

‘You always knew it, didn’t you, love?’ he says, and she swells under his touch.

Half of Chloe expects he might put Maureen right then, if there had been a genuine mistake. Wasn’t this the time to finally say it? But instead he stands next to the sink and shakes his head, smiling.

‘Well, if she remembers the park,’ he says.

Maureen nods enthusiastically, and then playfully stands up and taps him. ‘And you thought we needed DNA tests,’ she laughs. ‘You watch too many of those CSI programmes, that’s your problem.’

He laughs. The two of them laugh. And Chloe sits at the kitchen table alone.

Inside she is screaming.

FORTY-FIVE

Chloe watches Patrick. This is her life now. She watches the way he holds the knife if Maureen asks him to help her peel spuds for dinner. She notices how comfortable the blade looks in his hand, how natural his grip is on the handle. Is this how he did it?

When he puffs up the cushions on his chair before sitting down to watch one of his CSI programmes, Chloe looks up from the sofa. She notices the way he grips the cushions, with two hands. Her eyes flicker to his face, searching for a moment of recognition, but it is so hard to tell. People like him are experts in deceit.

When Maureen and Patrick are out of the house, she has searched – and searched – for where he keeps his gun. But she has found nothing, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Yet again, wouldn’t he need to be a master of deceit to have kept it hidden all these years?

She can’t say she feels uncomfortable in the Kyles’ house now, not all the time. In the daylight, when the kitchen is filled with the sound of the radio, when Maureen is humming as she wipes down the worktops, when the sound of the horse racing on the TV floats up the stairs, Chloe can almost pretend that nothing has changed. And yet, everything is different.