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
Inside Patrick’s arms, Maureen makes a wounded crying sound, almost animal-like, and her husband dips his head to meet hers. They sit like that for a while, the other people in the living room fading away. They are back where they started, just the two of them. When Patrick looks up, Chloe sees that his eyes are filled with tears. He looks at the detective.
‘Are you sure? I mean, is it definitely her?’
‘Obviously, due to the length of time and . . . well, and decay’ – the detective speaks slowly – ‘there will need to be a formal identification, but from initial records it does seem that . . . that yes, it is the body of your daughter, Angela Kyle. I’m so sorry, Mr Kyle.’
The detective reaches out and touches a hand to his shoulder, just for a second. Patrick glances at it, unsure how to respond. Instead his attention falls again to his wife under his arm. He wraps her up tighter as she sobs quietly into his chest. Her right hand clutches the wool of his jumper. It’s only then that Chloe makes out what Maureen has been whispering on repeat.
‘It’s over, Patrick,’ Maureen cries softly. ‘Angie’s come home.’
Chloe stands in the kitchen now, stirring milk into seven cups of sweet tea. She’d gone out there to help the uniformed officers find their way around the kitchen. Somehow it had felt wrong to hear them raking through the contents of Maureen’s kitchen cupboards; she didn’t want them judging Maureen for the plastic pink beakers she keeps just for Chloe, or the Bunnykins cutlery they would find in the drawer. They wouldn’t understand. They couldn’t comprehend a mother’s pain, why she has desperately clung on to these things of Angie’s all these years.
To be honest, Chloe is glad for the breathing space. The air is thin in the living room and after a while her head had started to spin. Whatever she has been doing here in the Kyles’ house these last fourteen weeks, something about the rawness of emotion she had just seen had made her feel uncomfortable – guilty even – about bearing witness to Maureen and Patrick’s pain. After twenty-five years this was a moment that belonged to no one but them. Chloe needs to give them time to take it all in.
She stirs the tea and listens out. There is no sound coming from the living room now. In the kitchen, the uniformed officers’ radios crackle quietly as they sit at the small pine table.
‘Have you been renting a room here long?’ one of the officers asks her.