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
The playground is still, the swings hang limply on their chains. The newly installed slides here didn’t know this place in 1979; they weren’t witness to what occurred here that day twenty-five years before. Chloe opens the short yellow gate; she goes inside, feeling the woodchip beneath her leather soles, the soft shutting of the gate behind her, the creak of its hinges. She sits down on a swing and pushes at the ground with her feet. After a few pushes, she takes to the air, her figure cutting through the quiet eeriness of the day. She closes her eyes, envying Nan’s ability to time travel. She thinks of her playing backgammon with her new friends, enjoying a conversation that can run on loop unhindered.
And then it happens again, a flash of something, like the wrong photo slide loaded into a projector. A split-second memory of this same place, but not now – then. Chloe opens her eyes quickly, her feet skidding abruptly on the ground, woodchip scuffing at her soles. The swing comes to a wobbly halt. She looks around. At once everything is the same again. She blinks, but it’s gone, like the echo left over from a dream. The car park is empty, but she knows another car once filled a place in there – Patrick’s blue Ford Escort. She pictures him, popping back to lock it while Angie played on swings like these. Just like when she lost Nan, he had turned his back for a split second. And then what? Maureen was right, how can a child just disappear? What exactly had happened to Angela Kyle?
FOURTEEN
It’s almost midnight when Chloe arrives at the office. As she approaches the glass doors in the darkness, a sudden thought hits her – what if they’ve changed the keycode since she left? She lingers outside a moment, biting her nails, trying to avoid an obvious search for the CCTV cameras, instead turning her head and momentarily allowing her eyes to flicker up to check the angle of them. Behind her, the odd car drives by on the black road. One slows and she quickly turns her face back to the door, keeping it down to avoid recognition. Her fingers hover on top of the keypad as if, for a second, unsure whether to go through with this plan. But there’s no going back now. She punches in the code, wincing as each number she presses sounds its own tune, and then she hits the lit key symbol. A second later and she is inside.
She takes the stairs two at time, keeping her head down to avoid the security cameras nestled in the top corners of each floor.