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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

She taps out a message saying she had come down with a migraine. It is true at least that she goes to bed early. Then she deletes the message.

In bed, she lies underneath her duvet, wrapped up in the story of the Kyles, and when she sleeps she’ll dream of turning their heartbreak to hope.

The church is empty and Chloe stands in the middle aisle, looking up at the huge vaulted ceiling and the dark beams that criss-cross overhead. She pictures Angie as a baby in her parents’ arms. Is this what she might have seen?

Chloe felt sure that the priest who was mentioned in the cuttings, Father Martin Cunningham, might have something to add to her investigation. Only when she’d arrived, the noticeboard read that the priest’s name was Father Matthew Purcell. And inside the church, as she scanned the lists of priests’ names scored in gold on the ornate board on the wall, it turned out Father Purcell had only been at St Gregory’s for the last two years. She could see from a photo of him that he was young – a child himself when Angie had disappeared. There was no point in interviewing him.

Still, she walks through the church, her hand trailing on the backs of empty pews. She lights a candle for Angie and drops a pound coin into the tin. It rattles inside as it lands, breaking the silence. Chloe stares at the flame, knowing Maureen and Patrick well enough to understand how much this small gesture would please them.

It has definitely been easier to throw herself into this task since she photocopied the file. She’s waited, the last couple of days, for her phone to ring, for Alec to demand her security pass back. She has been terrified that she was spotted on CCTV, or that the reporter has been down to the archive to give her back her money. But as the days have gone by, she’s started to relax inside her own skin again. She even had a dream two nights ago that she solved the crime and brought Angie home and was given back her job at the paper as a reward. She’d not only solved the mystery but saved the archive, and the Kyles, how they had loved her for it.

She sinks down on a pew, picturing for a second a packed church, Maureen and Patrick doing the same, elbow to elbow with friends and neighbours. Then she sighs. It always comes back to Maureen and Patrick, every lead, every hunch, every new clue she finds among the photocopies tacked to her bedroom wall. She knows the real answers to what happened to Angie must lie with the Kyles. But how can she possibly get to speak to them?