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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

The door is pushed shut, another crunch from the draught excluders and then, outside, everything is still. Chloe stands there for a moment. On the other side of the glass she hears the woman’s agitation at her kids; one starts to cry. No Maureen. No Patrick. No Angie. They’ve gone.

Chloe grips the reporter’s notebook as if it might steady her. She takes a step away from the door and then back again. It can’t be right. She goes to knock again, then decides against it. She steps back, checks the number – definitely 48. She heads back down the path slowly, through the flaking blue gate. She’s in such a hurry to leave, she forgets to close it after her. She takes another look back at the house and sees the woman watching her from the window. It can’t be right, something must be wrong. Patrick and Maureen wouldn’t have moved. They couldn’t have.

She walks home slowly, her shoes dragging on the pavement. She tries desperately to think of explanations. She passes a bin and dumps the notepad and pen into it. What if it had been Angie knocking on that door? What then? She can feel the ugliness rearing inside. And something else: anger, hurt. Hot black stones that burn inside her belly. After all these years of saying they’d wait for Angie how could they have just upped and left?

By the time she gets back to Nan’s she’s stumbling to get her key in the lock. When she does the hallway is blurred with angry tears. She slams it behind her, catching a bit of Nan’s curtain in it. She pulls it out, too hard, the top of it coming free from the rings, and it hangs there, limp, useless.

‘How could they just leave?’ she cries to an empty hallway. And then again louder, ‘How could they just leave?’

She runs up to her room, half expecting to open her door and the cuttings to be gone too, as if she had imagined the hurt and pain in Maureen and Patrick’s eyes. But the cuttings are there, waiting for her, mocking even. She scans them quickly, her finger tracing the lines, one after another, after another, until she finds what she’s looking for:

‘Angela is our life, our love, our everything. An open wound will be here in our hearts until the day she is returned to us. We will wait for the rest of our lives for the day we are reunited.’

Liars.