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
‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ Hollie asks, tilting her head to read the name upside down. ‘Angela Kyle?’
Chloe’s eyes dart across the spread, from headlines, to pull quotes, to the pixels of Maureen and Patrick Kyle until they finally collect in some recognizable fashion in her brain. She hadn’t known them at first, age and grief having taken their toll on their faces, weather and worry having beaten new lines into them, their hair greyer – and lesser in Patrick’s case. But these are the present-day colour versions of Maureen and Patrick. She reaches out just as Suleyman appears at the table with the food.
‘Here we go, ladies, one poached eggs on toast, and one plain toast no butter.’
He puts the small plate down right on top of the headline. Chloe picks it up quickly and, as she does, she takes it in for the first time:
WE’LL NEVER GIVE UP ON OUR ANGIE
Chloe gasps then – a kind of half-gasp, half-laugh. An exhalation of disbelief. Hollie looks up.
‘It is them, isn’t it?’ Hollie says.
‘Yes,’ Chloe replies. ‘Yes, it’s them.’
‘It says here they’ve moved,’ Hollie says between mouthfuls, ‘that’s what the piece is about. At first I picked it up thinking they’d found her or something, but it’s just a piece saying how they’ve moved to . . . oh, hang on.’ She leans forward then, over her eggs, rubbing one finger down the newsprint, blurring the ink as she reads upside down. Chloe winces as Hollie dabs her black-stained finger down, smudging the words. ‘There, there it is. Low Drove. That’s out in the Fens, isn’t it?’
Low Drove. Chloe has never heard of it.
Hollie chews on her toast, mentioning two more villages Chloe hasn’t heard of. ‘Yeah, it’s between them somewhere. Tiny place, I think me and Phil drove through it once when we were going to a garden centre. One road, blink and you miss it – that kind of place.’
Chloe is half listening, half reading. Scanning and reading and mouthing the words to herself until she’s not listening to Hollie anymore at all because this, this is all the proof she needed.
Chloe takes a bite of the toast but she can’t eat now, and not because of some fake stomach bug. It’s as if every hope she’d lost these last few days has been returned to her, as if wrapped up in this news cutting is a gift. But with the elation comes a horrid sickening feeling. She pictures all those torn and shattered cuttings, a feeling now that it was she who had let down Maureen and Patrick. It was she who had lost faith in them. The toast rolls around and around in her mouth. Finally she swallows.
She picks the paper up and reads the headline again.
WE’LL NEVER GIVE UP ON OUR ANGIE