The Imposter Anna Wharton (e novels to read .txt) 📖

further questioning. For some reason Hollie’s boyfriend, Phil, pops into her head.

‘Insurance,’ she says.

‘Oh right,’ Maureen replies. ‘Pass the salt, will you, Pat?’

She’s thought about asking them, of course she has. But they’ve already told her that the room is for storage. Why wouldn’t she believe them? Would a detective believe them?

‘Are you sure you’re OK, Chloe?’

‘Would you stop fussing, woman!’ Patrick says between mouthfuls. ‘She’s said she’s fine.’

‘I’m only asking, Patrick.’

He sighs and gets up from the table, putting a plate underneath his wrapped fish and chips. He heads into the living room, then comes back for the ketchup. In the silence he squirts some onto his plate. He leaves again and a moment later, the last of the evening’s news filters through into the kitchen.

‘I was only asking,’ Maureen says again, this time into her chip paper.

The two women eat for a while in silence. Chloe chews her food but there’s a question she can’t swallow. She looks to the open doorway, wanting to be sure Patrick isn’t listening.

‘There is something . . .’ Chloe says.

‘Yes?’ Maureen looks up from her food.

Chloe hesitates. ‘The room next to mine . . .’

Maureen’s eyes flicker back to her plate.

‘I just wondered why there is a padlock on it? I just wondered why it’s always kept—’

‘Patrick doesn’t like me going in there,’ she says in a whisper, looking quickly to the doorway. She is suddenly nervous in a way Chloe hasn’t seen before.

‘But why?’ Chloe says. ‘If it’s just storage . . .’

Maureen picks up her plate from the table. ‘It is storage, Chloe, but . . . it’s best left, that’s all.’

‘But—’

Maureen scrapes the last of her food into the bin and puts her plate in the sink. She wipes her hands on a tea towel, then follows Patrick into the living room. Chloe hears her offering him a cup of tea, adopting a much lighter tone than a second before. Then nothing for a while except for the sounds of the TV. There’s been a big fire somewhere in Essex, two firefighters have been killed. Another is still missing.

Chloe makes an excuse to go to bed early that night. She yawns from the sofa to make it seem convincing, not that anyone protests.

After she’s turned out the light in her room, she lies back in the darkness, the muffled sounds of the television creeping up through the house. She turns over on her pillow, once, twice, then sighs, switching on her bedside lamp. The duvet twists around her legs and she shakes it off. On the bedroom floor, she reaches for the box under her bed. It’s pushed all the way to the back wall, and her hand fishes for it in the dust and darkness. Her fingertips find the cardboard sides of it and she pulls it out from under the bed. The box is black, or at least it once was. Now it is scuffed and scarred, having travelled with Chloe for years. Inside it is filled with envelopes, each one of them named. She pulls out the newest looking one. She sits back against the bed frame, the cool of the wooden floorboards under the back of her knees, her feet on the rug. She opens the envelope and empties it into her lap. She hasn’t brought all the cuttings here, just a selection, in case she needs some reminders. The rest are back in her bedroom at Nan’s. She knows she will need to go back for them, but when she thinks of Nan’s house, she feels awkward and unsettled inside. She unfolds one photocopy after another, surprised how old photos that she had come to know so well now feel strange to her. She can’t remember which cuttings she’d brought, and so each that she unfurls is a surprise, although none offer new clues, not even from this vantage point.

Raised voices filter through the floor. Chloe stops, the cutting in her hand. She can hear Patrick.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman . . .’

She shuffles closer to the floorboards, pressing her ear to a warm one where she had been sitting to get closer to their conversation. She holds her breath, the wood between them stealing much of what’s being said in the living room, only tiny snippets floating up towards her.

Patrick continues: ‘. . . treating her like . . . turned up out of nowhere . . . know nothing about . . .’

And then Maureen interjects, her pitch higher, harder to decipher.

‘Please, Patrick . . . know more than anybody . . .’

Patrick’s voice cuts her off. Not that Chloe can hear what he says. Instead it’s the way he says it, a coldness to his tone. She lies there, pinned to the floor. She waits for Maureen’s response. But there is nothing, just fuzzy sound from the television. Her heart thuds against the floorboards. Should she go down? Has he hit her? Is that why she’s suddenly silent? She listens closer for the sound of crying, but she can’t pick up anything through the thickness of the oak between them. What had they been arguing about? She’s read stories about this, women controlled by angry men, shocked into silence by the fear of them lashing out. Was this Maureen’s life with Patrick? Is that how he appeared to her?

She finds a pen in her bag and writes down the date along the side of the cutting she’s holding: Patrick angry. Maureen frightened into silence.

A few minutes later she hears the click of the television going off in the living room, the soft pad of slippers mounting the stairs. She gathers the cuttings up quickly and pushes them back into their envelope. The one she’d written on is the last she puts away. She notices the headline then:

ANGIE’S FATHER IN SHOCK ARREST

She folds it up and gets back into bed. By the time she sees a pair of feet pause outside her door, she’s already turned off the light.

TWENTY-SIX

There is a change in the atmosphere in the morning, she can tell before she’s even reached the kitchen. Chloe lingers at the bottom of the stairs, listening out for Maureen and Patrick’s voices, but there is only silence. From