The Imposter by Anna Wharton (i have read the book txt) 📕

She mutters good morning. Alec coughs in response, then he picks up a pile of envelopes and heads deep into the archive. His clothes leave a stale breeze. His silence unnerves her. Should she follow him into the dense forest of filing? She closes her eyes and tries to think what would be happening if her life were a TV show, but nothing comes to her.

She turns on her computer, wishing she could muffle the fanfare it makes as it loads. As the office starts to fill, she casts glances over both shoulders in turn, the weight of the Angela Kyle file feeling reassuring in her hands. She peers inside, the spine of every single cutting so neatly folded; her fingernails pluck at them as if they’re tiny guitar strings.

She empties the file and spreads the cuttings out on her desk, every so often aware of Alec passing by and glancing in her direction. Smaller cuttings offer tantalising tasters, words leap up from the melamine: missing girl, heartbroken parents, search, desperate, hope fades. But she knows the real story – the whole story – is folded away within the larger cuttings. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking of the Kyles, especially not last night when she had returned home alone, when she’d felt the silence in the walls of that empty house. Is that how it has felt to these parents since the day Angela went missing? She feels she must be the only person who has some idea of what they are going through, and that likewise, they would understand her, and in many ways that made her feel less lonely, just the thought that someone would understand.

She picks one of the articles at random, opens out the double-page spread on her desk.

LOCALS JOIN SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL

She starts to read, but Alec limps past again so she quickly presses the article underneath the scanner. Her heart races as the pixels begin to appear on her computer screen.

There is a picture of Angie in this one, a grainy black and white reception class photo, a milk-tooth grin, hair in two bunches.

Missing: Angie, four, the caption reads.

The main picture is of locals searching through long grass alongside police, watched over by her parents, and underneath: Heartbroken: Parents Patrick and Maureen Kyle. She lingers on this picture of them, their fingers knitted tightly together in gripped hands, the two of them united in their grief for their precious missing child.

A reporter enters the archive and, thinking it’s Alec, she quickly labels and closes the file. Then she picks another:

MOTHER: ‘HOW CAN MY GIRL JUST DISAPPEAR?’

This time a colour piece from a feature writer who hasn’t worked at the paper for ten years. She had gone back to the family for a revisit:

MAUREEN Kyle sits opposite me on the sofa in their cosy sitting room. There is not a thing out of place and yet, it’s very clear that something is missing from this tableau. She appears poised, collected, but as her eyes rest on a photograph of her missing daughter, little Angela – or Angie, as her mum and dad call her – that calm exterior cracks, and the tears flow. ‘One minute she was here, playing in this living room, and the next she was gone. It doesn’t seem right. How could my daughter just disappear like that? How can any child disappear without trace? Somebody somewhere must know something.’ Her husband, Patrick, inches closer to her on the sofa and reaches for her hand . . .

Footsteps around her, Alec’s uneven gait. The scanner greedily eats up detail she herself longs to consume. The office is getting busy, Chloe knows she needs to look busy too. She picks another cutting from the pile.

ANGIE LATEST: POLICE DIVERS DREDGE RIVER

The next one:

BOGUS SIGHTING WASTES POLICE TIME

Another:

LOCALS RALLY FOR ANGIE VIGIL

The next couple of hours pass as the news rolls in from the wire. Reporters empty their shorthand pads at the news desk, and the editor’s office door opens and shuts as the day’s splash is decided upon. Among the chaos of the newsroom, Chloe works diligently through the Angela Kyle file. She knows it wouldn’t ordinarily take this long, that she doesn’t need to read all the cuttings. There are some she manages to resist, especially when she feels Alec’s eyes on her. But when he’s lost among the metal filing cabinets, when she hears the clang of the drawers as he removes and replaces files, she takes those few precious seconds to find out more.

ANGIE’S FATHER IN SHOCK ARREST

Her stomach turns under her desk. This one she has to read.

POLICE swooped last night on the home of missing city girl Angela Kyle, arresting her father in a shocking turn of events. Patrick Kyle was taken to the city’s Bridge Street police station and questioned for two hours after an anonymous tip-off from the public. But the bungling act by police proved to be the result of nothing more than a prank call, and Mr Kyle was released without charge. The city’s police chief has since apologized unreservedly to the Kyle family.

Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, Patrick Kyle said, ‘Yes, it was upsetting, but it also reassured us that the police are taking our daughter’s disappearance very seriously. We welcome every lead being followed up, we support the police in investigating every suspicion, it’s the only way that we will get our Angie back.’

There’s another picture – the same again. The pair of them united. Impenetrable. Their loyalty to their daughter constant, steadfast, intoxicating.

By mid-morning the sandwich man arrives and Chloe tears herself away from her desk to buy a tuna baguette from the trolley. She keeps her eye on the file all along for fear that Alec might take it. He still hasn’t spoken to her, but she comforts herself with the thought that she’s insignificant enough for yesterday’s absence not even to be noted.

Eleven thirty rolls around, the newspaper is put to