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

She pushes back her duvet, and pads across the room. She stands in front of one long wall covered in cuttings and closes her eyes. She sticks out her finger, swirls it in the air and dots it down at random. It lands on a story about police dogs searching Ferry Meadows. She’s already been there. She closes her eyes and tries again. This time it lands on the story about the school children celebrating Angie’s life.

That is how Chloe will start.

She arrives at the school just after 2.30 p.m.

‘Sorry, I’m late,’ she says to the receptionist. ‘I have a meeting with the deputy head at two thirty?’

‘Not to worry, her previous meeting has overrun anyway.’

‘That’s OK then,’ Chloe says.

The receptionist asks her to take a seat. She removes her coat and folds it over on her lap. Then crosses her legs, and refolds her coat. She hasn’t been inside a school since she attended one herself. She feels conscious of her own skin on her bones. She tries to distract herself by looking at the children’s artwork. On the walls are giant red letters, each spelling out one of the school values. Chloe reads them: Empathy, Respect, Courage, Honesty. Her eyes flicker across that last one.

Beside the words are photographs of children in their uniforms. The little girls in the pictures wear blue gingham dresses – a summer uniform Angie never got to wear. Then, along the way, tucked away slightly, not far from the receptionist’s office, is another photograph. Chloe’s breath catches inside her throat. She stands up and steps a foot closer. It’s the same school portrait of Angie that was printed in almost all of the newspapers, and underneath, in copperplate handwriting, no name, just four simple words: Always in our hearts.

She knew she had been right to come here.

An office door opens and a woman says her name as she walks towards her with a hand outstretched.

‘Naomi Taylor, deputy head, so sorry to have kept you waiting.’

‘Oh, that’s OK,’ Chloe says, tearing her eyes away from the photograph. ‘I was late myself.’

The woman wears dangly earrings and for some reason, Chloe flicks her own hair away from her shoulders.

‘Anyway, let’s get on with the tour,’ she says, handing Chloe a school brochure. ‘How old did you say your little one is?’

‘Er, four,’ Chloe replies quickly.

‘Right, and remind me, do you have a boy or a—’

‘Girl,’ Chloe answers.

‘OK, so as she would be entering reception, shall we start there?’

Miss Taylor walks slowly, lingering on schoolwork on the walls, talking Chloe through the history of the school and setting out its values. Chloe longs to run her hands along the walls as they walk. She imagines Angie doing the same. If these walls could talk, she thinks. Then supposes they wouldn’t be able to give up any clues. Miss Taylor pauses outside a classroom.

‘After you . . .’ Miss Taylor says, opening the classroom door.

The room is filled with noise where at least thirty children are scattered among tables and chairs, with a few lying on the carpet on their bellies, reading books, their legs bent and crossed in the air above them.

‘Looks like we’ve turned up at golden time,’ the deputy says, introducing Chloe to Mrs Bryant, the teacher, and her assistant. Miss Taylor talks Chloe through things like ‘Key Stage One’ and other terms she’s unfamiliar with. She makes an effort to nod and appear interested, all the time her eyes roaming the room, taking in everything from the tiny chairs to the whiteboard. Although surely it would have been a blackboard in Angela’s day? It was when she was at school.

‘And has this always been the reception classroom?’ Chloe asks.

‘Yes, ever since the school opened in 1974,’ she replies.

Chloe nods and looks around. In the corner there is an old white butler sink that has clearly never been replaced. There’s a little plastic footstool in front of it, and Chloe pictures Angie climbing up onto something similar to wash her hands back when she was here. There’s a doorway on the other side of the room through which sunshine spills light across the floor. She pictures Maureen and Patrick standing there each afternoon to collect their daughter, the sun dipping in the sky, an amber glow warming the tops of their heads as they waited. She smiles as she imagines Angie looking up at them from the carpet with their halos of afternoon sunshine – these two perfect parents. But then she corrects herself: no, no, it would have only been Maureen, Patrick would have been at work. Strangely, she can’t remember seeing anything about what he did in the cuttings. She makes a mental note to check. Chloe wants to imprint everything about this room in her mind, right down to the poster paint smell. It all builds up a picture. A picture that she has stepped into, that she is now a part of, and that surely brings her closer to the Kyles?

‘Shall we continue?’ Miss Taylor says, guiding her elbow.

Although Chloe has already seen everything she needs.

That night, back in her bedroom at Nan’s house, she writes down what she can remember about the school in her little notebook. On her phone there is a message from Hollie: Phil said he didn’t hear from you today. Make sure you call him. Xx

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,