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

into place and slips the key inside her bra. She adjusts her hair and hurries down the stairs. Chloe is unsure whether to follow her. A mumbled voice meets Maureen in the kitchen, the sound of the back door closing shut as Chloe puts her first step on the top of the stairs. A woman’s voice:

‘. . . thought you might be in the garden . . . sunny out today . . . murder a cuppa . . .’

Chloe takes a few steps down the stairs and peers over the bannister. She can only see the back of a black coat on a chair, hear the scrape of the wooden legs on the kitchen lino as whoever has arrived sits down at the kitchen table. She sounds as if she’s at home, whoever she is. Chloe listens but doesn’t recognize the voice. But then, why should she? All the way out here she’s never met any of Maureen and Patrick’s friends and relatives. It probably would have been different if they’d still been in Chestnut Avenue, but out here, surrounded by all these fields, sometimes this house feels more like an island.

Downstairs the lightness has returned to Maureen’s voice and Chloe hears her own name being mentioned.

‘A lodger?’ the stranger’s voice asks. She sounds surprised, curious – shocked, even – which piques Chloe’s own curiosity.

She decides then to recommence her descent down the stairs, trying as best she can to make her footsteps sound natural, not as if she’s been eavesdropping.

‘Here she is,’ Maureen says.

The woman twists round from her seat with a smile that falls – just a little – when she sets eyes on Chloe.

‘Chloe, this is my oldest friend, Josie,’ Maureen says, introducing the pair. ‘Josie, this is our new lodger.’

Chloe holds out her hand and Josie takes it tentatively. She’s small and dumpy, with grey hair cut close to her head. Behind the years that she’s grown into, Chloe can see that she was once a very beautiful woman. She wears a silk scarf around her neck and drops her gaze from Chloe to adjust it.

‘How do you do?’ Josie says.

‘Nice to meet you,’ Chloe replies.

Chloe crosses the kitchen to stand beside Maureen at the sink. This stranger’s appearance at Elm House makes her feel more at home here herself, and she gleans some satisfaction from the way that Josie studies her and Maureen standing side by side. In the end it’s Josie who looks away first.

As Maureen makes tea, she tells Josie how Chloe saw the advert in the newsagent’s window. She fills the kettle and describes the first time she walked in the kitchen door. She drops a teabag into each mug and explains how easily she’s settled in, as if she’s always been here. As she adds the milk she raves about how nice it is to have someone to fuss over again, and Chloe smiles and blushes on cue, all the time knowing she is playing her part flawlessly.

But after a while, as the three women sip their tea, something about the way Josie watches her starts to unnerve Chloe. The way Josie’s eyes flicker across her while Maureen continues chatting oblivious. In many ways Josie would be the perfect witness to interview. She wonders if Maureen and Josie would have been friends when Angie disappeared. If so, did detectives speak to her at the time? What might Josie have told them?

Maureen doesn’t appear to have noticed that her friend has remained silent the whole time she has been talking.

‘. . . and the most incredible thing is, how much does she remind you of our Angie?’

Josie had been about to sip from her mug, but it stops mid-air.

‘I’m sorry?’ Josie says.

‘Chloe,’ Maureen says, as she sits down beside her at the table. ‘I was saying how much she reminds me of Angie, doesn’t she you?’

Josie takes a slow sip of tea and over the top of the mug regards the two women in front of her. She shakes her head.

‘No, Maureen,’ she says, placing her cup back on the table. ‘I can’t say she does.’

Maureen looks up at her friend, and then at Chloe.

‘Josie, but of course she does. Look at her hair, her pale skin, and she’s even got this freckle on her neck – show her, Chloe. I saw it the very first night she moved in, not that I said anything but . . . Angie had one just like it. Josie, don’t you see it?’

Chloe reaches up to her neck, her fingertip finding the freckle Maureen had never mentioned before.

Josie takes another sip of her tea without looking. ‘I can’t say I do, Mo.’

Maureen reaches up to fix her hair, and laughs a little.

‘Oh Josie, you’re making me feel like I’m going mad. Patrick’s the same, he can’t see it either.’

‘Plenty of people have dark hair, Maur—’

‘I know, I know, Josie, it’s just . . .’

The two women look at Chloe and she dips her gaze down into her lap. Josie uses the silence as her opportunity.

‘Angie was a little girl when she disappeared, Maureen,’ she tells her friend. ‘How can you say that Chloe reminds you of Angie when she’s a grown woman?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘How old are you, Chloe? Thirty? Thirty-one?’

‘Twenty-nine,’ Chloe replies.

‘The same age as Angie would have—’ Maureen tries, but Josie talks over her.

‘There you go, Mo, she said it herself – twenty-nine – how can she remind you of a little girl? She’s a grown woman.’

‘But if Angie hadn’t—’

‘Yes, but she did, Maureen.’ Josie’s voice is louder, as sharp as glass.

Silence. Maureen looks scolded.

‘Now let’s stop this talk and enjoy our tea,’ Josie says. ‘I’m sure Chloe has got things she needs to be getting on with rather than hanging around this kitchen with the likes of us.’

Josie looks at her, and Chloe looks at Maureen. Everything they’d shared that morning undone in front of her eyes. She doesn’t know why but deep in her stomach, Chloe feels the ugliness start to stir. Maureen says nothing, just looks down at her hands wrapped round a warm mug of tea as if it were a lifebuoy in a