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

her cardigan more tightly around herself, wrapping her arms across her body. Patrick’s sudden appearance here has changed the atmosphere in the kitchen, thickening the air with tension.

Chloe pours the hot water over the teabag. As the tea brews, she turns her attention to Patrick. He’s leaning against the worktop, his feet crossed at the ankles, and – Chloe now realizes – he has his own arms folded across his chest, mimicking Josie’s body language at the table.

Maureen suddenly stands up, seemingly unaware of the change in the air.

‘I shall have to start getting dinner ready soon,’ Maureen says, crossing the kitchen.

And as Chloe goes to replace the milk in the fridge, she sees the way Josie watches Patrick. She looks away quickly and starts picking up her handbag.

‘Yes, well, I should be getting on,’ Josie says.

‘Oh, really, Jo?’ Maureen says, sounding disappointed. ‘But Pat’s only just got in, won’t you stay for some tea?’

Josie’s eyes again flicker to Patrick, but he’s standing staring down at the floor. ‘Oh, no thanks, Mo, not today. Why don’t you come over to mine next week? We’ll catch up with the girls?’

‘OK,’ Maureen says, ‘that’ll be nice. I’ve been so busy getting this place sorted I—’

‘Don’t worry, everyone understands. It takes a long time to get it how you want it, doesn’t it? But it’s all looking good. You’ll get there.’

‘Oh Josie, are you sure Pat can’t run you back to town?’

Patrick looks at his wife quickly. Chloe notices how he doesn’t offer the same.

‘No, no, I’m perfectly fine on the bus,’ Josie says. ‘Well, goodbye, Mo. Goodbye, Chloe.’

The two women hug on the back door step, and it’s only when Maureen follows her friend out and round to the drive that Patrick seems to grow inside his clothes somehow, standing taller. He takes his seat at the kitchen table, pushing Josie’s cup into the middle of the tablecloth and unfolding his newspaper in the space it leaves.

Maureen comes back into the kitchen, fixing her hair.

‘Right, what was I going to do tonight? That’s right, I got some sausages out of the freezer.’

And with that, the kitchen at Elm House breathes easily again.

Back in her bedroom, her cup of tea beside her in bed, Chloe goes over Josie’s visit. She can’t remember ever seeing Josie’s name mentioned in any of the cuttings. She curses herself again that she doesn’t have her complete archive here in Low Drove. She could go to Nan’s and collect it – the cuttings that are still in one piece – but then she pictures the place: the loneliness hanging behind curtains that she’d forgotten to draw in her haste to leave; the post piling up behind the front door, the curtain still hanging from the back of it, trailing on the carpet. Not so long ago that place had been a home, Chloe and Nan’s home. Now it stands empty, neglected.

On the end of her bed is the top Maureen gave her this morning. Chloe pulls it towards her, tracing a finger along every stitch. The thought that Maureen made this for her warms her blood. She stands up and slips off her jumper, pulling the blouse on over her head. She stands in front of the mirror, twisting this way and that as the last of the evening’s pink sky falls through the windows onto the mustard-yellow sunflowers.

She had a friend who had a blouse like this when she was little. Or was it her own? She has a vague memory of the colours – or is it the pattern? She can’t place it. The day is muddling up everything in her head, but the blouse feels familiar and it fits perfectly. And it was made for her – just for her – and that is enough.

She sits back down on the bed in the blouse and fishes the pale blue notebook out from her small archive buried deep under the bed. Picking up a biro, she takes the lid off and opens the next blank page. She pauses, chewing the end of the pen, then flicks back a couple of dozen pages, filled with notes in various shades of blue and black ink. She knows she has so much to write in here today: there was the walk with Maureen, everything she told her about the day Angie disappeared. There was the spare room and all its contents – a neat list of everything she saw in there should fill two pages alone. But instead, she returns to the blank page and writes, Josie dislikes/suspicious of Patrick. Why? Police tip-off? Look into this. She circles that last bit, as if to highlight its importance.

Chloe closes the book. She doesn’t really need to write everything down in her notes. For now, she sits back on her pillow, holding the material from her blouse between forefinger and thumb, and admiring every individual stitch. Every stitch that Maureen made, for no one else but her.

A few hours later, Chloe is sitting on her bed reading a magazine as she hears Patrick on the landing, then in the bathroom, the sound of the shower turning on and the boiler whirring into action. Afterwards, on his way downstairs, he gives her a knock when he passes by to let her know that dinner is ready. They have these routines now, the kind you find in normal homes. Or at least Chloe likes to think so.

Chloe waits until his footsteps have faded before she gets up from the bed and smooths the creases from her new blouse. She opens the bedroom door and the landing is cloudy with steam and mist from his body spray, a sweet musky scent lingering at the top of the stairwell. She stops there to admire her reflection once more in the glass window. She smooths out the white Peter Pan collar that Maureen so painstakingly sewed. Only that’s when her eyes fall on the photograph on the windowsill and a frozen feeling crawls the length of