The Imposter

by Anna Wharton

  ‘The buttons . . . oh Pat, you don’t think you can still get the same ones, do you? I just borrowed them, that’s all.’

  ‘Maureen, this is too—’

  ‘Oh Patrick, don’t be so silly, it’s just a few butt—’

  ‘No it’s not,’ he shouts, his voice reverberating around the kitchen. In the silence that follows the glass lampshades on the ceiling lights ring faintly with the echo of his rage.

  Patrick looks up at Chloe and then away again. ‘Take it off,’ he says, quietly at first. Then again, louder, pointing at the stairs: ‘Take it off!’

  ‘Patrick, I—’

  ‘Maureen, this is too much. You’ve gone too far this time.’

  Chloe rushes back upstairs. Behind her she hears the back door slam, and then a moment later, Maureen rushing into the garden after Patrick. In her room she closes the door, then behind the curtains searches for them out of the window that overlooks the back garden. She can’t see anything, the blackness of the night swallowing them up, but she hears voices, a snatched conversation.

  ‘. . . got to stop . . .’

  ‘. . . the likeness . . . please.’

  ‘coincidence, Maureen . . .’

  ‘more than that . . . can’t deny . . .’

  Chloe pushes herself up close to the glass, her hair suddenly wet with condensation, her ear quickly frozen, but she can’t hear anything else. All is quiet for a moment. She looks down at the blouse still hanging from her frame. She knows now what Maureen was trying to do. She had planned this. She wanted Patrick to see what she sees. She wanted him to see Angie.

  Finally she senses something in the garden and looks down. Two figures move about in the shadows. She hears Maureen’s voice, softer, coaxing. There’s no sound from Patrick. She can’t tell if he is being persuaded. But persuaded of what? It’s not as if Chloe has made any claims. She’s confident that she hasn’t given Maureen the wrong idea. How could blame possibly be put at her door? All Maureen has done is put together the dots and drawn an entirely new picture.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Chloe is unsure how much time passes up in her room. She looks out on the garden occasionally but it is black, lit only by the moon that shines brightly tonight though casts no light on what might be going on beneath her. While she waits, Chloe changes out of the blouse, folding it carefully and putting it into the bottom of her wardrobe where it joins a space thick with bed linen and spare towels.

  Eventually Chloe hears the back door open again, the tap tap of footsteps on the kitchen lino. The door closes, softly this time, and muffled voices float up the stairs. Chloe tries to establish the tone of them, but they’re too muted to gauge. What was said? She can still close her eyes and picture Patrick’s face as he stared at her in that blouse. How had Maureen managed to calm him so quickly?

  ‘Chloe?’

  She stands stock-still in her room. The voice floats up the stairs again, calling her name. It’s Maureen.

  ‘Chloe, love, would you come down? We want to talk to you.’

  She opens the door a little and peers out. Maureen’s face greets her at the bottom of the stairs. She’s smiling, her features soft, not anxious.

  ‘Come down,’ she says, beckoning with her hand. ‘Come on.’

  Chloe leaves her room and takes the stairs. As she reaches the bottom, Maureen turns and she follows her into the living room. Patrick sits in his chair by the patio doors, but the TV is off; he sits upright, his feet on the floor, not the pouffe. He looks as if he has aged ten years.

  ‘Sit down, Chloe,’ he says, indicating the sofa. She sits by the door, in Maureen’s usual spot, and Maureen sits beside Patrick on the pouffe. For once Chloe is grateful for another pair of eyes on them, for Angie bearing witness from the sideboard.

  Maureen looks at Patrick, who clears his throat.

  ‘What . . . what happened earlier, you’ll have to forgive me,’ he says.

  Maureen pats his hand.

  ‘It . . . it was just a shock to see . . . well, it’s been a long time, I don’t have to tell you,’ he says.

  Chloe nods. She cups her hands together in her lap. She is still, resenting even the requirement to breathe. She doesn’t want anything to interrupt this moment.

  Maureen interjects. ‘Patrick’s sorry for the way he reacted,’ she says, ‘he didn’t mean to frighten you.’

  Patrick coughs again. He looks at his wife, as if he’s unsure of what he’s going to say next, but she smiles at him, encouraging him on.

  ‘I think, what I found so shocking was . . . was the resemblance between you and’ – his eyes flicker up to Angie on the sideboard and he squeezes them shut – ‘. . . and to our Angie. Perhaps I haven’t wanted to . . . acknowledge it before, but I guess that . . . well, seeing you there in that blouse . . .’

  Maureen looks at him, nodding. He goes on.

  ‘I know Maureen’s felt like this for a long time, and to me, well, I guess I’d given up hope a long time ago. But maybe . . . well, tonight, I’ve had to admit that . . . maybe there is something in it, I mean, maybe there’s a chance . . .’

  Maureen rests her hand on his leg and he pauses.

  Chloe’s heart races inside her chest on the other side of the living room. She stays still, silent. She may still be wrong.

  ‘What Patrick is trying to say is, we think . . . well, we know it sounds ridiculous’ – Maureen laughs a little – ‘but we think maybe there’s a chance that you could be Angie. You could be our missing girl.’

  Chloe takes a long, slow exhalation. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath the whole time Patrick had been talking. However many times she might have fantasized about this moment, it still manages to come as a surprise. She feels faint; her hands grip the cushion she sits on; the air in the room feels thin. Her head light.

  Maureen and Patrick stare at her from across the room. Patrick wrings his hands in his lap.

  ‘Could I . . . could I get a glass of water?’ Chloe says.

  ‘Yes,’ Maureen says, springing up from her seat. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Maureen goes into the kitchen, and Patrick sits staring at the floor, giving Chloe a few precious seconds to think. Is it true, what they just said, that they think she is Angie? Maureen returns with the glass. She takes it.

  ‘Oh, you’re shaking,’ Maureen says.

  Chloe takes a sip. ‘Yes, sorry, it’s . . .’

  ‘It’s the shock, isn’t it, love?’

  Chloe nods, while Maureen goes to sit next to Patrick. She tells herself to focus on the glass, to let them do the talking, to convince her. That’s what she needs them to do. She breathes into the glass.

  ‘I mean, you said yourself that you were adopted, that you didn’t really know your background,’ Maureen says. ‘I mean, didn’t you say you were around four or five?’

  Chloe nods, thinking back to that conversation, to the seed that she had planted all those weeks ago that had somehow grown into this.

  ‘I mean, do you have any memories at all of before that? Anything?’ Maureen asks.

  Chloe looks up at the ceiling. She thinks of the boxes of toys in the spare room, how familiar some of them had been. She doesn’t tell them that, though. She needs them to convince her. That’s how this needs to go.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe, some things . . . maybe.’

  ‘Listen, we’re not saying this is definite,’ Patrick says. ‘Maybe we’ve got it wrong, maybe—’

  ‘We don’t think so, though, Chloe,’ Maureen interrupts. ‘There are too many coincidences: the way you look, your colouring, your background, the fact that your grandma was from the same area . . .’

  Chloe reaches her hand up. It is shaking. Humans are pattern-seeking beings; they like symmetry; they like stars to align. She stares back at Maureen and Patrick across the room, sees how much this mother wants to be right. She’ll ignore any facts that don’t add up, taking only the ones that do. That’s how horoscopes work – people only listen t
o what they want to hear. Every day we walk around with a fine filter that discards all evidence to the contrary of what we want to believe. She looks at these two parents, lost for nearly three decades – what we need to believe.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Chloe says. ‘It’s all a bit of a shock, you know?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Maureen says, and it’s at this point that she crosses the room to sit next to Chloe on the sofa. She takes her hands in her own, examining the shape of them, as if searching for anything similar to her own.

  ‘We’re not expecting you to agree,’ Maureen says, ‘and we might be wrong, Chloe, but imagine if we’re not, imagine if you are our daughter.’

  Maureen takes her hands in her own and holds them against her chest. She looks into Chloe’s eyes and finds the recognition she seeks there. Her eyes saying, Imagine if it were true.

  Patrick interrupts. ‘I mean, we’ll know for sure, eventually, like.’

  Maureen turns towards him. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, technology, it’s moved on, hasn’t it? Since our Angie was . . . well, they have all sorts now, DNA testing and—’

  She drops Chloe’s hands. ‘Patrick, you still think I don’t know, don’t you?’

  ‘What? No, Maureen, I wasn’t saying—’

  ‘After everything that’s been said, after dragging this poor girl down from her room, you still think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

  ‘Maureen, I—’

  ‘Patrick Kyle, after all these years, you still don’t know me, do you?’

  ‘Maureen, what?’

  ‘Yes, I am your wife, but first and foremost, I am a mother. Do you think just because my child was taken from me that I stopped being a mother? Did you stop being a father that day?’

  He shuffles in his seat.

  ‘Actually, don’t answer that. Because it’s different for men, you don’t carry them like we do, you don’t wake up each morning and go to sleep at night cradling them inside your own body before they are even born. When they are, you claim you feel the same, but let me tell you this Patrick James Kyle, you’re not even close.’

  Maureen’s face is set firm. She continues:

  ‘The day Angie was born was the single best day of my life. It defined me. I was no longer just someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s wife, I was someone’s mother, and to me, that made me someone.’ She prods herself in the chest. ‘And then she went and I was nothing, I was no one, and I couldn’t even grieve because I had nothing to grieve for. But in here’ – she taps her chest again although her voice falters – ‘I was still a mother. So don’t tell me that I think some stranger is my child. Don’t tell me that I can live with her as my lodger and forget that she’s somebody else’s daughter. I knew Angela. I know Angela.’ She pauses then to look at Chloe. ‘And I’m telling you, Patrick, with every fibre of my being, I know that this girl is my daughter.’

  Maureen reaches for Chloe and tucks her arm underneath her own. Chloe sits beside her, passive, like a piece of driftwood caught by the current, swept away by the emotion in the room. And yet, isn’t this what she had always wanted? To be chosen? To be loved more than a dead person?

  Patrick puts his hands out, motioning for her to stop. ‘Maureen, don’t go upsetting yourself, all I’m saying is that there is a process—’

  ‘What do you mean, process?’

  ‘Well, of course there is. You can’t just pull people off the street and say they’re your . . .’

  Chloe feels Maureen tense. Patrick continues:

  ‘I’m just saying that there will be . . . formalities that we need to go through. The police will need to be—’

  ‘Why? What’s it got to do with them?’

  Patrick sighs towards the carpet. He scrapes his hands through his hair; his grey curls are wild. He is drained, beaten. His voice fills the living room: ‘Because they’ve been looking for her for twenty-five fecking years!’

  Maureen jumps back, shocked by his tone. She lets go of Chloe, and lifts a hand to her face.

  Chloe sees in Patrick’s face that he instantly regrets shouting. He stands and crosses the room to Maureen, crouching down in front of her on the sofa. He reaches for her arms, holds them gently in his grasp.

  ‘Mo, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I can’t just give you what you want . . . and my love, I know . . . I know more than anyone that this is what you want.’ He looks at Chloe. She can see that he is trying, really trying to see what Maureen wants him to see.

  ‘But, Maureen, we can’t just decide for ourselves, for Christ’s sake. We’ve been doing those pieces in the papers every year, people will want to know what’s happened, there will be a big—’

  ‘You’re right,’ Maureen says, standing up quickly. ‘The newspaper, we’ll have to let them know, they’ll need to do a piece and . . .’ She walks past him, over to the teak dresser. ‘Patrick, where did we put that reporter’s card? I’m sure . . .’ She rummages through her address book.

  Chloe glances quickly at Patrick, now kneeling on the floor, his face in his hands. She gets up and joins Maureen as she searches frantically for the number. She takes her by her shoulders, softens her voice, because if truth be told, something has just dawned on her, too. Patrick is right, they would need to do a piece in the newspaper, the same newspaper that she has been working at all these years, the same newspaper that fired her for taking the Angela Kyle file home almost three months ago. She can’t risk outsiders getting involved – it would jeopardize her place in the house, it could undo all her hard work.

  ‘Maureen, Patrick is right,’ Chloe says, and she feels him look up from the floor. ‘There is a process; well, I mean, there will be. We will need to let the police know, and he’s right, there will need to be DNA tests. All that will have to be done before you tell the newspapers. It’s the first thing they’ll ask for.’

  Maureen is half listening, but she can tell she’s still distracted. Chloe looks over at Patrick and he gives her a nod, encouraging her to go on.

  ‘To be honest,’ Chloe says, ‘I’ve had these thoughts, too.’

  ‘You have?’ Maureen says.

  Chloe nods. ‘Of course, like when we were in that room, with all of Angie’s things, I recognized so many of them, and not just because they would have been around when I was little, but because . . . I don’t know, it’s hard to put my finger on it. But there are other things, too. Just being with you and Patrick, it feels right somehow, like we’ve always been like this, like we were, I don’t know . . .’

  Maureen listens to every word. Chloe can see that her mind has let go of the newspaper story; that for now, it’s just the three of them. Chloe continues:

  ‘But tonight, it’s been quite a shock, and I think . . . I think I need time to get used to the idea myself before we talk to anyone else. I want it to be just the three of us, for a bit longer, just so . . . well, then it’s just like us against the world, isn’t it?’

  Maureen smiles. ‘So you don’t think we’re crazy?’ she asks.

  Chloe shakes her head. ‘No, not at all, but other people might.’

  They laugh and Chloe continues:

  ‘And so we have to be sure. We’ve got to be so sure.’

  Patrick gets up and walks over to them. He puts his arms around Maureen and she leans back into his chest.

  ‘Chloe’s right,’ he says. ‘There’s plenty of time for all that. Let’s just allow it to sink in out here in Low Drove for now.’

  Chloe looks out at the darkness that envelops them, the moon peering through the tops of the trees. Out here they could live any kind of life they liked. Maureen nods, reticently at first, but then more convincingly. And with that, Chloe notices, Patrick’s shoulders relax.

  ‘OK,’ Maureen says, taking Chloe’s hands in hers. ‘OK, it’s just between the three of us for now.’

  And in all that had happened, everybody forgets about Angie watching from the shelf.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It is quiet
in the car the following morning, the only noise the rumble of the tyres on the tarmac of the A47. Fields whizz past, tractors chugging across them, and the last of winter’s frost clings to the leather seats inside Patrick’s blue car.

  A few times, Chloe has tried to think of something to say to break the silence, but nothing has come to her. She’s tired – it had been hard to sleep last night. She’d spent hours going over and over the events of that evening, how perfectly it had all happened. She had to admit it felt strange going to sleep in Elm House knowing that across the landing, Maureen slept safe in the knowledge that after twenty-five years her baby was home.

  Patrick looks as if he hasn’t slept at all. His eyes are on the road, but Chloe can see from the passenger seat that they are bloodshot. His hands grip the steering wheel, his knuckles white.

  Chloe has never been in his car before. She looks around; the cigarette lighter is missing, there are a couple of holes in the upholstery, new car mats that he’s added in the footwell. In the back, something lies across the seat, covered by a sheet. She’s grateful suddenly of an opening to break the silence.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asks him.

  He casts a glance into the back of the car via the rear-view mirror.

  He turns to her. ‘You really want to know?’

  She nods.

  ‘I can tell you,’ he says, ‘but you won’t like it.’

  Chloe pushes herself up a little in her seat.

  ‘And you mustn’t tell Maureen,’ he says.

  She turns around, and then she sees the long, slim shape of it.

  ‘It’s a gun,’ Patrick says. ‘Not that Maureen knows I’ve got it, and she must never know. She hates anything like that, she gets the wrong idea.’

  ‘Why have you got it?’ Chloe asks, twisting her fingers awkwardly in her lap.

  ‘I’m taking it in to be serviced,’ he says. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got a licence for the thing.’

  She glances back at it, sleeping on the seat.

  ‘But why do you need one? And why doesn’t Maureen know you have it?’