The Imposter, Anna Wharton [romantic story to read TXT] 📗

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 to 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