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

down beside the hare. The animal jerks away, a bloody part of its leg tearing from the tarmac, but not enough. Flesh and fur enmeshed on the road.

Patrick reaches for its long angular head with both hands. The animal struggles, but his strength is too much. She sees the hare’s black-tipped ears poke out of the top of Patrick’s palms. There is no time for Chloe to look away. The wind carries the sound towards her: the snap of the hare’s neck breaking in two. It is the swiftest of movements that does it, and in the same second the animal stops struggling. Patrick returns its limp body to the road. Its wide eyes reflecting the last of the amber sun.

Chloe stands as still as the hare on the tarmac. In this barren landscape, the only witness to this death.

Patrick makes to stand, then bends back down. He pulls what’s left of the hare from the road and tosses it onto the grassy verge. A pinky stain remains where it lay. He turns back towards the car and that’s when he looks up and sees Chloe’s face. He stops still. The pair of them twenty paces apart. His own face drained of blood.

‘Chloe, it was the . . .’

She stares at the blood on his hands. Those big hands.

‘There was nothing more . . .’ He takes a step towards her.

Chloe instantly jumps back. She feels the boot of the car against her back. She whips round, searches the landscape for another car, another witness. There is nothing, nobody.

Patrick holds his hands out as if surrendering. But he knows she’s seen it, the ease with which he stubbed out that animal’s life. There is no going back and she cannot hide the horror on her face. He knew how to break that hare’s neck. He did it as though he had done it a thousand times before. But there is only one occasion now that runs like a reel through Chloe’s head. He sees it too. He must do.

‘Don’t come near me,’ she says, her hands feeling behind her for the side of the car.

‘Chloe, what—’

‘Don’t move another step.’

‘Ah, come on, Chloe, you saw the poor fecking creature, it was the kindest—’

What will she do out here on this lonely road? She reaches into her pocket for her phone, then remembers it is off. And who would she call, anyway? What would she say? What is there to tell? That’s when she hears herself say it.

‘You did it, didn’t you?’

‘Did what?’ Patrick asks.

‘You killed Angie.’

FORTY-SEVEN

There is silence between the pair, just the whistle of the wind as it finds the only two things around which to coil.

She stares at Patrick. His face is blank. Her own hot blood pounds in her ears.

Patrick staggers backwards and forwards in the road, his hands reaching for his temples. For a long while, he can’t speak. When he does, all he says is, ‘What?’

His tone is incredulous, frayed at the edges.

Patrick takes one step towards Chloe. She inches back. Two fields away, she hears the hum of traffic from the dual carriageway. Too far to run. Closer, she hears the rustle of the sugar beet leaves in the fields that surround them, and then her voice as she calls across the asphalt to him: ‘I’ve known for a long time that you did it. I just didn’t know how I knew for sure . . . but seeing that just then, how easily you—’

‘Chloe, it’s a fucking hare.’

Chloe is silent. It’s not just the hare.

On the road, Patrick clasps his hands together. He shakes his head as if he cannot believe what she is saying. Then he rests his forehead in his hands.

He tries again, stepping forward, but Chloe moves back.

‘It’s a fucking animal, Chloe. There’s a big fucking difference between an animal and . . . and . . .’

‘It’s not just that, though, is it?’ she says. ‘It’s everything. You told me yourself you weren’t at the swings the day Angie disappeared. So why would you have people looking there? The whole investigation was based on that play park . . .’ As she says this she spreads her arms wide, as if the police had been combing this very field.

Patrick stops, as if the thought has suddenly hit him. He looks up to the sky and then puts his head into his hands.

‘Chloe, I . . . look.’ He pauses, staggering around. ‘Would you get a hold of yourself.’

But she won’t give up. She’s come this far.

‘All these years you’ve let Maureen think that Angie was taken from that park. All these years. And yet you were hiding the biggest secret of all, from everyone.’

‘Chloe, it’s not what you thi—’

‘Why else would you let Maureen think that I was Angie unless you didn’t want her to know what had happened to her? What you had done to her?’

He takes another step forward. ‘I think you’ve got your wires cr—’

‘Don’t move,’ she shouts. He stops suddenly, and he must see it then, the terror in her eyes. Her absolute fear of him.

‘Don’t take another step closer,’ Chloe says. ‘You killed your daughter and now what? You’re going to kill me?’

With that thought, she looks around, across the fields that surround them. She hasn’t thought this through. Just what is she going to do now? There is a house, across two fields, where smoke files from its short chimney stack, a warm glow from one downstairs window. Could she make it there? Could she get there before him? She turns back to Patrick. He’s standing, wide-legged, wide-eyed on the tarmac. She weighs up whether she could run, but she has no chance. She knows that. If he has that gun in the boot of the car, her chances of making it even fifty yards are slim. She hadn’t expected it to happen like this. It wasn’t meant to. But there was the car journey, the hare, his hands. His hands.

Patrick is cradling his head in them now. Pacing up and down, talking to himself – not that Chloe can hear what he’s saying.

He goes to