The Imposters


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
 Copyright © 2023 by Tom Rachman
 Cover design and art by Jaya Miceli
 Cover © 2023 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
 The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
 Little, Brown and Company
 Hachette Book Group
 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
 littlebrown.com
 twitter.com/littlebrown
 facebook.com/littlebrownandcompany
 First ebook edition: June 2023
 Originally published in the UK by Quercus Books, 2023
 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
 The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or email [email protected].
 Little, Brown and Company books may be purchased in bulk for business, educational, or promotional use. For information, please contact your local bookseller or the Hachette Book Group Special Markets Department at [email protected].
 ISBN 978-0-316-55308-7
 E3-20230517-JV-NF-ORI
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Chapter 1 The novelist
 Chapter 2 The novelist’s missing brother
 Chapter 3 The novelist’s estranged daughter
 Chapter 4 The man who took the books away
 Chapter 5 A writer from the festival
 Chapter 6 The deliveryman who stood in the rain
 Chapter 7 The novelist’s last remaining friend
 Chapter 8 The novelist’s former lover
 Chapter 9 The novelist
 Acknowledgements
 Discover More
 About the Author
 Also by Tom Rachman
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 Also by Tom Rachman
 The Imperfectionists
 The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
 The Italian Teacher
 
 
 
 
 To Ian Martin, for food and friendship
 
 
 
 
 1
 The novelist
 (DORA FRENHOFER)
 HER HUSBAND IS CHATTING, his comments interrupted by potato salad. Democracy is in crisis. Another bite. Someone’s friend said populism. Chewing. A woman on the radio worried.
 Dora – seated opposite at the kitchen table – responds only with ‘Mm’, a noise of such ambiguity that Barry worries he’s talking nonsense, so talks more, an abundance of words that might include something clever eventually.
 On the one hand, he says.
 ‘Mm.’
 On the other?
 ‘Mm.’
 ‘What time did we say for them to get here?’ He knows, so the question can be understood as marital sonar, probing the mood of a spouse, registering what bounces back.
 Dora, who is seventy-three, spent most of her decades without a husband, intentionally so. But that preference changed when she plotted the last chapter of her life: once feeble, she’d end it. The plan presented a problem. Act too soon, and you annihilate a worthy part of your life. Act too late, and you never act at all.
 So she found her solution: a younger husband (nine years her junior) to monitor her, and tell her when to act. Dora refers to Barry as her ‘ageing assistant’ – the kind of joke one repeats too often, which is how one knows it’s not quite a joke. Someday, he’ll hesitate in the next room, plucking up the courage, then will march in, declaring sorrowfully, ‘It’s now; probably now.’ But lately, it’s his physical changes that startle Dora: a stooped grey man joins her at every meal, whereas the tall craggy woman appears only in mirrors.
 Barry swallows a last mouthful of lunch, and fetches his little tin of sugar-dusted French candies. He flings a purple sweet into his mouth, cheeks caving as he sucks, the bags under his eyes rising effortfully, a melancholy man posing as a chipper one, still exuding the lonely English childhood, an engineer father who wept once, undergraduate studies hiding at a Cambridge library, followed by a series of enchantments with the charismatic, who mastered him.
 Barry began as research for one of Dora’s late-career novels, a melodrama involving divorce. She sought authenticity, and someone provided the number of a family lawyer. Before their first meeting, Barry read several of her books, and worried that she might convert him into a character. When she arrived, he praised her memoir above all. Everyone prefers the memoir, so she likes it least. A novel is what you make; a memoir, what’s made of you. Put another way, novels are her inner life, even if her inner life rarely sells more than eighty-six copies worldwide.
 Still, Dora has managed to keep barging her volumes into stores over the years, a succession of small novels about small men in small crises. As for Barry, he never did become a character in that book – he loses his temper too rarely for fiction. Instead, he morphed into an endearing companion at her elbow during classical concerts, such as those recent Bach cello suites at Wigmore Hall, when Dora enquired during the performance if he was alright, and he leaned to her ear, first clearing his throat, causing her to rear back, then: ‘Scientifically, men are more likely to be moved to tears by music,’ he mumbled. ‘According to studies.’ She pulled his arm closer, placing his hand on her thigh, causing him to look up shyly, meeting her green eyes.
 Dora checks her watch – they should be here. Who are they again? She clasps her hands, arthritis-knobbled knuckles, blue veins under translucent skin. Barry leaps to his feet, and hammer-punches the table, causing the candy tin to leap