2 The Imposter by Mark Dawson

illusion being dispelled. That would be embarrassing, perhaps even dangerous. He knew that a lie would lead to another lie, and then a whole series of lies that would spring from the first, and he was comfortable with that. He had been living that way for most of his life and he was good at it.
    As he looked at Joseph and his evident good fortune, he wondered whether Joseph might present him with the opportunity he had been looking for.
    “Are you living around here?”
    “I’ve got a little place in Camden,” Edward lied. He did not want to admit that it was nearby in case Joseph suggested they go to see it. He could not stand the thought of that.
    Edward was thankful as Joseph became a little distracted. “Look, Doc,” he said, “I can’t stay, much as I’d love to. I’m meeting a man about a spot of business. But what are you doing tomorrow?”
    “I should think I’ll be working.”
    “Can you slip out for a couple of hours in the afternoon?”
    “Yes. Probably.”
    “Terrific. I’m going to be at the gym. How’d you fancy a spot of sparring? We’ll see how well that foot of yours has healed.”
    “Sparring. Haven’t done that for a while.”
    “So now’s the time to get back into it. What do you say?”
    “I’d love to. Where is it?”
    “On the Hill.”
    Edward said he didn’t know where that was.
    “Little Italy. Clerkenwell. We call it The Hill.” Joseph wrote the address down on a napkin and pushed it across the table. “You can get the number thirty-eight bus. Two o’clock. Don’t be late.”
    With that, he got to his feet, shook Edward’s hand for a second time, and left. Edward looked at the napkin in his hand, the ink blurring at the edges as it was absorbed into the material, and allowed himself a smile.

7
    EDWARD WAS WORKING in the kitchen when Jimmy arrived with the first post. It was the usual dreary collection, invoices that they would gamely attempt to put off, paying only those suppliers they could not afford to do without or the ones who were threatening to sue. Jimmy filtered the stack, separating one envelope that didn’t fit the usual description. It was a luxurious cream colour and of weighty stock. It was addressed to Edward.
    “What’s that then?” he cooed. “Look at that––stamped by the War Office. What have you been up to?”
    “Haven’t got the faintest.”
    Edward slid his finger inside the envelope and opened it.
    “Well?” Jimmy persisted. “What is it?”
    Edward realised that he was gawping. “I’m getting the Victoria Cross,” he said.
    * * *
    EDWARD SAT ON THE TOP DECK of the number thirty-eight omnibus, watching the city change as it passed through central London. Tramlines, winding at the bottom of Pentonville Hill, gleamed like silver. The bus passed across them and headed East. It was brown, rather than red, brought up from the coast by the operating company to replace vehicles that had been damaged during the Blitz. The windows were still fixed with cross-hatched lattices of tape to prevent the glass imploding in the event of a bomb detonating nearby. London looked dreary and battered, the view from the top deck disclosing glimpses across fenced-off bomb sites to the rubble, pools of brackish water and scorched walls beyond. The city had taken it very badly at the hands of the Luftwaffe.
    He got off the bus at Holborn, turned off the main road and headed up Hatton Garden and into Little Italy. The mongrel district was to the north and south of Clerkenwell Road, hemmed in by Roseberry Avenue on the west and Farringdon Road on its east. To the south, it occupied the area around Saffron Hill, Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. Edward had lived in London all his life yet he had never been here before. The streets were ancient, a baffling maze of narrow and winding cobbled passages that crept between rickety houses and tenement blocks. A number of bombs had fallen and as he walked he passed half a dozen blasted gaps in the terraces where houses