– He said: I’m looking for someone to dance around the kitchen with, to Stevie or James Brown.
– He said: I’m into self-improvement, running, meditation, yoga.
– He said: I’ll know her when I see her.
– He said: you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, do you?
– He said: are you a night owl? Are you up to much? I’m on the river – we’re drinking shots.
It’s hectic.
– He said: can you send a full body photo?
– He said: what’s the catch? There has to be a catch.
– He said: can I ask when your last relationship ended, and why?
– He said: where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
– He said: I have to finish tidying my desk. I’ll be there ASAP.
– He said: the sky’s extraordinary tonight. Fifteen, sixteen shades of pink.
– He said: so what happened? Did he get what he wanted and then do the dirty on you?
– He said nothing. Checked his phone, apologised, checked his phone, apologised.
– He said: what are you reading?
– He said: I don’t like doing the legwork. I let the ladies come to me.
– He said: I am reading Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving.
– He said: can I meet you a little bit later? Later than that? No, later.
– He said: let’s play it by ear.
– He said: what are you wearing?
– He said: I’m travelling for work, but I can meet you at the station.
– He said: I’ve been held up; I’ll be there in 20.
– He said nothing. You looked at your icecubes and rattled the glass.
– He said: my friends say I’m a really great catch.
– He said: do you feel anything at all?
*
Author
I do the first exploratory interview on zoom while breastfeeding my son, who is a few months old.
It’s a sunny, funny chat, the woman pulling pink faces on the screen to entertain my baby. When I sent her the interview text, though, she feels exposed.
‘Did I say that?’
She doesn’t want to be identifiable. She’s worried about what people might think, how readers will respond. A lot gets lost between live conversation and the page, so I add some small, concrete details to try to ground the discussion a little more in physical reality. But these additions sound like my voice. Is this my text, or hers?
*
Olivia
Sometimes – it’s ridiculous – I’ve got a really lovely group of friends – sometimes I’m like, Am I really part of
this group? I have to rationalise it again and say
No, I’ve been friends with these people for 10 years.
It’s a feeling of not belonging.
Losing my father was a big thing. And then being
a perfectionist. I think as a child I used grades or doing well
at school as my self-worth. And then when you get older
and you start a degree it’s not so easy and then you feel,
Oh, I’m not achieving.
So the boundaries change.
*
Sinéad
When I was a child we moved around a lot, so I went
to lots of different schools. I was aware that I would often
do that kind of hanging on the edge of something,
holding back: at the back of the classroom, edge
of the game in the playground at break time. I was often
involved in theatre, and, yeah, I would often feel like everybody else was at home there and I was not.
I was sort of, peripheral… I don’t really know
how to explain it. I never committed fully to something.
I’d be there, but I would be… protective. In case I was
found out… to be, you know, not really an actor.
Not really… something.
*
Publisher
Dear Kate,
Since responding to Pretenders it’s been worrying me that something is missing in the construction of the book – unless that’s still be added – which I think may prevent it from cohering. That missing element is Kate Potts, you…
there’s little sense of where the impetus for the book has come from, which must surely be your own experiences of – or anxieties over – imposter syndrome in one form or another. Not including yourself anywhere feels like an abstention or even a cop out which I think will puzzle or annoy reviewers and readers.
If you feel able to tackle this head on, one possible approach might be in a poem, or even a monologue of your own. If you were to respond to the questions you put to your interviewees, what would you say?
*
Kate
When did I first feel like an imposter?
I remember I didn’t have a friend’s phone number.
She’d gone to a different secondary school to me and I didn’t have her number. She wasn’t in the phone book.
My parents said ‘Phone directory enquiries.’ So I did that.
Does it still exist in the internet age?
I would have been about 11, I think. Dialling
on the beige finger-dial phone we had sat in the hallway.
The woman said: ‘Please stay on the line if you require further assistance.’ I didn’t realise that this meant
if you wanted another number, a different one. I thought maybe they’d try something different to find the
number you’d asked for at first.
I was really persistent. Or stubborn. I must have
really wanted to phone this friend!
I just asked for the same number again and again. Eventually, I got a man very sternly telling me off who thought I was just causing trouble. A kid causing trouble.
I still remember the kick, the cringe of it.
Is that feeling like an imposter? It’s feeling exposed. Ashamed of your lack of knowledge and understanding.
Like you’ve got something really, really wrong.
What else? I can remember… trying to go to the pub
very ineptly when I was about sixteen. Pretending
I’d been before when I hadn’t. I think I was trying
to impress a boy.
I was being an imposter. I was pretending to be part of a grown-up world that I didn’t understand.
Once, we went to the theatre, or tried to go to the theatre
and my parents had accidentally – they were super-busy
with work – they’d got the wrong date.
We walked into our local theatre, and we walked
down the long, red aisle to go to our seats
and my dad said to the people sitting there,
‘Excuse me, I think you’re sitting in our seats.’ It turned out that actually, we’d got the wrong day; our tickets
were for a different day that had already passed.
So we’d missed the play.
We all turned round and trooped back up and out of the theatre and went home.
Just that feeling of… anticipation and thinking that you belonged somewhere and that you had a right to be there,
and then, recognising that actually, you didn’t.
Everyone knew you were making it up.
It was too good for you.
These things – getting told off by directory enquiries, having
no seats at the theatre – they’re, I guess, not a cause but
what it feels like, for me. To be an imposter.
Shame, I suppose. Which is probably what anyone
would feel in those situations. But I felt –
recognised, permanently marked out, in those moments.
You’re an imposter. You don’t have a right to be there.
Contents List
9 Introduction: Among the Pretenders
14 The Real Bird
17 Dwellings: voices
33 A Telephone Conversation with My Sister/Footnotes
37 Imposters (1). Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Anna Anderson/ Franziska Schanzkowska)
38 Dwellings
41 Work, Work, Work: voices
71 Coping with Redundancy
73 Imposters (2). James Gray (Hannah Snell)
75 Imposters (3). Anna Delvey (Anna Sorokin)
77 Shipwreck/ The Iron Lady
