Shatter by Michael Robotham Read Free Book Online Page A

Forty-eight names. I won’t find her today. Not today, but soon.
    Maybe I’ll watch the video again. I like watching one of them fall.

    5

    Charlie is dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, dancing with Emma in the lounge. The music is turned up loud and she lifts Emma onto her hip and spins her round, dipping her backwards.
    Emma giggles and snorts with laughter.
    ‘You be careful. You’l make her throw up.’
    ‘Look at our new trick.’
    Charlie hoists Emma onto her shoulders and leans forward, letting the youngster crawl down her back.
    ‘Very clever. You should join the circus.’
    Charlie has grown up so much in the past few months it’s nice to see her acting like a kid again, playing with her sister. I don’t want her to grow up too quickly. I don’t want her becoming one of the girls I see roaming around Bath with pierced navels and ‘I-slept-with-your-boyfriend’ T-shirts.
    Julianne has a theory. Sex is more explicit everywhere except in real life. She says teenage girls may dress like Paris Hilton and dance like Beyoncé but that doesn’t mean they’re making amateur porn videos or having sex over car bonnets. Please, God, I hope she’s right.
    I can already see the changes in Charlie. She is going through that monosyl abic stage where no words are wasted on her parents.
    She saves them up for her friends and spends hours texting on her mobile and chatting online.
    Julianne and I talked about sending her to boarding school when we moved out of London, but I wanted to kiss her goodnight each evening and wake her of a morning. Julianne said I was trying to make up for the time I didn’t spend with my own father, God’s-personal-physician-in-waiting, who sent me to boarding school from the age of eight.
    Maybe she’s right.
    Julianne has come downstairs to see what the fuss is about. She’s been working in the office, translating documents and sending emails. I grab her around the waist and we dance to the music.
    ‘I think we should practise for our dance classes,’ I say.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘They start on Tuesday. Beginners Latin— Samba and the Rhrrrrumba!’
    Her face suddenly fal s.
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘I can’t make it.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I have to get back to London tomorrow afternoon. We’re flying to Moscow first thing Monday morning.’
    ‘We?’
    ‘Dirk.’
    ‘Oh, Dirk the Jerk.’
    She looks at me crossly. ‘You don’t even know him.’
    ‘Can’t he find another translator?’
    ‘We’ve been working on this deal for three months. He doesn’t want to use someone new. And I don’t want to hand it over to someone else. I’m sorry, I should have told you.’
    ‘That’s OK. You forgot.’
    My sarcasm irritates her.
    ‘Yes, Joe, I forgot. Don’t make an issue out of it.’
    There is an uncomfortable silence. A gap between songs. Charlie and Emma have stopped dancing.
    Julianne blinks first. ‘I’m sorry. I’l be back on Friday.’
    ‘So I’l cancel the dancing.’
    ‘You go. You’l have a great time.’
    ‘But I’ve never been before.’
    ‘It’s a beginner’s class. Nobody is going to expect you to be Fred Astaire.’
    The dance lessons were my idea. Actual y, they were suggested by my best mate, Jock, a neurologist. He sent me literature showing how Parkinson’s sufferers benefit from practising their co-ordination. It was yoga or dancing lessons. Both if possible.
    I told Julianne. She thought it was romantic. I saw it as a chal enge.
    I would throw down the gauntlet to Mr Parkinson; a duel to the death, ful of pirouettes and flashing feet. May the best man win.
    Emma and Charlie are dancing again. Julianne joins them, effortlessly finding the rhythm. She holds out her hand to me. I shake my head.
    ‘Come on, Dad,’ says Charlie.
    Emma does a bum wiggle. It’s her best move. I don’t have a best move.
    We dance and sing and col apse on the sofa laughing. It’s a long while since Julianne has laughed like this. My left arm trembles and Emma