Michael Robotham - Shatter

A crowd is being sucked inwards, unable to resist a playground fight where someone has taken on the school bully. Julianne comes rushing back, pushing through onlookers, knowing something terrible is afoot. She says my name. She begs me to shut up and tugs at my arm, but it’s too late.

‘You see, I know your type, Dirk. I know your shabby superior smile and condescending attitude towards waiters and tradesmen and shopgirls. You use sarcasm and overweening formality to gloss over the fact that you have no real influence or power.

‘So you try to make up for this by taking away what other men have. You tell yourself it’s the challenge that excites you; the chase, but the truth is you can’t hold onto a woman for more than a few weeks because pretty quickly they work out that you’re a pretentious, stuck-up, self-centred bastard and then you’re fucked.’

‘Please, Joe, don’t say any more. Please shut up.’

‘I notice things, Dirk, little details about people. Take you, for example. Your fingernails are flat and yellowing. It’s a sign of an iron deficiency. Maybe your kidneys aren’t working properly. If I were you I’d go easy on the Viagra for a while until I got myself checked out.’

By the time I reach the hotel room Julianne has locked herself in the bathroom. I tap on the door.

‘Go away.’

‘Please open up.’

‘No.’

I press my ear to a wooden panel and imagine I hear the faint silky slithering of her gown. She might be kneeling, pressing her ear against the door, opposite mine.

‘Why do you do it, Joe? Whenever I’m happy you do something to mess it up.’

I take a deep breath. ‘I found a receipt from Italy. You threw it away.’

She doesn’t respond.

‘It was for room service. Breakfast. Champagne, bacon, eggs, pancakes… more food than you could ever eat.’

‘You went through my receipts?’

‘I found it.’

‘You went through the rubbish- spying on me.’

‘I wasn’t spying. I know what you normally have for breakfast. Fresh fruit. Yoghurt. Bircher muesli…’

My certainty and loneliness are now so intense they seem perfectly matched. I’m drunk. I’m trembling. I’m remembering the events of the night.

‘I saw the way Dirk looked at you. He couldn’t keep his hands off you. And I heard the snide comments and the whispers. Everyone in that room thinks he’s sleeping with you.’

‘And you do too! You think I’m fucking Dirk. You think I ordered breakfast after we fucked all night?’

She hasn’t denied it yet. She hasn’t explained.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about the dress?’

‘He only gave it to me yesterday.’

‘Was the lingerie also a bonus… a present from him?’

She doesn’t answer. I press my ear harder to the door and wait. I hear her sigh and move away. A tap is turned on. I wait. My knees are stiff. I feel a coppery taste in my mouth, a hangover in the making.

Finally she speaks, ‘I want you to think very carefully before you ask me the question, Joe.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You want to know if I fucked Dirk? Ask me. But when you do, remember what’s going to die. Trust. Nothing can bring it back, Joe. I want you to understand that.’

The door opens. I step back. Julianne has wrapped a white towelling robe around her and cinched it tightly at the waist. Without meeting my eyes, she walks to the bed and lies down, facing away from me. The mattress springs barely move under her weight.

Her dress is lying on the bathroom floor. I fight the urge to pick it up and run it through my fingers, to rip it into shreds and flush it away.

‘I’m not going to ask,’ I say.

‘But you still think it. You think I’ve been unfaithful.’

‘I’m not sure.’

She falls silent. The sadness is suffocating.

‘It was a joke,’ she whispers. ‘We worked really late to close the deal, tying up the loose ends. I crashed. Exhausted. It was too late to call London so I emailed Eugene with the news. He didn’t get the message until he arrived at the office. He told his secretary to call my hotel and order me a champagne breakfast. She didn’t know what to order so he said: “Order the whole damn menu”.

‘I was asleep. Room service knocked on my door. There were three trolleys of food. I rang the kitchen and said there must be a mistake. They told me my company had ordered me breakfast.

‘Dirk phoned from his room. Eugene had done the same thing to him. I was too tired to eat. I rolled over and went back to sleep.’

My left hand is shaking in my lap. ‘Why didn’t you mention it? I picked you up at the station and you didn’t tell me.’

‘You’d just watched a woman jump off a bridge, Joe.’

‘You could have told me later.’

‘It was Eugene’s idea of a joke. I didn’t think it was very funny. I hate seeing food go to waste.’

My tuxedo feels like a straightjacket. I look around the hotel room with its pseudo luxuries and generic furnishings. It’s the sort of place that Dirk would bring another man’s wife.

‘I saw the way he looked at you… staring at your breasts, putting his hand on your back, sliding it lower. I didn’t imagine that. I didn’t imagine the whispers and innuendos.’

‘I heard them too,’ she replies. ‘And I ignored them.’

‘He bought you lingerie… and that dress.’

‘So what! You think I sleep with men who buy me things. What does that make me, Joe? Is that what you think of me?’

‘No.’

I sit on the bed next to her. She seems to flinch and move further away. The alcohol has hit my head, which is pounding. Through the open bathroom door, I barely recognise my own reflection.

Julianne speaks.

‘Everyone knows Dirk is a sleaze. You should hear the jokes in the secretarial pool. The man puts his business card in the women’s toilets like he’s touting for clients. Eugene’s secretary, Sally, called his bluff in the summer. In the middle of the office she unzipped Dirk’s fly, grabbed his penis and said, “Is that all you’ve got? For someone who talks about it so much, Dirk, I thought you’d have something more substantial to back it up.” You should have seen Dirk. I thought he’d swallowed his tongue.’

Devoid of emotion, her voice is a monotone, unable to raise itself an octave above disappointment or sadness.

‘In the old days you would never have let a man get away with touching you like Dirk did tonight.’

‘In the old days I didn’t need this job.’

‘He wants people to think he’s sleeping with you.’

‘Which is only a problem if people believe him.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about him?’

‘I did. You were never listening. Every time I mention work, you turn off. You don’t care, Joe. My career isn’t important to you.’

I want to deny it. I want to accuse her of changing the subject and trying to deflect blame.

‘You think I choose to be away from you and the girls?’ she says. ‘Every night I’m away, I go to bed thinking about you. I wake up thinking about you. The only reason I don’t think about you all the time is that I have a job to do. I have to work. We decided that. We chose to move out of London for the sake of the girls and for your health.’

I’m about to argue but Julianne hasn’t finished.

‘You don’t know hard it is… being away from home.’ She says.’ Missing things. Calling and finding out that Emma has learned a skip or hop on one leg or to ride her tricycle. Finding out that Charlie has had her first period or is being bullied at school. But do you know what hurts the most? When Emma fell over the other day, when she was hurt and scared, she called for you. She wanted your words, your hugs. What sort of mother can’t comfort her own child?’