Michael Robotham - Shatter

There she is- my beloved- the whore’s whore. Second row. Fourth from the right. She had a brown bob. A round face. A half-smile. You were eighteen years old. I was still ten years away. Ten years. How many Sundays is that?

I tuck the school yearbook under my arm and get a second can of beer. Upstairs a computer hums on my desk. I type in the password and call up an online telephone directory. The screen refreshes. There were forty-eight girls in the leaving year of 1988. 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.

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’ll 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 Beyonce 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 monosyllabic 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 falls.

‘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’ll be back on Friday.’

‘So I’ll cancel the dancing.’

‘You go. You’ll 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. Actually, 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 challenge.

I would throw down the gauntlet to Mr Parkinson; a duel to the death, full 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 collapse on the sofa laughing. It’s a long while since Julianne has laughed like this. My left arm trembles and Emma holds it still. It’s a game she plays. Holding it with both hands and then letting go to see if it trembles, before grabbing it again.

Later that evening when the girls are asleep and our horizontal waltz is over, I cuddle Julianne and grow melancholy.

‘Did Charlie tell you she saw our ghost?’

‘No. Where?’

‘On the stairs.’

‘I wish Mrs Nutall would stop putting stories in her head.’

‘She’s a mad old bat.’

‘Is that a professional diagnosis?’

‘Absolutely,’ I say.

Julianne stares into space, her mind elsewhere… in Rome perhaps, or Moscow.

‘You know I give them ice-cream all the time when you’re not here,’ I tell her.

‘That’s because you’re buying their love,’ she replies.

‘You bet. It’s for sale and I want it.’

She laughs.

‘Are you happy?’ I ask.

She turns her face to mine. ‘That’s a strange question.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about that woman on the bridge. Something made her unhappy.’

‘And you think I’m the same?’

‘It was nice to hear you laughing today.’

‘It’s nice to be home.’

‘Nicest place to be.’

Monday morning. Grey. Dry. The agency is sending three candidates for me to interview. I don’t think they’re called nannies any more. They are carers or childcare professionals.

Julianne is on her way to Moscow, Charlie is on the bus to school and Emma is playing with her dolls’ clothes in the dining room, trying to put a bonnet on Sniffy our neurotic cat. Sniffy’s full name is Sniffy Toilet Roll, which is again what happens when you give a three-year-old the naming rights to family pets.

The first interview starts badly. Her name is Jackie and she’s nervous. She bites her nails and touches her hair constantly as if needing reassurance that it hasn’t disappeared.

Julianne’s instructions were clear. I am to make sure the nanny doesn’t do drugs, drink or drive too fast. Exactly how I’m supposed to find this out is beyond me.

‘This is where I’m supposed to find out if you’re a granny basher,’ I tell Jackie.

She gives me a puzzled look. ‘My granny’s dead.’

‘You didn’t bash her, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

I cross her off the list.

The next candidate is twenty-four from Newcastle with a sharply pointed face, brown eyes and dark hair pulled back so tightly it raises her eyebrows. She seems to be casing the house with the view to robbing it later with her burglar boyfriend.

‘What car will I be driving?’ she asks.

‘An Astra.’

She’s not impressed. ‘I can’t drive a manual. I don’t think I should be expected to. Will there be a TV in my room?’

‘There can be.’

‘How big is it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Is she talking about watching it or flogging it, I wonder. I scrub out her name. Two strikes.

At 11.00 a.m. I interview a pretty Jamaican with braided hair, looped back on itself and pinned with a large tortoiseshell clip at the back of her head. Her name is Mani, she has good references and a lovely deep voice. I like her. She has a nice smile.