Read Online Shatter by Michael Robotham - Free Book Online Page A

hook tel s the rest of the story. It was raining on Friday; bucketing down. She chose the raincoat but not an umbrel a.
    Emma is sitting at the kitchen table, attacking a piece of paper with coloured pencils. I walk past her into the lounge, trying to create my own picture of what happened on Friday. I glimpse the ordinariness of the day, a woman doing her chores, washing a cup, wiping down the sink and then the phone rang. She answered it.
    She took off her clothes. She didn’t draw the curtains. She walked naked from her house wearing only a plastic raincoat. She didn’t double lock the door. She was in a hurry. Her handbag is stil on the hal way table.
    The thick glass top of the coffee table is supported on two ceramic elephants with tusks raised and flattened above their heads. Kneeling beside the table, I lower my head and peer along the smooth glass surface, noticing tiny shards of broken crayon or lipstick. This is where she wrote the word ‘slut’ across her torso.
    There is something else on the glass, a series of opaque circles and truncated lines of lipstick. The circles are dried tears. She was crying. And the lines could be the edges of looping letters that departed from a page. Christine wrote something in lipstick. It can’t have been a phone number, she could have used a pen for that. More likely it was a message or a sign.
    Forty-eight hours ago I watched this woman plunge to her death. Surely it had to be suicide, yet psychological y it doesn’t make sense. Everything about her actions suggested intent, yet she was a reluctant participant.
    The last thing Christine Wheeler said to me was that I wouldn’t understand. She was right.

    8

    Sylvia Furness lives in a flat in Great Pulteney Street on the first floor of a Georgian row that has probably featured in every BBC period drama since the original Forsyte Saga . I half expect to see horse-drawn carriages outside and women parading in hats.
    Sylvia Furness isn’t wearing a hat. Her short blonde hair is held off her face with a headband and she’s clad in black spandex shorts, a white sports bra and a light blue T-shirt with a looping neckline. A gym membership card dangles from a bulky set of keys that must help burn calories simply by being lugged around.
    ‘Excuse me, Mrs Furness. Do you have a moment?’
    ‘Whatever you’re sel ing, I’m not buying.’
    ‘It’s about Christine Wheeler.’
    ‘I’m late for a spin class. I don’t talk to the press.’
    ‘I’m not a journalist.’
    She glances past me then and notices Darcy at the top of the stairs.
    With a squeak of anguish she pushes past me, wrapping her arms around the teenager, summoning tears. Darcy gives me a look that says, I told you so .
    She didn’t want to come upstairs because she knew her mother’s business partner would make a fuss.
    ‘What sort of fuss?’
    ‘A fuss.’
    The front door is reopened and we’re ushered inside. Sylvia is stil clutching Darcy’s hand. Emma fol ows, suddenly quiet, with a thumb wedged in her mouth.
    The flat has polished wooden floors, tasteful furniture and ceilings that seem higher than the clouds outside. There are women’s touches everywhere— from the throw cushions in African prints to the dried flower arrangements.
    My eyes scan the room and fal upon a birthday invitation propped beside the phone. ‘Alice’ is invited to a pizza and pyjama party. Her friend Angela is turning twelve.
    Sylvia Furness is stil holding Darcy’s hand, asking questions and offering sympathy. The teenager manages to slip out of her grasp and tel s Emma there’s a park on the corner, behind the museum. It has swings and a slide.
    ‘Can I take her?’ asks Darcy.
    She’l have you pushing her forever,’ I warn.
    ‘That’s OK.’
    ‘We’l talk when you get back,’ says Sylvia who has tossed her gym bag on the sofa. She looks at her watch— a stainless steel, sporty number. She won’t make her spin class. Instead she flops into an armchair,