Clean Break Read Free Page A

absorbed their customer care course. Their grooming was immaculate, their smiles would have made a crocodile proud, and the mid-Atlantic twang in their “Good morning, how may I help you?” stopped short of making my ears bleed. Needless to say, they were as misleading as the building’s façade. After I’d given them my card, asked for Michael Haroun and told them his department, I still had to kick my heels for ten minutes while they ran their debriefing on the weekend’s romantic encounters, rang Mr. Haroun, filled out a visitor’s pass and told me Mr. Haroun would be waiting for me at the lift.

    I emerged on the fifth floor to find they’d been economical with the truth. There was no Mr. Haroun, and no one behind the desk marked “Claims Inquiries” either. Before I could decide which direction to head in, a door down the hallway opened and someone backed out, saying, “And I want to compare those other cases. Karen, dig out the files, there’s a love.”
    He swivelled round on the balls of his feet and déjà vu swept over me. Confused, I just stood and stared as he walked towards me. When he got closer, he held out his hand and said, “Ms. Brannigan? Michael Haroun.”
    For a moment, I was speechless and paralyzed. I must have been gawping like a starving goldfish, for he frowned and said, “You are Ms. Brannigan?” Then, suspicion appeared in his liquid sloe eyes. “What’s the matter? Am I not what you expected? I can assure you, I am head of the claims division.”
    Power returned to my muscles and I hurriedly reached out and shook his hand. “Sorry,” I stammered. “Yes, I … Sorry, you’re the spitting image of … somebody,” I stumbled on. “I was just taken aback, that’s all.”
    He gave me a look that told me he’d already decided I was either a racist pig or I didn’t have all my chairs at home. His smile was strained as he said, “I didn’t realize I had a doppelgänger. Shall we go through to my office and talk?”
    Wordlessly, I nodded and followed his broad shoulders back down the hall. He moved like a man who played a lot of sport. It wasn’t hard to imagine him in the same role as I’d first seen his likeness.
    When I was about fourteen, we’d gone on a school trip to the British Museum. I’d been so engrossed in the Rosetta Stone, I’d got separated from the rest of the group and wandered round for ages looking for them. That’s how I stumbled on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. As soon as I saw them, I understood for the first time in my life that it wasn’t entirely bullshit when critics said that great art speaks directly to us. These enormous carvings of the lion hunt didn’t so much speak as resonate inside my chest like the bass note of an organ. I fell in love with the archers and the charioteers, their shoulder-length hair curled as tight as poodle fur, their profiles
keen as sparrowhawks. I must have spent an hour there that day. Every time I went to London on shopping trips after that, I always found an excuse to slip away from my mates as they trawled Oxford Street so I could nip to the museum for a quick tryst with King Ashurbanipal. If Aslan had come along and breathed life into the carving of the Assyrian king, he would have walked off the wall looking just like Michael Haroun, his glowing skin the color of perfect roast potatoes. OK, so he’d swapped the tunic for a Paul Smith shirt, Italian silk tie and chinos, but you don’t make much progress up the corporate ladder wearing a mini-skirt unless you’re a woman. Just one look at Michael Haroun and I was an adoring adolescent all over again, Richard a distant memory.
    I followed Haroun meekly into his office. The opulence of the atrium hadn’t quite made it this high. The furniture was functional rather than designed to impress. At least he overlooked the