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The Switch

  by Catherine Condie

  While on an exchange visit to Paris, a young teenager becomes an unexpected witness to a drugs raid. English exchange student Lily holds the key to a serious crime incident at the local Bar Tabac. Making her escape, she heads for the banks of the Seine. But now she’s not sure why and from whom she is running . . .

  For the 11+ age group.

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  Published by Bear Books

  The Switch

  Copyright 2011 Catherine Condie

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) for commercial purposes without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  The Switch

  Hyperlinked Contents

  PART ONE

  le lundi précédent

  mardi

  mercredi

  PART TWO

  mercredi 14:05

  jeudi

  About the author

  PART ONE

  mercredi

  Wednesday

  13:58

  Monsieur Briac steps out of the Bar Tabac onto the wide Parisian walkway with his mobile pressed against his ear, his face contorting with the wild movement of his lips. He reaches his other arm over the limp straggles of his dark hair and grips as if he is pulling at something in his brain. He tugs his head back further and looks up to the second floor window of the apartment on the Rue de la Bastille. His mouth is stilled in its openness. He hurls the mobile into the crashed Citroën and ignoring the pleading reach of the blooded youth on the ground, begins to run towards her. Lily flies back from the window glass, dropping the dust-laden net curtain to the floor. Her feet are in stone.

  She has to get out.

  Dust catches in her throat. Coughing violently she hurls herself over the thin rug covering the lino floor of the bedroom and into the hall to the front door. The brass handle burns into her hand as she presses, again and again.

  Her palm is shocked into the air as someone levers from the other side. She turns in slow motion, her mind flashing with images of the carnage outside. With raw instinct she runs into the body of the apartment.

  Glass bottles smash in the bathroom sink as she grabs Monsieur Briac’s cut-throat razor from a Pernod glass. She is rooted behind the bathroom door with the razor at arm’s length, her muscles trembling, her arm on fire.

  Brrrrrrrrrr . . . brrrrrrrrr

  The toll of the intercom rises to the high ornamented ceiling of the old 11th Arrondissement apartment, ripping into her body and splitting her heart with such a fear as she has never experienced in all her fourteen years.

  Silence.

  Then a crackle as someone speaks from the ground floor.

  ‘Allo Briac? Vous êtes là? C’est Madame Claude.’

  Relief at the gravelled voice of Madame Claude, la conçierge. Lily has seen her, dressed in shades of black, grey hair pinned tightly to her scalp, prune-like wrinkles folding in the sun as she sits in her kitchen chair on the pavement.

  ‘Briac. Je monte. Tout de suite.’

  Madame Claude’s shoes shuffle in an echo of distorted tones from the sepulchral marble of the hall. The intercom clicks off as rudely as it burst in.

  Thank God, Madame Claude is coming up.

  Suddenly men’s voices, elevated and enraged, echo and chase through the five floors of the block. Their shouts are within metres. The weight of a body slams against the front door, the impact reverberating down the hall, smashing any hope of reprieve from the slow-footed Madame Claude.

  Lily’s back tenses against the tiled wall and she blanks her mind, drawing in on the stench of Monsieur Briac’s aftershave from the broken bottle in the sink. Her stomach boils and the cavern of her chest heaves desperately against her instinct to retch. The back of her throat and her cheeks inflate.

  She turns her head to the crack in the doorway.

  The air is clean.

  She breathes hard into the silence.