The Switch

By Catherine Condie

While on a school 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 and what she discovers is not quite what she expects . . .

Fast moving adventure set in Paris for the 11+ age group.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Condie
• Release date: Jul 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465803887

Catherine Condie

Born in Cambridge,UK, Catherine began her career in PR and corporate communications, progressing as an editor of science journals, and as communications advisor for a European programme. She currently works in internet marketing and is a school literacy governor. Catherine is also a singer/songwriter and guitarist, and plays in a rock band.

Book preview

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.

le lundi précédent

Monday, two days earlier

L’École du Sacre Coeur had overgrown its tiny location between the church of the same name and the district railway station not too far from Paris’ Gare du Nord. A rough patch of dry grass ran down from the school playground to a line of trees along the railway line. A couple of tennis courts settled into the view over the steep bank.

Lily’s French exchange partner Pascale took hold of Lily’s rucksack from the line of cases on the playground and swung it over her bare shoulders.

‘Photo?’ she exclaimed, her grin revealing the small gap between her two front teeth. Her hair framed her face like a modern Mary Quant, as Lily’s mum said when Pascale came to stay with her in England.

‘Oui, une photo,’ Lily replied.

Lily and Pascale crowded with the school party towards the edge of the railway bank. Pulling Lily’s camera from her hand, Pascale tossed it to a taller, older boy who was following. The boy unzipped the camera case while the girls found a place to stand. Lily grinned straight to camera and did her best not to squint through her new frames.

‘Again?’ the boy said. He crouched to adjust a setting.

Pascale fooled about, holding a succession of different smiley faces until it became too much. ‘Are we finished, Thierry?’ she said. ‘You take too long.’

‘OK, finished.’ The boy zipped up the camera case.

‘It’s my brother,’ Pascale said. ‘He is good at taking pictures but sometimes he is too serious.’

Thierry flicked his hair from his eyes, and dropped the camera into Lily’s hands.

‘You can e-mail them to your parents,’ he said. He stared with an intensity to scare then strode off, plugging his earphones into his ears, and seemingly oblivious to an older dreadlocked youth goading him from behind.

‘Pah,’ Pascale said, watching her brother go. She flipped open her mobile. ‘Trois heures et quart.’

‘Three fifteen!’ exclaimed Lily’s best friend Flora in her broad Scots accent. ‘No wonder I’m tired. Not used to early starts.’

‘Or any sort of timekeeping,’ joked Lily.

Flora pulled a face. ‘It was a long trip.’

‘You were asleep. The whole time!’

‘Not the whole time. Camille, don’t listen.’

Flora’s exchange partner Camille wagged her finger. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I remember at your house.’

‘It's four o’clock,’ Pascale said. ‘It gets busy. We should find the bus.’

‘My parents are already here,’ Camille said, wafting her hand towards the school entrance. ‘We live to the east, a few miles away.’

‘The same,’ Lily said.

‘We might see each other.’ Flora twisted her long blonde hair and fastened it on the back of her head with a clip before pulling her heavy bag over the top. She followed Camille towards the diminutive figure of Mrs Kite their French teacher and the smartly suited outlines of Camille’s parents, before climbing into a waiting car.

‘Pupils from Marching Lane School, we’ll meet here tomorrow. Your families have the timetable,’ Mrs Kite called out shrilly, searching over children’s heads to locate the remaining members of her group. The teacher caught Lily’s eye. ‘Don’t forget, you have my mobile number in case you need to contact me.’

Lily hoped she wouldn't.

They reached the bus stop where Thierry, who she knew to be nearly sixteen and in Year 11 or the French equivalent, stood with his back to them, his rock-star styled mid-length hair dropped down over his face, tapping out a rhythm on the ground with his trainer.

‘He is listening to heavy metal,’ Pascale said, screwing up her face. ‘I can hear, it is his band. They did a recording one time.’

‘Indie musique, pah!’ Thierry called, in response to his sister’s whispering. He began to air drum the rhythm of his music.

Lily detected from his voice that under his hair his face held a grin. For that, she decided over

Reviews for The Switch

[walnut242 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I neither loved or disliked this book. I really do not know how to describe my feelings. The whole time I was reading I continued to ask myself "would/could this really happen this way?" When I say this I am not refering to the switching of babys. I refer to interactions between individuals. Things they did or maybe the way they did things. Other books I have read by Ms. Kelly I have enjoyed, just not this one. I felt that the concept was good but could have been developed a little differently.