The Glass Palace Chronicle

1 THE GLASS PALACE CHRONICLE Patricia le Roy 2 Prologue LONDON October 1990 Everything was ready. She laid the syringe on the edge of the washbasin and stowed the instruments neatly away in her handbag. The sounds of voices and laughter filtered dimly down from the floor above. The party was in full swing. She had made the call from the basement storeroom five minutes ago. Even if Roland had heard the sound of the phone being replaced in its cradle, there was nothing he could do about it. The new exhibition had attracted a lot of attention and there were at least fifty people in the gallery. In any case, he had no reason to be suspicious. She brushed her hair carefully back from her face and applied fresh lipstick. Death was a friend: one should go to meet him looking one's best. There was a whole gram of heroin in the syringe, ten times the normal dose. She had left nothing to chance. She sat down on the closed toilet seat and rolled up her sleeve. Since she had made her decision two days earlier she had been conscious of a vast inner lightness, as if a weight had been lifted from her heart. Subconsciously she had known for a long time that this was how it would end. Heroin was another country: it had no frontiers. No one escaped. There was only one way to get free of it. She had tried five times to give it up and she was weary of struggling. Even if Philip hadn't been coming back next week, she might have done it now anyway. Someone tried the door handle. "Just a minute," she called, and picked up the syringe. Time was running out. Soon Roland would notice her absence and start fretting that there was no one to replenish the glasses and hand round the petits fours. She started looking for a vein in her left arm. Faintly in the distance came the sound of police sirens, growing closer. She was not afraid. Now at this moment, all she could think of was the shoot. Still she had a moment's fleeting regret for Philip. It was a shabby way to treat him after all he had done for her. But he had always understood her, better even than their parents, and maybe, after reading the note she had left in the flat, he would understand this too. She found the vein on the third try. Now that the shoot was just seconds away, everything else was wiped out of her mind. Blood began to seep up into the syringe. The sirens stopped. There was a sudden silence on the floor above. Now. She pressed the plunger. Her heart felt as if it was being torn apart and her skull wrenched off her head. The flash, the glorious, the ultimate flash. And then the darkness hit her like a dead weight. When the police arrived three minutes later and broke the door down, she had slipped off the seat on to the floor. She was lying on her back with her eyes open. The needle was still stuck in the vein. Her heart had ceased to beat. * 3 Part One PARIS January 1993 Caroline was dead. She had been dead for two years, two months, and 27 days. In any case, she would never have set foot in a place like this. Far less sat at the bar alone, a target for the eyes and minds of every casual male drinker in the place. Still it was odd how the girl at the bar was sitting in exactly the same way Caroline used to sit, with her hair falling round her face and her shoulders hunched protectively round her glass. The girl looked up from her drink and he went rigid in his seat. It was Caroline. He could feel the blood draining from his face. It couldn't be Caroline. Caroline was dead. Or was she? After all, he had missed the funeral, he had never seen her dead-- He took another swallow of whisky and got a grip on himself. Of course it wasn't Caroline. But the resemblance was extraordinary. He went on staring. The same olive skin, the same faintly Oriental features, the same air of fragility. The girl had seen his reaction. She was looking directly at him. Their eyes met. She picked up her drink and slid off the stool. Too late he realized what a girl like that was doing in a bar like this. She had misinterpreted his look and now she was coming to negotiate her terms. She walked confidently across the room, followed by the eyes of all the lone male drinkers round the bar with their demis de bière. She was dressed entirely in black, unfamiliar layered garments, short sleeves over long sleeves, an odd kind of draped skirt over some kind of trousers, and heavy black laced-up boots. Clothes that contrived both to reveal and conceal her body at the same time. The English students sitting a couple of tables away with their backpacks and county accents looked up curiously as she went past. The man in the rumpled business suit across the aisle stopped gazing ardently at his much younger girlfriend and gave her an assessing glance. She reached his table and looked down with a sudden air of diffidence. "Je peux m'asseoir?" He had the impression that if he said no, she would simply retreat back to her stool. "Si vous voulez." He gestured vaguely at the seat opposite. She put her glass down on the table and slid on to the banquette. Close up the resemblance was both more and less striking. Caroline had favoured white and pastels: he could not remember ever seeing her in black, let alone the exotic garments that this girl wore, but the skin, the hair, the features were all uncannily alike. "Alors," said the girl, in a tone that fell only a few degrees short of overt aggressivity, "je vous plais?" He wasn't sure how to answer that. Instead he said, "Vous êtes française?" "Non, anglaise." "Really?" That was the last thing he had been expecting. She certainly didn't sound anglaise. "Yes, really. You too?" Her voice was nothing like Caroline's. Caroline's voice had been light and high-pitched, this girl's was low and grave. 4 "I'm sorry to stare, but you look exactly like someone I ... I know." She nodded, apparently taking this in her stride. "What's your name?" He hesitated. "Paul." "I'm delighted to meet you, Paul. My name's Claudia." No Scottish burr in her voice either. She spoke standard, middle-class English. She could have been from anywhere. "What are you doing in Paris, Paul?" she went on. "Do you live here, or are you over on business?" "I'm just passing through." "Ah. Are you on your way back to England or have you just come from there?" "I just left," he said tersely. "What about you? What are you doing here?" "I'm on my way back. As soon as I get enough cash together, that is. Why that bloody country has to be an island, I don't know. If one could just hitchhike there like everywhere else, life would be so much simpler." "You've run out of money?" "You got it." She smiled ferociously. "I don't actually plan to make a career out of what I'm doing now." "Don't you have parents or family in England who could send you the money for the fare?" Her lips compressed into a thin line. "No." "Then why not try the Consulate?" "Oh I did," she said airily. "It didn't work out." Paul blinked. What was that supposed to mean? Repatriating stranded citizens was one of the routine functions of British Consulates in foreign cities. But she was looking at him in a way that placed further questioning firmly off-limits. "I ... see. But isn't there some other way you could earn the money to get home?" "Nope. There's nothing out there -- nothing that pays serious money, that is. It's the recession. I did some waitressing last month and after that I got a few hours cleaning people's houses, which was okay for pocket money, but then the guy I was living with threw me out, I can't afford a hotel, the escort agencies won't have me... It doesn't leave one much choice." The students had paid their bill and were heading off towards the Gare du Nord and the last train home. The portly middle-aged waiter, who had served Paul for the past three nights and was beginning to greet him as a regular, hovered at the edge of Paul's vision, his tray balanced on three fingers of his left hand and his right thumb hooked into the pocket of his striped waistcoat. Paul looked at Claudia. The glass of red wine she had brought with her -- probably the cheapest drink one could get in a French bar -- was empty. "Would you like another glass of wine?" "Oh. Yes. No. No more wine, thank you. But I think I--" She broke off and appeared to sift mentally through a series of alternatives. "I'd like a grand creme please." Paul signalled to the waiter. "Anything to eat?" "Oh. Yes. Thank you, that would be very nice," she said with unexpected demureness. "It's late though, I don't know if they're still serving." "Vous pouvez faire un sandwich pour Madame?" suggested Paul, and the waiter gave Claudia an appraising look and said that no doubt they could, would that be ham, cheese, or rillettes? Ham and cheese, she said.

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