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The Kid shook his head. The waitress smiled and left.

Katherine raised her glass. ‘To us.'

The Kid lifted his glass. ‘To Mr. Dalmore, aged twenty-one years.'

They drank to that.

Afterward

Musée National du Château et des Trianons, Versailles – nine months later

At first, he didn't notice her enter the room. He was staring at a painting, an eighteenth-century portrait of a young man in a powdered wig, with a pen nib raised delicately in the air, as if the subject of the painting were considering a mischievous poke into the eyeball of the portraitist, to keep the sitting lively.

The girl who entered the exhibition was young, closer to twenty than to thirty, and pretty, with long blonde hair to her shoulders. She wore a yellow sun dress. She held a sweaty copy of Fodor's France under her arm. She sidled next to the man, and he noticed her for the first time. She stood, hip cocked, observing the portrait. Although she tried to hide it, too much about her yelled American: the department-store map of Paris sticking out of the Fodor's, the tennis shoes, the fanny pack.

The girl stared at the portrait for a long minute, then fumbled with the museum guide. She turned the page, looking for something, but was unable to find it. She frowned, puzzled.

She turned to the man standing next to her. ‘
Pardon
,' she said, in passable French. ‘
Parlez-vous anglais
?'

Timothy Van Bender regarded the young girl carefully. There was no way this was a trap. She was too young, too befuddled. And, besides, it was unlikely anyone would recognize him. He had changed his appearance too much since his ‘suicide' and escape from the United States: grown a beard, wore his hair long, traded Brooks Brothers suits for flannel shirts and cargo pants.

He looked around the room and made certain no one else was listening. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘I do.'

She smiled in relief. Timothy noticed that she had quite a pretty smile.

‘Is this the Joseph Ducreux room?' she asked.

‘One of them,' Timothy said. ‘Yes.'

Something about the girl was familiar. He stared at her, tried to place it. It took a moment, and then he understood: she reminded him of Katherine, twenty years earlier. She was young, awkward, trying her best. Just a bit outclassed. But attractive. Terribly attractive.

The girl pointed at the portrait in front of them. She pointed like an American, one index finger outstretched. ‘Is this …' She looked down again at the museum guide, turned it left, then right, tried to gain her bearings.

‘Here.' Timothy gently took the guide from her. He reoriented it, so that on the page the wall holding the Count of Bougainville portrait was at the top. ‘This way,' he said. ‘You're looking at this.'

The girl took the guide from him and held it in front of her. She nodded. Now it made sense. ‘Thanks.' She read from the guide. ‘The Count of Bow-Gin-Villa?'

Timothy froze. For a moment, he thought the impossible had occurred: that Katherine Sutter, the woman he had married, had somehow transported herself into the body of this young American tourist. But, no, it could not be. Timothy had learned – at the cost of everything he had ever had – that there was no such thing as body switching, no such thing as identity transfers. No. This girl standing beside him was not his wife Katherine. This girl was just a pretty tourist, stumbling over the same pronunciation that Katherine had, two decades before. It was coincidence, and nothing more.

The girl was looking at him. She was waiting for him to answer.

‘Actually,' Timothy said, and he felt a laugh form at the base of his throat. ‘Your pronunciation—'

He stopped suddenly.

The girl raised an eyebrow expectantly, and her face was open, receptive – as if she anticipated a correction, a reproof – maybe a
friendly lesson in French. But the man had halted mid-sentence, as if something had suddenly occurred to him.

The young girl looked at the man. It was as if he had been stricken, mid-word, with paralysis. He was frozen, mouth open, a smile stillborn on his lips, his head angled strangely.

Finally he smiled and said, matter-of-factly: ‘Your pronunciation is perfect.'

About the Author

Matthew Klein was born in New York City and went to Yale University. After graduation, Klein started several technology companies in Palo Alto, which, combined, raised tens of millions of dollars from investors. After the collapse of the dot com market, Klein moved to Westchester County, where he now runs a trading technology company and writes novels.

Copyright

AN ORION EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Orion Books.
First published in ebook in 2012 by Orion Books.

Copyright © Matthew Klein 2006

The moral right of Matthew Klein to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 4091 0910 5

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