Lapis Lazuli [Prequel To : For The love Of Chéri]

Chapter 1 : From Paris With Love

Decades ago.

Late fall.

Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

04:00am

An alarm filled the air in the dark master bedroom of a large house, situated in an upmarket neighbourhood.

Maurice stirred in the large bed and reached over to silence the irritating sound. Sitting up, he searched the table for his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes before putting them on.

One the other side of the bed, his young wife stirred beside him In the darkness of the room. He grabbed his dressing gown from a chair near the bed and whispered a curse to himself as he stood up to look out the window at the freezing scene outside. It was as if winter had arrived early, and it was even trying to snow from what he could tell.

"This fucking country is always so cold." Maurice sighed quietly to himself as he pulled together the open front of his robe and lit a cigarette before he sat on the window sill.

Maurice L'Estrànge was trying to acclimatise to a country where he was certain he would find his fortune. He wanted to start afresh in Montreal with his young wife of two years, Monique.

Previous to this, he had lost everything in a costly divorce to the mother of his five children, who then succumbed to her own family's plague of madness, and had been committed to a woman's asylum for her own good.

Maurice was career-driven, and was not, by his own admission, the kind of man to tend children daily, especially as he felt that was a woman's vocation. He loved them dearly but had neither the time nor the will to perform such a task, but the more pressing duty of providing for them weighed heavier on his mind and was his top priority.

Subsequently, the children were often split up and shunted around to different care providers. From relatives to friends, and anyone who would take them. Very often, they would attend one activity or the other as another form of child care. Be it attending practical classes like science and politics, or classes in the arts like painting or music lessons, however, the child was inclined.

When they were still in Paris, Monique loved looking after her stepchildren, even though the eldest were not too different in age to her. She felt especially close to his artistic eldest daughter who she viewed as a friend and his introverted eldest son. But she was separated from her stepchildren when their father decided he wanted a fresh start, the other side of the world.

Maurice was tall and very thin, to the point where clothes just seemed to hang on his frame, which he went to great lengths to conceal.

These were the signs of the genetic bane of his family, Marfan syndrome and all that it brought with it. This is what gave him his long over-flexible limbs. The condition had also caused a curvature in his spine which he had several operations to try and straighten and have reinforced with pins, inclusive of having some bones fused, as no corrective measures had been taken when he was a child.

Three of his children had inherited the condition, and he made sure they took all medical measures to safeguard their future health and so that they would not end up like him when the condition became progressively worse as they aged.

Maurice cut a very striking, yet slender image. His thick shock of raven hair looked severe against his extremely pale complexion but matched his very highly arched eyebrows and high cheekbones which were offset by sunken cheeks, making him look even more gaunt.

He smoothed his short black hair back as he smoked his morning cigarette by the window. His joints were most painful in the mornings and in the cold, and he popped painkillers at an alarming rate.