Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

They were not heroes, today. They were victims. The world believed that they had been barely more than children, brainwashed and abused, then hurled into the void to die. An inquiry was being held into the human rights abuses at space academies, experts questioning the ethics of filling students full of facts and then sending them off to found nations.

Harry was awarded a medal for bravery, for piloting the crew from the Orlando back to the Damocles.

Astrid and Harry slept off the weakness in quarantine, curled up together some nights clumsy and quiet as newborns, because they weren’t used to facing the nights alone. One evening, Astrid woke to find Harry sitting on his bed opposite, sobbing. When he noticed her, he looked out the window and said softly, ‘In my dreams, I’m still up there.’

ASTRID DISCOVERED THAT SHE’D been wrong about home. She thought her heart had abandoned it forever.

Her father had come to pick her up from the space centre, embraced her with tears in his eyes and helped her into the car. She had returned with nothing, no bags or belongings. As they drove through the city, Astrid felt as if she was seeing everything for the first time.

When they stepped outside in front of her house, she realized that her home was different from any place her feet could ever find. She had thought that the sight of her own street would be the greatest disappointment after circling the rings of Jupiter. She couldn’t have known that the skin under her soles had never forgotten the feel of the cobbled path, the dandelions springing up between the stones. Her father’s rough hand in hers. The dull sweetness of apples turning pink on their tree.

Astrid hadn’t expected that when she blinked their front garden would be peopled with old ghosts; herself and Juno at five, six and nine making daisy chains with clumsy fingers or pressing their faces to the eyepiece of their father’s telescope, jostling for another look at Terra-Two.

Their teachers liked to tell them in astronomy class that the light from the stars took years to reach their eyes on Earth. That the most distant stars could have burned out billions of years ago, but still their light brightened the night sky. Cosmic proof for the existence of ghosts. Ara had asked, ‘What do they see, when they look back at us?’

Astrid used to think that home was wherever her sister was, but as she lingered before the front door, she finally understood that, somewhere in space, they were still together. They were still skipping stones across a duck pond at nine, devouring mint ice creams in Hyde Park, lying on the common looking for constellations. In the same way, Ara was forever dancing in the courtyard at the space centre, catching raindrops in her fingertips and saying, ‘What would you do, Astrid, with this day, if you could do anything at all?’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Every time that I ask him to listen to a chapter that I’m working on and he sighs or plays video-games instead of reading proof pages, I mentally cross his name off this list. But I owe so much to my husband, Benedict Douglas-Scott, my sixth-form sweetheart. He’s an extraordinary man; kind-hearted, courageous and genuinely good. He inspires me every day and whilst this book could probably have been written without him, I would not be the woman I am without him.

I am indebted to everyone at Greene & Heaton, my agent and literary godmother, Judith Murray, and Eleanor Teasdale.

Sincere thanks goes to my editor, Anne Perry, at Simon & Schuster, Joe Monti at SAGA press and Fraser Crichton. After two years of your patient support, I feel as if my book turned up, like a prom date, at my door, shoes polished, hair brushed, ready to go to the ball.

To both of my mothers Dr Sheila Ochugboju and Philomena Agunbiade. All of my siblings, Ellakeche, Ruth and Che, whom I held hostage for a decade and forced to listen to every version of my story. And Pavalina Toukalkova for looking after all of us for years.

To my best women, and sister-friends: Natasha Dujkic and Dr Stella Collinson, who are good and loving and clever and strong; and to Ella Sparks whose integrity and all-round Junoness has inspired me since I was 16. And to Nanci Gulliver, my Anam Cara and creative soulmate.

I am very grateful to Sionaidh, Alexander and Venetia Douglas-Scott, and to Anne Alfred and Michael Douglas-Scott. My friends Alice Lui and Jack Bowyer, Madhav Bakshi and Dr Thomas Eliot for his help with copy-edits. To Lauren Price-Evans for being such a lovely role-model and to Christopher King who has been the kindest and most supportive manager.

My father Emmanuel Ochugboju was the first person who told me that I could be a writer and KT Forster was the mentor who ushered me along that journey.