Corlett - The space between the stars

Like lots of other writers, I have spent many a happy hour mentally composing the acknowledgments for my debut novel, deciding which artist would perform the theme tune for the film, and drafting imaginary acceptance speeches for major literary awards. The one for the Nobel Prize is an absolute corkerreally profound and moving. Particularly the bit about world peace.

Unfortunately, when I came to actually write the acknowledgments for my debut novel, I couldnt remember any of the interesting and witty things Id come up with, so Im afraid Im going to have to fall back on the tried-and-tested wow, that Oscars speech went on for a long time format.

There are many, many people who deserve my thanks. Some have had a specific role in bringing this book to life, while others have helped and supported me throughout the whole of my writing journey. It is probably inevitable that I will miss someone. If I do, please take it as a lapse at the moment of drafting this list, and rest assured that your contribution is not otherwise forgotten.

First on this long list is my wonderful agent, Lisa Eveleigh, who believed in me from the first, and always went above and beyond. Thank you for everything.

My heartfelt thanks also go to my equally wonderful editors Bella Pagan and Cindy Hwang, and the rest of the Pan Macmillan and Berkley teams.

Thank you to my MA tutor, Maggie Gee, for telling me I could do it, and also how to do it in considerably fewer words. Also to Fay Weldon, for all her support and some lovely lunches. I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from two such great writers.

Ive been fortunate enough to have had the support and encouragement of many other writers, as well as of others involved in the creative industries. I cannot name them all, but some deserve a specific mention. The Intensive Critique group on the WriteWords forum, for giving me my first ever feedback, as well as my real-life writing group, The Beermat of Silence, for shouting at me loudly whenever a sentence went on for so long that it was in danger of rivaling War and Peace. Particular thanks go to Roger Barnes, for shouting about long sentences and correcting some of my spectacularly incorrect sailing terminology. Last, but not least, Jen Faulkner and Kate Simants, fellow writers and fellow child-wranglers, for support, encouragement, and friendship.

Thanks must also go to everyone at The Little Coffee Shop in Saltford and the Waterstones cafe in Bath, for endless cups of tea while I wrote and edited this book.

Finally, thank you to my family, for their unwavering love, support, and gentle mockery. To Margaret, for babysitting above and beyond the call of duty; Simon, without whom this book could never, ever have been written; and Thomas, Ben, and Sam, who all did their level best to make sure it wasnt.

Actually, scratch that finallytheres another one.

Tony and Steve, builders and decorators extraordinaire. Because I promised I would, and Ill never hear the end of it if I dont.

CHAPTER

S he knew it was the third day when she woke. Even in the twists and tangles of the fever, her sense of time had remained unbroken. More than unbroken. Whetted into a measure of such devastating accuracy that shed wanted nothing more than to die quickly and be done with that merciless deathwatch count of her last hours. And dying was quicker, according to the infomercials that spiraled out from the central planets when the virus first took hold there. Most people were gone by halfway through the second day. If you were still lingering beyond that midpoint, chances were youd still be there after the fever had burned itself out in a last vicious surge on the third day.

Jamie could taste blood in her mouth, bitter as old coins, and her back was aching with a dull, bed-bound creak of pain. But her bones were no longer splintering in some unseen vise, and there was none of the spiraling vertigo that had flung her about inside relentless nightmares. In the throes of the fever, skeletal horses had leered at her, and an organ-grinder who was nothing but teeth and hands had turned the handle faster and faster until it all blurred into nothingness.

Her senses were slowly coming back online. She could hear her own ragged, uneven breathing, and she could smell the reek of sweat-stained sheets.

She was alive. That realization brought no leap of joy or relief. There was a nag of unease working its way around the edges of her thoughts.

Survival was something shed never dared hope for in those interminable days before the virus took hold on Soltaire, when thered been nothing to do but wait for the inevitable to hit their planet too. The diseases long incubation period meant that it had already reached every corner of settled space before the first symptoms appeared on the capital, Alegria. The messages from Alegria and the central worlds stopped a week or so before the sickness hit Soltaire. The infomercials had already given way to blunt emergency transmissions. As the days passed, the silences between them grew longer, the messages shorter, less coherent, as though the airwaves were fraying. But by then they knew what was coming. The virus was terminal in almost all cases.

Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent