This was why she had set her sights on creating a new world. She stopped for a second and looked up. There were patches of blue in the cloudy sky, and somewhere up there in the blue was the International Space Station, and beyond that there was an asteroid called the Rock. The Rock would be captured by rockets and towed to a stable point between the Earth and the moon very soon. It was going to become the base.
Somewhere else, unimaginably far away, there was another planet. A planet that was a bit like this one but pristine. They had already identified it. They would go there. If she worked hard, she could move there herself.
Nina imagined how it would feel to walk on the surface of a different planet, one with similar-enough gravity and a close-enough atmosphere. How would it feel to know that you were millions of miles from home? It made her dizzy.
She had to be a part of it because if they were colonizing space, she could not let it be the same all over again. She could not let the greedy men shape the new world, too, and she knew that Starcom, for example, was heavily invested in the New Earth project. Humanity had to look after their second planet, wherever it was, and the best way for her to make that happen would be to go there and do it herself.
Nina had already been on the fast-track science program at school when she saw that poster stuck up on a science noticeboard: HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A SPACE PIONEER? When she looked into it, it turned out to be offering the chance to apply for top-level training for traveling to and living in space, co-run by the British Space Agency and NASA. It was open to anyone aged between fifteen and eighteen, and you had to be able to get to the South Bank of the Thames every Sunday afternoon, with no exceptions.
She had spent weeks finessing her application. It was a ruthlessly competitive thing, but she knew, in her heart, that she could do it, and she did. She had been short-listed and interviewed several times, and she had undergone a full, invasive medical examination and a series of blood and urine tests. Then she, Nina Stevens, had beaten out thousands of others and got a place in the space pioneers course. Now she went to the South Bank every weekend and learned rocket science, which was, it turned out, exactly as difficult as you’d think.
And that was where she met Louis Ricci.
* * *
• • •
She skirted around the dodgy areas, the places everyone knew you should avoid unless you were into drugs or guns, and she and Beth ended up on the high street, with its mixture of charity shops, coffee shops, and generic chain stores. There were advertising hoardings everywhere, some of them with photographs, others with moving images. As she pushed Beth past a bus stop, a picture of Guy Clement appeared, holding a bar of the overpriced Rockolate he advertised. “Hey there!” he said. “Fancy one of these? It’s out of this world.”
“Fuck off, Guy,” she said. Guy Clement was the superstar British astronaut, but he advertised everything relentlessly, and his name had become shorthand for selling out. That, for Nina, had almost overshadowed everything he had achieved. Here he was, trying to sell her chocolate that she couldn’t afford and that would part-fund the space mission. “Fuck off,” she said again.
An elderly man in a kurta turned and frowned at her language.
From time to time, she looked down at Beth, who was wearing lots of clothes (all of them from the charity shops on this very street) and was wrapped in a blanket, her springy hair tucked into a big woolen hat with a bobble on top. Beth was resolutely awake, gazing at everything around her with polite interest and the air of a minor royal looking around a factory.
Nina’s phone chimed with a message, and she was pleased to see that it was from Louis.
I miss you! he wrote. What are you up to? xxxxxx
Nina did appreciate a boy who used proper words in his texts. And lots of kisses. She had to stop and put the pushchair brakes on to write a good enough reply.
Out with Beth, she wrote. The baby. Walking the streets of London, pretending to be a teen mom. We’re about to go to UnionBeanz. Come join us? Then she remembered she hadn’t put kisses and followed it up with a text that just said xxxxxxx.
Ten seconds later he replied.
On my way! I’m ditching my friends for you girls xox
Nina arranged her hair and slightly wished she’d put on some makeup and better clothes. She found a table at the back of the coffee shop and parked Beth’s buggy, then dragged a grimy high chair from a stash of them by the toilets and transferred the baby into it. Beth wriggled and made it clear that she actually planned to sit on the floor, but the floor was sticky with all kinds of spills, and there were crumbs and bits of paper napkins and coffee stirrers and something that Nina thought might be a piece of bacon fat, so she enticed Beth into the high chair by whispering, “Cake,” into her ear.
She folded the pushchair. Being a teen mother was harder work than she had thought it would be. Mum did all this stuff without even thinking about it, although Mum never went to coffee shops because she didn’t have any money.
She settled Beth in, turned the high chair to face the queue, and went to wait at the counter, watching Beth the whole time, waving at her, desperate to keep her happy, while keeping a close eye on anyone who walked anywhere near her. When she got to the counter she ordered two Bigwhitebeanz (this chain was ridiculous) and a BaybeeBeeneeCheenee, which was a cup of milk froth with a marshmallow on top, and then she pointed to a plate of chocolate brownies and asked for two of them. She would never be able to tell Mum or Al how much it cost her.
“I’ll give you a shout when they’re ready,” said the barista, who was young and androgynous and wore big-framed glasses that they probably didn’t need.
Beth was happy and mercifully unkidnapped when Nina got back to the table, and two minutes after that, Louis arrived. Somehow he didn’t have to push his way through the people as Nina had. The room cleared a path for him, and then he was there, all cheekbones, bright blue eyes, and floppy dark hair, right in front of her. He looked like a hero from a movie. He was gorgeous. Nina was still amazed that he had been single when they met, and she was even more amazed at the fact that he had been so nervous when he approached her. She would always remember him tripping over his words as he put a hand on her upper arm as they were leaving the class and asked whether she would like to go for a coffee with him sometime.
“I mean,” he’d said, “you might not even like coffee. It doesn’t have to be coffee. What I mean is . . . Oh, you know what I mean.”
“I do know,” she had said. “And yes, I would like to.”
“My favorite girls,” he said now, kissing Nina on the lips and patting Beth’s head.
“She can’t really be your favorite girl,” Nina said. “You haven’t actually met her.”
Louis sat down. “Hello, Beth.” He held his hand out, and she patted it and giggled. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Louis.” Beth smiled her dimply smile at him, and Louis said: “Oh, my God, she is adorable. There you go. My two favorite girls. Done.”