England’s climate was cool and damp. The rooms were always cold, no matter how well the heating worked. The tap water was not as tasty as Brooklyn tap water. The dryers took forever to dry anything and shrank your socks. There was less pressure to work late and exercise and more of an inclination to meet at the pub for a pint or have a nice cuppa and a biscuit and relax in front of the telly.

Did he miss it? Yes, sometimes. He was fifty-six years old and he did still sometimes miss home. But if they hadn’t moved, Shy would never have learned to play table tennis and he never would have thought about Mars or written Red. Or Gold.

Definitely Red.

He’d made great progress in the few short hours since Shy’s inspiring table tennis match. Both girls were pregnant and had married Ceran in a tacky, overly publicized Martian wedding with vaguely pagan undertones. They’d stolen a rover and run away and discovered a crater full of frozen water, which they’d melted to survive. And the Russians were coming, a whole rocket-load of them. Not to kill them, but to rescue them. Isabel’s rich Russian family were criminals with hearts of gold.

But they missed home. There was only a chapter or two to go. Roy had to get them home.

By the time Liam and Greg came home, Peaches was high as a kite and cooking a rabbit.

“Dinner won’t be ready until I don’t know, midnight, but it’ll be worth it,” she told them loudly, brandishing a glass of white wine.

“I smell pot,” Liam said.

“Oh, do you now?” Peaches giggled.

“Mom!” he whined. He looked like he’d been crying.

“Herbes de Provence, that’s what you smell.”

“Are you stoned?” Greg asked. He seemed impressed.

“Very,” she admitted.

It was hot in their apartment. She’d taken off her sweater and jeans and was cooking in just her T-shirt.

“Mom, please put on some pants,” Liam whimpered.

Her phone bleated. Another text from Roy Clarke. Greg stared at the phone where it lay on the counter.

Then the phone rang. It was Stuart Little. It rang and rang. Her ringtone for when he called was set to the opening drum sequence of the Blind Mice song “Omnia Vincit!” It was pretty obnoxious.

Peaches gulped her wine and snorted, horselike. “I’ll go find some shorts.”

When she came back, Greg and Liam were seated at the kitchen table, waiting for her. This was odd. They never gathered around the kitchen table except to eat.

“We have something to tell you,” Greg announced.

Peaches didn’t know if she was being paranoid because of the pot, but it sounded like they were trying to freak her out on purpose.

“Guys,” she protested, “I already had the worst possible day.”

“Well, it’s about to get worse,” Liam said.