It takes Ed a second to find the galaxy with the binoculars and I have to lean close to him to point it out. ‘How far away is it?’ he asks.

‘About two and a half million light years.’

‘And I’m looking at it …’ His voice is filled with wonder.

‘You’re not looking at it now. You’re looking at it two and a half million light years ago.’

‘So if a little alien was on a planet over there, looking through a telescope at Earth, it wouldn’t see us?’

‘It wouldn’t even see human beings. They came along two hundred and thirty thousand years later.’

Ed lowers the binoculars and looks at me. ‘But here we are,’ he says.

Our faces are centimetres apart. ‘Here we are,’ I say.

He nods, and to prove the point he leans forward and kisses me, and that spark that’s been pulling us together for days, weeks, maybe even years, bursts into life. His hand draws me close and I hold on tight to his coat and kiss him back. I can taste marshmallows and his lips feel totally alien, but at the same time like something that belongs to me. I kiss Ed King and he kisses me, and I really love my life on planet Earth.

SIXTY

‘Open it! Open it!’ Mum, Elsa and Pongo have piled on to my bed. Elsa is waving an envelope up and down. A thick, white envelope with NASA printed in one corner. Mum pulls it out of Elsa’s hands and passes it to me.

I run my hands over the smooth surface. ‘I don’t think I won, Mum. It feels like bad news.’

‘Look how thick it is,’ she says. ‘How many words do you need to say, “Bad luck, you didn’t win”? Not many. But if you have to include information about flights and hotels …’

‘You really think so?’

‘I do, but there’s only one way to find out.’

Elsa jumps up and down, my planets spin on their threads and the fifty-nine female astronauts smile down at me. I pull open the corner of the envelope then stop. ‘I really want to go,’ I say, ‘more than anything in the world.’ I think Mum knows I don’t just mean to Houston. ‘But if I haven’t won, I won’t give up. This is just the start.’

Mum nods and puts her hands over her eyes, like she can’t bear to watch.

I take a deep breath, then carefully peel open the envelope. I pull out the folded sheets of paper and smooth them out on my lap. ‘Dear Megara,’ I read, then I stare at the next sentence. I read it again and again.

‘Lift-off?’ Mum says.

I look back up at her. All I can do is smile.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank the staff at the Physics and Astronomy department at the Sussex University who were so helpful during my research visits. Walking round the PhD research lab was an incredible experience and one I will never forget. I’d particularly like to thank David Daniels from the schools lab who runs inspiring workshops very like the one Meg attended and who so patiently answered all my questions.