The Launch Party by Lauren Forry

Author:Lauren Forry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Day 3

Chapter 23

06:45 UTC

The sun’s rays encroached over the dusty landscape. Penelope had learned that all the windows were equipped with a shield that helped protect them all from the ultraviolet rays and radiation while still allowing a clear view of Earth and the stars. Somewhat clear. Dust had begun to gather on the window.

Unseen threats – Earth was full of them. She imagined all the people down there. Imagined her parents waking in Kent, taking the dogs for walks and cleaning the kennels. Imagined her colleagues in London commuting to work, her desk sitting empty. Her colleagues, who knew little of her phobias, probably thought she was having a grand time. The police therapist had suggested Penelope try being more open about her phobias, and she’d tried but found it too difficult to share with the people, other than family, who knew her. She didn’t want them to look at her any differently or think her any more incapable than she already felt. But when Bobby had first asked her on the flight, it had been easy. The words just came out of her. It was easy to admit the truth to strangers.

Her parents, though, were probably wondering how she was coping. They had laughed when she told them she’d entered the contest. Then they’d questioned her when she said she’d be going. She needed time away, she’d told them. She needed space to think. Her dad said that was why he thought she was staying with them in Kent. When she said ‘space’, he hadn’t thought she actually meant space. All that unnecessary risk, they’d said. They knew Penelope hated unnecessary risk.

In truth, Penelope thought she’d be more scared than she was. But ensconced in the hotel, wrapped in warm sheets, the furniture pulled in around her, it was easy to trick her brain into believing that the view outside her window was fake, a projection, a cinema screen.

She stretched out her leg and knocked a folder onto the floor.

The files surrounded her on the bed. She’d stayed up most of the night reading them, slept briefly and fitfully, and now sat watching Earth, waiting for it to be an acceptable hour to be awake. Not that there were real hours up here. The twenty-four-hour day was an illusion. Just, as she suspected, was most of this trip.

Nothing in the files contradicted what she already knew about her fellow guests, and all of the information included in her own had been accurate. What bothered her was why these files existed at all. Who had put them together? And why did Bobby have them? There were no identifying organisational markers on any of them. Nothing with the Apollo Group logo. No production company name or address. There was only one clue she’d found – a Post-it note loose at the bottom of the box, like it had fallen off one of the folders as Bobby went through them. The handwritten note simply said: ‘Break a leg!’ Even though she wasn’t a theatre person, she knew that was slang for good luck before a performance.

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