We're only £51 away from our first stretch goal of UV spot gloss, after which we can streeeeetchhhh towards SPRAYED EDGES YEAHHHH!!!

Please spread the word so these Sapphic Spies can see the light of day with shiny highlights on the cover! If we make it to £2,500 by the end of today, I'll squeal! (That's all, steady on, I'm British; no jigs allowed!)

Tell a friend! Tell your reading buddies! Tell your mutuals on socials! Tell strangers on the street!

And, most importantly, thank you so much for all your help so far!!

The wooden pins just arrived (poor postman out in the pouring rain in his shorts), and they're PERFECT! I couldn't have hoped for more!

They're 4cm across, 5cm corner to corner, and have two butterfly-backed pins to keep them nice and secure wherever you put them!

You can add them to your pledge at any time!

- AK

Hi there!

A bunch of Booktopia authors will be livestreaming in a little over 24 hours, courtesy of the extremely kind (and organised) Laura VanArendonk Baugh.

You can chat during the stream either at:
YouTube: https://go.lauravab.com/booktopia (captions will be available)

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/laura_vab 

The stream is at 11AM PST / 2PM EST / 7PM GMT / 8PM CEST / 11PM PHT / 11:30PM IST

Come say hi, discover some awesome books and authors, or ask us questions!

See you there :D

I thought it'd be fun to share the first chapter, and so without further ado, here it is! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

---

Charlie had one shot at this, and if she cocked it up, it’d be all over. The last thing she fancied was to find out what it felt like to have her whole body shatter, starting with whatever hit the floor first.

Back when she started to learn parkour, she would’ve looked down, but that was newbie error. What was the point of staring into the abyss when her goal was the ledge opposite?

She shifted her head and confirmed her estimates, then leaped.

There was a split second of freedom, where she could almost pretend that she was flying, and she laughed gleefully as she touched down on the far ledge and rolled away from it to disperse the energy of her landing. The roofing of Euston station was built in the 1960s and she didn’t trust it one bit.

From here, she could sprint across the roof of the covered walkway, climb one of the support pillars of the station, and use the handrail as a stepping stone to the top level of the roof.

Charlie bounced to her feet and ran. She flowed along the route she’d just figured out, over the heads of late-night commuters, none of whom bothered to look up. Most people didn’t in this city. Not unless they were paid to.

“Oi!”

The man who yelled was probably shouting at her, but she wasn’t going to wait to find out.

She cat-climbed the nearest support pillar, propelled herself up into the air, and landed on her feet with the metal rail nestled snugly against the arches of her shoes. A quick drop to a crouch to gain power, then she sprang at the roof above her and grabbed it with her fingers splayed, palms against the concrete. From there it was pure muscle to heave herself up and over the edge, under the second handrail, and she puffed as she pulled herself to her full height once she was safe.

The roof was dotted with ventilation exhausts, and it made the air up here smell of diesel and coffee. All around, lights twinkled from offices, hotels, and the construction site she’d come up here to get a birds-eye view of.

She probably didn’t have long. It usually came down to how long it took for a security guard to find his keys, so she stretched briefly then hurried to the western edge of the roof and gazed over the expanse of exposed earth, heavy machinery, and barriers erected to keep people like her out. Beyond all of that, she knew that the object of her suspicion would be visible from here during the day, but at night she could only imagine where the tops of the trees of Regents Park would be, nestled half a mile away between tower blocks that were scheduled for demolition as part of the long-awaited high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham.

The park was out there, and it was diligently being avoided by every aspect of the work. Charlie completely understood that slapping HS2 through the middle of the park wasn’t ever going to happen, but so much of this work could have been avoided if there was an underground section between Euston and the proposed Old Oak Common station.

She leaned over the handrail and looked down. From here, directly over the edge of the building, she could see into the restricted area that her boss wouldn’t let her enter, despite having all the right protective gear and safety training. He’d said something about her still being a trainee, but she didn’t buy it.

If she could get down there, she could get into the tunnels they were building, and then she might be able to find out what they were trying to avoid under the park.

And if she did, she could get fired.

Charlie sighed. This wasn’t the greatest economy to lose her first ever job in, especially now she had student debt hanging over her head for the rest of her working life.

She weighed the pros and cons while the allure of the answers lay around forty metres below.

Was it worth losing everything she’d worked so hard for, just to have an answer?

She heard the clatter of the roof access hatch behind her, and that meant she was out of time. One way or another, she had to make a move.

“Hey! You shouldn’t be up here! I’m going to need you to—”

The rest was lost to the wind as Charlie ran back the way she’d come and launched herself over the handrail to the level below.

Maybe she’d get her answers another day.

* * *

By morning, everything was normal. Most people liked normal. It was supposed to be reassuring. Safe. Predictable.

All the things Charlie hated the most.

That wasn’t anyone else’s fault. She might hate the decrepit wallpaper and smell of mould in her parents’ Rotherhithe flat, but she didn’t hold it against her parents. Any roof was better than no roof at all, and it wasn’t their fault that the council were too cheap to come sort out the damp problem.

She showered and dressed, clipped her fingernails, then sat on the edge of her bed a moment and debated whether to look at the letter again.

What would be the point?

Charlie stared at the top drawer of her bedside cabinet for well over a minute, then huffed and pulled it open. There wasn’t a whole lot in there: spare batteries for a TV remote she never used, with the remote right next to them; a couple of books she kept meaning to get around to but hadn’t found the time; and the envelope that held the letter.

She should have thrown the damn thing away already. It had been sitting there for four years now, taunting her, and she still hadn’t managed to bin it.

With a glance toward her door to make sure nobody was about to burst in, Charlie snatched the envelope up and pulled the letter out. She let her eyes skim the words, because they were so familiar that she could quote the whole thing by heart. She could even recite the 16-digit reference number at the top.

Dear Charlotte Hart,

I am pleased to inform you that we are able to offer you a place to study Engineering (BA (Hons), MEng), a four year course, on condition you obtain the required grades in your forthcoming examinations in the current academic year.

The university will make you a formal offer of a university place through UCAS. The offer on UCAS will be accompanied by the university’s Terms and Conditions and other documents you must read carefully.

Charlie didn’t bother reading the rest. She folded the letter with care, returned it to the envelope, and tucked it away in the drawer.

She’d never expected to get accepted. Her school encouraged her to apply, and she did it for a bit of a laugh, but Cambridge University weren’t supposed to accept applications from people like her.

In the end she’d gone for a cheaper option. There wasn’t any way she could afford the rent, food, formals, socials, higher tuition, overseas study, and everything else that came bundled up with a place at Cambridge. As it was, studying in London had left her with a mountain of tuition fee loans, transport costs, and the staggering price of engineering textbooks, even though she’d done it all while living with her parents and little brother, and working at the nearest supermarket all hours she could get.

The letter was an eternal what if? and she didn’t know whether she kept it to torture herself with, or to remind her that she’d been good enough — but not rich enough — to leave this barren council estate behind and walk into another world. She’d picked St. Catharine’s because they had the lowest accommodation costs of all the Cambridge colleges, and it was still way beyond her reach.

Charlie pulled her work boots on, checked the laces were snug, then got off the bed and made her way out into the real world.

The letter never went with her.

* * *

“Mum, my toast’s cold!” Sam stuffed it into his mouth anyway, and grinned as he ducked away from the playful swat of their mum’s hand.

“You little sod, when are you going to leave home and get a job?” Mum’s retort was just as affectionate, and she laughed as she turned her smile to Charlie. “Morning, sunshine! Toast?”

“Yeah, please.” Charlie grabbed her water bottle from the fridge and took a swig, then hung it from her belt by its carabiner. “Dad already gone?”

“You just missed him.” Her mum snatched the toast as the toaster flung it at the ceiling, and she buttered both slices before handing them to Charlie. “Hot,” she warned, though her own hands were obviously heat resistant. “You in for dinner tonight?”

“Probably.” Charlie took a mouthful of the slightly-burned toast and checked her phone for the time.

“Yeah, it’s not like she’s got anything better to do,” Sam said with a grin.

“Haven’t you got a school to go to or something?” Charlie said to him, not caring that she sprinkled a few flecks of toast over her t-shirt at the same time. “I hear you don’t get A-Levels if you don’t actually turn up.”

“Yeah my big sis got those and now look what she does,” he snorted. “You’re part of the system now, Charlie. They’ve got you.”

She pulled a face at him and ate the rest of her toast.

Charlie was always into taking things apart with her hands. Sam liked to think what he was going to dismantle was society. They couldn’t have been more different, but he was her little brother, and she was his big sister, and somehow that transcended everything else. She was the one with the short, choppy hair. Sam had the ponytail. Charlie kept her nails short and functional, both for work and her extracurricular explorations, and Sam liked his longer and brightly coloured.

She was the engineer, and he was the artist.

“Are you sure we’ve got the same dad?” Charlie sighed at her mum.

“One hundred percent,” was the answer. “Now shoo. I’ve got my own job to get to.”

Charlie rolled her eyes in fake annoyance, gave Sam a hug, kissed her mum on the cheek, then grabbed her coat.

* * *

She checked the time on her phone as she arrived at the building site that was Old Oak Common. When HS2 was done, this would be a thriving transit hub and train depot, but for now it was a muddy field with machinery and engineers all over it, and there was no way to get here other than a sprint from North Acton station.

Satisfied that she was early, Charlie tucked the phone away and brought out her security pass instead, checking into the site and making her way toward the locker rooms to fetch her safety gear.

“Charlie?”

She halted at the sound of Mike calling her name, and turned toward the supervisor’s Portakabin with a smile. “Hey, Mike!” She waved quickly. “What’s up?”

Mike was twice her age, and sometimes it felt like he was twice her height, too. He was thin as a rake, and — like most of the guys she worked with — kept his face clean-shaven and his hair short. Nobody wanted to end up face-first in a machine just because their beard got caught.

He tucked a clipboard under his arm and thumbed back toward the Portakabin. “Can I have a word?”

“I haven’t got my stuff on yet—”

“No problem. It’s not an on-site thing.” He glanced around briefly, then turned and gestured for her to go ahead of him. “More of a BTP thing.”

British Transport Police.

Charlie puffed out her cheeks to keep from swallowing at the sudden surge of fear that stabbed at her. The BTP couldn’t have identified her already, could they? They’d barely had twelve hours, and anyway, surely they had actual crime to investigate, rather than one traceur running over a station roof for all of five minutes?

Mike’s lips were pressed together. He looked grim.

Charlie said nothing. If she was about to get grilled, she’d look way less guilty if she reacted to it here and now like she already knew her job was on the line, so instead she shrugged and marched toward the Portakabin and tried to keep her features neutral.

If they had CCTV footage, though, she was totally screwed.

She marched into the abyss, and prayed for a miracle.

The Special Operations Executive employs people the other agencies consider worthless or dangerous: Criminals; Homosexuals; Women. Now it's time to introduce an asset who is all three.

Former child prodigy. Weapons-grade genius.

World-class criminal mastermind.

She's done the crime, and now she's serving the time working for the S.O.E. (or using them as part of her evil plans, who knows?).

Say hello to...