What You Wish For (26 page)

I lie on my back on the cold, damp grass. I close my eyes. I can hear the sea below me, and the seagulls swooping over the rocks.

The world becomes dark and I open my eyes. As always, the brightness of the stars surprises me. But now I know the names of the constellations; names that Marie taught me. That we invented. My eyes roam from star to star, and I try to imagine where she might be. Is she up there somewhere, looking down? There is still a large part of me that says no, that favours other, more rational explanations. But when I concentrate – when I really listen hard – I can hear the singing, the choir, the Chorus.

And somewhere among the choir, I hear a human voice.

Author’s Note

Thanks for reading
What You Wish For
. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did and can spare a few minutes to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads, I’d be very grateful. I love hearing from readers and you can contact me by email (
[email protected]
), via Twitter (
@mredwards
) or on Facebook (
facebook.com/vossandedwards
). I promise to respond.

This book has had a long journey to publication. I started writing it way back in the 1990s, when I still had a good head of hair and was first pursuing my dreams of being a writer. At the time,
The X-Files
was massive, crop circles were always in the news and Babylon Zoo were at the top of the charts with their
Spaceman
song. Aliens were big, and that influenced me when it came to writing this book.

When I returned to the book recently, I tore the whole thing up and started again, rewriting it from scratch. But I decided to keep Marie’s obsession with aliens – even though I could have changed it to something more fashionable.

Because
What You Wish For
needn’t have been about alien abduction cults. This novel is about belief, and Marie could have belonged to any number of belief systems: religious, political, spiritual. For the record, my views are more like Richard’s than Marie’s. I am a rationalist. I want to see the hard evidence before I believe in something. It seems unlikely – impossible, even – that the Earth can be the only planet to harbour life. But I don’t believe that grey, large-headed aliens regularly visit us and abduct people.

(Though at the same time, I hope they don’t have Kindles on other planets. That some intelligent otherworldly being won’t read this book and decide to pay me a visit . . .)

I have deliberately left the ending of
What You Wish For
open. What do you think happened to Marie and Andrew? The truth is out there, as somebody once said . . . And I’d love to know what you think.

For those of you who read
The Magpies
and are still wondering what happened to Lucy, she has a small part in
Because She Loves Me
, published September 2014.
Because She Loves Me
is similar to
The Magpies
in theme and tone, although this time the terror is even closer to home. I can’t wait for everyone to read it.

Until then, thanks again for reading this book.

Mark Edwards

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

My wife, Sara, for being a wise and honest reader and for everything you do to allow me to pursue my dreams.

Louise Voss for excellent suggestions and insight as always.

Jennifer Vince for yet another striking cover. (If you’re looking to hire an excellent book cover designer, Jennifer can be contacted via
www.jennifervince.com
.)

Isabella Tan for the cover image and Sarah Ann Loreth.

Julia Gibbs for proofreading the manuscript. Julia can be found on Twitter
@ProofreadJulia
.

Sam Copeland, my fantastic agent.

Emilie Marneur and everyone at Amazon Publishing.

Andrea Walker for helping me come up with the title.

Sue Vaughan for the ‘Fifty Shades of Greys’ joke!

And everyone on the Voss & Edwards Facebook page (
facebook.com/vossandedwards
) for your constant support, help, enthusiasm and all-round awesomeness.

About the Author

Photo © Mark Earthy

Mark writes psychological thrillers. He loves stories in which scary things happen to ordinary people and is inspired by writers such as Stephen King, Ira Levin, Ruth Rendell, Ian McEwan, Val McDermid and Donna Tartt.

Mark is now a full-time writer. Before
that, he once picked broad beans, answered
complaint calls for a rail company, taught English in Japan, and worked as a marketing director.

Mark co-published a series of crime novels with Louise Voss.
The Magpies
, his first solo, topped the UK Kindle charts for three months when it first released. Since its success, the novel has been re-edited and published by Thomas & Mercer. Mark is now writing his next spine-tingling thriller, to be published in late 2014.

He lives in England with his wife, their three children, and a ginger cat.

He can be contacted on:

Twitter:
@mredwards

Facebook: 
www.facebook.com/vossandedwards