I’m thinking about this photograph Sam showed me. We were round at his nan’s after school. I’d been worrying about stuff – my parents, as usual. All their arguing, and the silences, which were worse. Sam used to listen, kind of, while I went on about it.
But right now, this particular afternoon in May, he was totally mesmerised by the picture he’d Googled. It was a photo of Earth, taken from the spacecraft Voyager, 3.7 billion miles away: the furthest away point ever that a photo’s been taken of our planet.
‘That tiny blue dot is where we live,’ Sam said. ‘Where all the people who have ever lived have spent their entire lives. It’s smaller than a speck of dust in sunlight.’ He looked at me. ‘What does that make you think, Kate?’
I peered at the picture again. The Earth was just a distant spot, absolutely tiny, caught in a ray of light, and around it was space: dark nothing, stretching for ever. ‘I suppose it shows how small and insignificant we are. Like nothing we do or don’t do is so important, in the grand scheme of things.’ I smiled back at him. ‘So maybe I shouldn’t worry about things so much. Is that what you mean?’
Sam sighed. It wasn’t what he wanted me to say, obviously. He carried on scrolling down the screen, reading the text, checking out photos as if I wasn’t there at all. And it was time for me to go home by then, in any case. He was about to have a driving lesson – paid for by his nan, even though she hardly had any money. But she didn’t want him getting a job. Not while you’re studying. This is your big opportunity, Sam. You’re the first one in this family with a chance of going to university . . .
So, thinking about it now, perhaps Sam was simply imagining himself in the spacecraft, with that view of the spinning world from far off in space. He was going to be an astronaut, or some kind of astrophysicist, just as soon as he could get away. If he could hang on long enough at school to get his exams. If he could stop himself doing something random and crazy. If he could get the money.
If if if.