The Heavy House at Scarrow Bay

About this book

In 2131, people who come down from space to live on Earth again learn to stand at the Heavy House, a crumbling Victorian rehabilitation centre on the eroding Yorkshire coast. Eighteen-year-old Tio Vass is the first patient ever born off-world. He arrives on a stretcher, exiled from his mining habitat after the painkiller he sold killed his best friend, with a stash of pills and a plan to get back up. The pool aide, Maren Ashby, has spent three years being an inspiration and is done with it. She sees through every lie he tells. Then a dying belt miner called Iggy offers Tio a deal: walk me to the bench at the far end of the cliff path, and my ticket home is yours. Tio can stand for forty seconds. The path is twelve hundred metres long.