She puts her free hand to his cheek and pulls him gently towards her, kissing him on the lips. “Yes,” she echoes. “It is.”
Beside her, Magnus coughs. “Now, now, Arcadia,” he intones. “There are children present.”
Released, Henry’s face is frozen in a grin, his eyes still shut.
“Breathe, Henry,” she reminds him.
Together, the party moves towards the oaken doors of Hall. And she, Arcadia Greentree, walks out into the quadrangle and the shining light beyond.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Writing is a solitary task, but it is rarely completed alone. I have many people to thank.
I was fortunate to grow up in an age before screens took over our lives, with parents and siblings who indulged a love of words with boundless time to read and countless games of Scrabble. The germ of writing fiction was nurtured by teachers who inspired and challenged me. Geoffrey Shaw and John Allen in particular taught me the value of precision and concision.
And discretion. With the exception of a few friends, my juvenilia remained—quite rightly—hidden from the tender eyes of the public. I turned my energies to sober works on serious subjects, interspersed with occasional visits to the opinion pages of newspapers in the hope of reaching a wider audience.
Over the past few years, however, even as my own children were discovering the pleasures of reading fiction, I rediscovered it with them. Soon my love affair with words was rekindled, and at nights and on weekends, on long-haul flights and on trains, I began to write.
Inspiration came from many sources—most prominently Arthur Conan Doyle, whose work I first encountered around age ten, in a gilt-edged tome bound with green leather. I continue to read widely and often, as one should, but particular debts are also owed to Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner.
Non-literary acknowledgements are too many to list, but must include the weekly puzzler in Tom and Ray Magliozzi’s Car Talk on National Public Radio. (Alas, I retained less of their advice on automobile maintenance.)
A team of readers offered constructive criticism on drafts at various stages: Elijah, Emily, Gemma, Henry, Johanna, John, Leo, Michael, Ming, Nathanael, Nelle, Tom, Pete, Rachael, Suzy, Viv, and Winnie. Patrick Tan helped keep the science within the realm of plausibility, but bears no responsibility for the resulting violations of human subject protocols.
As I discovered, it is one thing to write a novel but quite another to publish it. My wonderful agent Victoria Skurnick believed in the project even before day one. At Marshall Cavendish, Lee Mei Lin saw the potential, my editor Rachel Heng helped shape it, and Mindy Pang sold it to the world. Ashley Penney brought the illustrations to life. Thank you also to the early adopters whose enthusiasm helped build an audience: Sharon Au, Philip Jeyaretnam, Gareth P. Jones, Kim Kane, Michelle Martin, Leeya Mehta, Adrian Tan, and Tony Wilson.
Last and most, thank you to my family. Two decades ago I was lucky enough to meet my own better half, my M, and together we explore nature and nurture with V and N. They have now been joined by T, for whom I must also write a book. But that is, and will be, another story.
Previously, in
the first book of the trilogy:
RAISING ARCADIA
Arcadia Greentree knows she isn’t exactly normal. But then she discovers she isn’t Arcadia Greentree either.
Arcadia sees the world like no one else. Exceptionally observant, the sixteen-year-old is aware of her surroundings in a way that sometimes gets her into trouble—and then out of it again. But then she discovers something odd going on at school, and a tragedy at home forces her to use her skills to catch a killer.
The stunning sequel to
Raising Arcadia:
FINDING ARCADIA
To understand the present, Arcadia Greentree must dig into her past.
Her family torn apart by tragedy, Arcadia tries to locate the “professor” whom she believes to be ultimately responsible. A series of clues lead her to Oxford University and a confrontation with her enemy—but all is not as it seems.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SIMON CHESTERMAN is a Professor and Dean of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. Educated in Melbourne, Beijing, and Oxford, he has lived and worked for the past decade in Singapore. He is the author or editor of nineteen books, including One Nation Under Surveillance, Just War or Just Peace? and You, The People. The Raising Arcadia trilogy is his first work of fiction.
Being Arcadia Page 16