A Date with Destiny: First-time author Rachel Ward talks about 'Numbers,' her new thriller

Jem has a disturbing secret: whenever she looks into people’s eyes, she sees the exact date of their death. Moments before a terrorist attack, she realizes that many of the bystanders are about to die. But when she and her classmate Spider flee the scene, they’re suspected of being part of the plot. How did you come up with that idea?

I live in Bath, England. I walk through the fields and hills every morning overlooking Bath, and I realized that I was thinking about mortality and death. It’s part of having my midlife crisis, really. And I thought, If I’m thinking about mortality and death more than is healthy, perhaps I should write about it. And then I’d just read, I don’t know if they call it Northern Lights in America.

Photograph by Sean Malyon.

Lyra in that book has a gift, but she’s in this weird setting. And I was thinking, What would happen if somebody had a gift in a very contemporary setting, and it was somebody who was at the bottom of the heap? It also coincided with the TV series Six Feet Under finishing in England. I loved that series. Every episode would start with a death. And up onto the screen would come someone’s name and their birth date and their death date, and I was thinking, Oh, wow! There’s a final date out there for everybody somewhere. What would it be like if we knew it?

Jem is a tough 15-year-old who lives in foster care. And Spider is this hyperactive six-foot-four black guy with a B.O. problem. How did you come up with such edgy characters?

One morning as I was walking my dog, Jem just wandered into my head. I knew what she looked like and how she spoke and pretty much her entire background. Then the next morning, I was thinking, What should I do with this girl? I realized that she’s so isolated that an adventure for her would be to actually have a friendship. So I needed to find her somebody to have a relationship with, and Spider just wandered into my head. So within 24 hours, I had both of them.

Your characters’ lives are so different from your own life. You studied geology and worked a steady job for years. Your life sounds so staid and stable.

It certainly is. I’m incredibly middle class and boring, and my upbringing is very middle class and stable. I’ve worked for 24 years for various local councils, and I’ve still got my day job. So my book is actually a million miles away from my own life.

Were you surprised when those two troublemakers popped into your head?

I was very surprised, but I did want them to be relevant. That’s why I had one white character and one black character. I thought if people who are reading this book are living in a city—London or whatever—I want them to be characters that they would identify with and would seem real to them. What’s lovely is that some people living in foster care have actually read the book and have given me feedback.

What have you heard?

There’s a group of readers who came along to the Bath Kids’ Literature Festival, where I was doing a session, and they asked me, “How did you write characters that are just like us?” I was so moved, I almost cried on stage.

What do you hope readers take away from your story?

What a great thing it is when you are loved for who you are. A lot of people feel that they are outsiders or unlovable, but all you need is one person to appreciate you for who you are and it can transform your life.