The One We Fell in Love With by Paige Toon Page B

suspect she gave up Angus because she didn’t want to hurt me and had never come to terms with the loss.
    Angus has always been easy to read – he’s open and honest and I believe he would tell me the truth if I asked him about it.
    But Eliza has tried so hard to keep her emotions hidden that I sense it would crush her if I brought it up.
    So I never did.
    Who am I kidding? I’m too scared to.
    Sometimes I feel guilty that I got to Angus first because Eliza would be so much happier with him by her side.
    But the problem is I would have to fall
spectacularly
out of love with him, or spectacularly
in love
with someone else, for them to ever stand a chance.
    Last night, I came to the following conclusion, and my words are still ringing around my head now as I stare at Remy trudging through the snow ahead of me: if Eliza and Angus are meant to be
together, the stars and the planets will have to align to make it happen.
    Because I can’t let him go easily. And while Eliza knows that I still love him, she won’t touch him with a bargepole.

Chapter 11
    Rose
    I find Mum at the back of the garden, staring at the rose that has climbed its way up into the branches of the old apple tree over the years.
    ‘Are you okay?’ I ask her.
    She nods abruptly and turns her face away from me.
    ‘Are you crying? Mum!’ I exclaim with dismay, going around to her front to make her look at me. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know, Rosie,’ she laments, shaking her head, but still not meeting my eyes. Instead she stares up at the rose –
my
rose. I was eight when we planted
it; when I asked if we could call it mine. Now it is so deeply intertwined with the apple tree that it seems almost part of it. It’s currently giving the apple its second flowering of the
year: a brilliant orange instead of its pale pink blossoms of spring.
    ‘I’m not sure about all of this,’ Mum says.
    ‘Come and sit down,’ I urge, guiding her across the lawn to the chairs on the deck. The garden is in full bloom: flaming reds, sizzling oranges and hot pinks blazing out from around
the border. I pull out a chair for her and take one for myself.
    ‘What aren’t you sure about?’ I ask gently, resting my feet on the cool wrought iron of the matching coffee table.
    ‘This house. This garden.’ She shakes her head again, despondently. ‘They hold so many memories. I don’t know if I’m ready to let them go.’
    My chest feels tight with worry. We’ve come so far. This is the right thing to do. Isn’t it?
    ‘Do you think you’ll ever be ready?’ I ask carefully.
    ‘That man rummaging around,’ she spits suddenly, and I presume she’s talking about the architect who’s just left. ‘Do you know they plan to knock through from the
sitting room to the kitchen?’ she asks indignantly. ‘What’s wrong with the sitting room? They’ll take all the cosiness out of it! Your father and I loved reading the papers
there in the sunshine—’
    Her voice cracks.
    ‘Oh, Mum.’ I lean across and put my arms around her, feeling her collarbone beneath my fingers. She’s lost so much weight in recent years. ‘It’s normal to get cold
feet. I love this house, too, you know. It’s going to be hard for all of us to say goodbye.’
    It was actually this garden that helped me to bond with Mum for what felt like the first time, on my own, away from my sisters.
    We’d moved from a tiny two-bedroom apartment in London, and being in such close quarters for the first seven years of our lives had been stressful, to say the least. Phoebe had been no
trouble at all, but Eliza would turn the room into a pigsty and we’d all get the blame for it. We had to share
everything
: birthday parties, toys, clothes, even our knickers, and
damn, it would piss me off when Eliza managed to nab the ones with the unicorns on them. We all loved those knickers.
    It was easier when we moved here and got bedrooms of our own. At least then, we had our own space.
    Mum had