This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud. I should have been with him; she should have left him alone. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.

It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder ― or impossible ― to lose.

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.

Maybe my sister and I shared more than we thought. We were both waiting and wishing for something we couldn't completely control: I wanted to be alone, and she the total opposite. It was weird, really, to have something so contrary in common. But at least it was something.

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.

'I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'