Determination surges through me. ‘Come with me,’ I say firmly, putting our beers on a nearby table. I grab her hand and tug her out of the living room. My head is spinning as I push open the door to the cloakroom under the stairs. I pull her inside and hear her gasp as I slam the door shut behind her. Then my mouth is on hers. I hear her sharp intake of breath as my tongue pushes her lips apart. She hesitates only a little before kissing me back. I could kiss her forever.
‘I want you,’ I murmur into her mouth, pressing myself up against her so she can feel how much.
Her breath quickens as I slide my hand up inside her T-shirt.
‘I want you,’ I say again, and then she silences me with fast, hungry kisses and I know that I’ve got her. She’s mine.
Someone turns the doorknob and I whip my hand out from under her T-shirt and slam my palm against the door, keeping it shut.
‘Go upstairs,’ I shout, locking the door. ‘Whoops.’ I laugh under my breath as I pull her body flush to mine. But she’s tensed again. ‘It’s alright,’ I tell her, my hand returning to the hem of her shirt. But this time she catches it, stopping me in my tracks.
‘What... We... What are you doing?’ she asks, even more breathless than before.
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ I ask in a low voice, kissing her neck. We’re picking up from where we left off last night. She needs to know what she does to me.
‘Angus, stop!’ she says loudly.
Oh fuck. Ice freezes my stomach and I jerk away from her, reaching for the pull cord to flood the room with light. She flinches at the brightness, instinctively lifting her hands up to block it. She squints at me from under the shade of her fingers and I stare back at her with horror.
Same greeny-gold eyes... Same light-blonde hair...Notthe same girl. ‘Oh...’ I say. ‘I thought you were—’
Rose
Phoebe
Eliza
You could say we’re freaks of nature.
We look exactly the same with our blonde hair and green eyes, and we all carry the same genetic material. One of us could literally commit murder and blame it on the others without our DNA giving us away.
Identical triplets are formed when a single fertilised egg splits into two, and one of the resulting two eggs splits again. The odds of this happening could be anything from 1 in 60,000 to 1 in 200 million, but one thing’s for certain: identical triplets are very, very rare.
When our parents brought us home from the hospital, they wereterrifiedabout mixing us up. Apparently we wore our hospital armbands until they grew too tight, and even after Mum snipped the bands off, she painted each of our little fingernails a different colour. Sometimes she’s still baffled about who’s who in our baby photographs.
But even though we look the same, and even though we came from the same, single, fertilised egg, we were separated into three before our mother even knew she was pregnant.
And here’s the crux of it: we were born threecompletely differentindividuals.
As time passed and our personalities began to shine through, Mum and Dad came to realise that we actually had very little in common.
Yes, we could all scream very loudly.
And yes, we were all extremely stubborn.
But that was about it.
Until we were seventeen, that is. Because when we were seventeen, Angus Templeton moved in next door. And unfortunately, all three of us fell head over heels in love with him.
Part One
Chapter 1
Phoebe
When people say they’re living in the shadow of the mountain, it sounds kind of ominous. But there’s nothing ominous about this. The mountain is so close, I feel like I’minit. I can’t even see the top unless I sit down on the sofa, and then my eye line reaches right up to the snowy peaks. What I wouldn’t give to be up there...
‘Why are you sighing?’
