The Ashby family
‘Why can’t you eat more politely,Jane? Like your sister Ruth!’
Said Bee across the lunch table.
‘She’s better at spaghetti than I am, that’s all,’ said Jane.
‘I can’t be bothered with things like that.’
Her Aunt Bee looked along the table at the twins Jane and
Ruth, and smiled. They were almost ten,and were exactly the
same, but it was never difficult to tell which was jane and which
was Ruth. Jane always seemed to wear old clothes,clothes for
riding horses and for working with them. Ruth, on the other
hand, was always in a fresh,clean dress, her hands were never
dirty and her hair was always neat and tidy.
Eight years, thought Bee. Eight years since the sudden,
shocking death of the twins’ mother and father, Nora and Bill,
in that terrible plane crash!Eight years since she left her life and
her job in London to come to Latchetts in order to look after her
dead brother’s children. And soon she would no longer be
responsible for them. The twins’ brother,Simon, would be
twenty-one in a few weeks’ time, and his mother’s fortune
would be his. The father had not been poor;the Ashby amily
had lived comfortably at Lathetts for more than two hundred