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Chapter One

‘SO, what are you going to do, then?’ Charley asked anxiously

Lizzie looked at her younger sisters, the familiar need to protect the her resolve

‘There is only one thing I can do,’ she answered ‘I shall have to go’

‘What? Fly out to Thessalonica?’

‘It’s the only way’

‘But we haven’t got any money’

That was Ruby, the baby of the fa at the kitchen table while her five-year-old twin sons, who had been allowed a rare extra half an hour of television, sat uncharacteristically quietly in the other roo them

No, they hadn’t got any uiltily

Six years earlier, when their parents had died together, drowned by a freak hilst they were on holiday, Lizzie had pro she could to keep the fa for a prestigious London-based interior design partnership, in pursuit of her dreaner Charley had just started university, and Ruby had been waiting to sit her GCSE exams

Theirs had been a close and loving fa their parents had been overwhelht the love and reassurance she so desperately needed in the arnant with the adored twin boys

There had been other shocks for theh Their handso mother, who had created for them the almost fairytale world of happiness in which the family had lived, had done just that—lived in a fairytale which had little or no foundation in reality

The beautiful Georgian rectory in the srown up had been heavily ed, their parents had not had any life insurance, and they had had large debts In the end there had been no alternative but for their lovely family home to be sold, so those debts could be paid off

With the propertyshe could to support and protect her sisters, Lizzie had used her ss to set up in business on her own in an up-and-co area south of Manchester—Charley would be able to continue with her studies at Manchester University, Ruby could have a fresh start, and she could establish a business which would support them all

At first things had gone well Lizzie had won contracts todevelopments, and fron the interiors of the properties they had bought Off the back of that success Lizzie had taken the opportunity to buy a er house from one of the developers for whoe It had seem to make sense at the time—after all, with the twins and the three of them they’d definitely needed the space, just as they had needed a large four-wheel drive vehicle She used it to visit the sites on which she worked, and Ruby used it to take the boys to school In addition to that her clients, a s her to buy, so that they could wind up the development and move on to a new site

But then had co had changed The botto that they were unable to trade down and reduce the e because of the value of the house had decreased so much, and with that of course Lizzie’s co away in a special savings account had not increased anything like as s had suddenly become very dark indeed