She’d laughed and showed me a photo of the two of them taken a few years before. “Really?” She raised an eyebrow.

I leant forward, eyes sincere, voice low and even. “You might look the same, but she’s a brassy, money-grabbing, attention-seeking whore.” Her eyes widened at the word, like an innocent child hearing it for the first time and finding it rather enthrallingly scandalous. She even giggled a little. “But you’re intelligent and sophisticated and have class,” I went on. She blushed and smiled at me, not getting the irony of my class comment as she accepted another tin of gin and tonic.

Of course, it was Leah I was really interested in. Well, her money anyway. More than enough to warrant a longer con than normal. I would mend their broken relationship, bring them together to be best friends and ensure Megan (who would, of course, have married me by then) was the beneficiary of Leah’s will. Then I would kill Leah and, once her money was safely in our marital account, Megan would appear to finally give in to the distress of her sister’s death and in a fit of pain and misery would kill herself. Or at least that is what I’d make it look like. I would be the pining husband. The distraught but wealthy widower, offered slots on every primetime show in the country—because of course it would be a public travesty for both twins to die so close to each other. Onward and upward I would go.

But Jesus! Megan could hold a grudge. To be fair, there were things Leah had done that even I thought a little beyond the pale. That thing with her first boyfriend… ouch! But if I’d thought Megan was stubborn, then Leah was worse. And she hated Megan, beyond even the most extreme sibling rivalry. I never did find out why.

The problem was that I needed to find a way to get what I deserved, what I was born for. Two hundred years ago, a wealthy old great-great-grandfather had bequeathed his huge fortune down the generations. Every Hardcastle would benefit from his largesse to the tune of the princely sum of twenty thousand pounds, paid on their fortieth birthday on the proviso that they were married. In 1810 that was a ridiculous amount, equivalent to about one and a half million today. But with every generation the gift got smaller in real terms and twenty grand would buy you less and less. It was only just enough in 1995 for my dyke aunt to bother with her sham marriage to that weird skinny dude with the stringy hair. Now I could just about afford a holiday and a new freezer, if I was lucky.

The whole thing with Leah wasn’t planned; I hadn’t thought she’d be interested in me, to be honest. But she couldn’t resist messing around with Megan’s life and I was more than happy to go along for the ride. And what a ride! Leah looked so much like Megan it was uncanny, but she wanted things my wife never wanted, begged me to do things Megan would balk at. Like bend her over, inch those little blue panties down and fuck her deep in the arse.