I’m Annie Ashton and my sister, Lauren Osbourne, is the one swaying slightly in her chair next to me. Lauren and I are twins. I’m the elder by five minutes and we have now both recently reached the grand old age of thirty-nine years.

Our sister Chelsea didn’t buy into the whole Life Begins at Forty thing. Her life started when she slipped effortlessly from our mother’s womb and into an existence that has, ever since, been charmed.

Lauren and I, born a scant year later, were breech twins who entered the world bottom first and, somehow, I think that set the tone.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Lauren stifles a yawn. ‘I need to go to bed.’

My sister twirls her long, dark hair languidly round a manicured finger. We have spent our entire lives fighting not to look exactly like each other. That explains my ultra-short pixie crop. Though I did stop short of dyeing it blond – mainly due to the expense rather than a submission of individuality. I’m a little softer round the middle than Lauren – something I blame on my two children, rather than my penchant for cake. Lauren looks more sporty than me – that’s because she is. Other than that, we’re two peas in a pod. Annoyingly, despite our advanced years, we still find we turn up in the same outfit to parties sometimes. This time, we took the precaution of co- ordinating our limited wardrobes well in advance by the medium of several dozen text messages. We had no intention of committing our usual fashion faux-pas at such a splendid do.

‘The night’s young,’ I remind Lauren. ‘You can’t be tired.’ The party is in full swing and the sounds of ‘It’s Raining Men’ pound out from the disco. There’s some dishy actor whose name I can’t remember from Holby City camping it up on the dance floor. The DJ is someone edgy and famous but, as I live my life under a rock, I’ve never heard of him. ‘Let’s have a boogie and see if we can bag you a celebrity boyfriend.’

‘I’ve already got a boyfriend,’ Lauren reminds me.

I look around, theatrically. ‘So where is he?’

‘That’s mean,’ my sister says.

It probably is.

To fill you in, Lauren’s boyfriend of five years was invited but couldn’t make it at the last minute. This is a regular occurrence. The small problem is that Jude Taylor has the inconvenient encumbrance of a wife and two children, which makes spontaneous socialising with his long-term girlfriend somewhat tricky. Clearly, whatever excuse he’d fabricated to be absent from the marital home on a Saturday night didn’t pass muster when push came to shove.

The reason my twin looks so toned is that she spends a lot of time in the gym pounding the treadmill out of sheer frustration.