The lanky youth who lunged through the door at full tilt didn't even see her standing there. Tim raced upstairs and the loud slam of a door ricocheted through the house. Arnold appeared next. In the act of shedding his raincoat, the older man froze. 'Ashley?'

Susan thrust past him. Her oval face was a waxen mask, stamped by bruised eyes and two burning spots of enraged red. 'Ashley?' she exclaimed shrilly. 'Susan-' Arnold planted a restraining hand on his wife's sleeve. 'Stay out of this!' Susan rounded on her husband furiously. 'She's here and I'm glad she is. I want her to know what she's done!'

'What I've done?' Ashley echoed after an incredulous pause.

'This is all your fault!' Susan hissed at her. 'What am I supposed to tell Mum and Dad when they come home? They put Tim in our care. He was our responsibility. When Dad finds out about this, he'll blame me for ever letting you near Tim. You don't need to worry! Dad won't come calling on you for his pound of flesh!'

Susan in a rage was a stranger to Ashley. She had the weird feeling that she had stepped into a crazy mirror-world where familiar people become unrecognisable. As a rule her sister was frigidly unemotional, but tonight she was a woman possessed, alien in her spitting belligerence.

Ashley moved a pleading hand. 'Susan, please. I don't know what you're talking about. How can I be involved in this?'

'Aren't you involved in everything that drags our family down? Do you know whose car he wrecked?' Susan ranted. 'Do you know why he wrecked it?' Ashley was in a daze, devastated by the obvious admission that Tim was apparently guilty as charged.

'Our stupid little brother went out to get his revenge on the man who left you in the lurch four years ago!' Susan's enraged face suddenly crumpled and she half covered her wobbling mouth with her splayed fingers, denying the tears that were threatening.