Lizzie and Frances are twins - nearly identical, tall, fair, unmistakably English - but their resemblance goes no deeper. Simply put, Lizzie is the sister who's always gotten everything right - husband, children, her own thriving business, marvelous friends - while Frances has not. People are beginning to worry about what Frances is going to do with her life, now that the twins are approaching forty. But after a lifetime of not measuring up, Frances decides to start playing by different rules. She shocks her family by taking a married lover, a Spanish Catholic who clearly will never leave his wife, and much to everyone's surprise, Lizzie's perfect life begins to crumble from the stress of it all - and from envy. A Spanish Lover combines an intoxicating love story unfolding under the Mediterranean sun with a sobering view of Britain's current economic stranglehold on a family that never dreamed that money would be a problem. It is a richly intriguing study of twins, of motherhood and marriage, or choosing not to marry, of painful domestic downsizing, and of late flowering with a vengeance.