THIS is the last snapshot of the Ransom family together, showing mum Claire, dad Derek and children Sam, Amy and Lewis on holiday in Colorado just one week before Lewis died.

Amy's brother Lewis died in a traffic accident almost five years ago when he was just 16.

Lewis, known as Louie to his family, was out on his bicycle with a couple of friends on September 4, 1996, when he collided with a car in Valley Road, Hughenden, suffering severe head and chest injuries.

He died at Wycombe Hospital the next day, on what would have been his first day of sixth form at John Hampden Grammar School, High Wycombe.

It is believed the accident happened as Lewis joined the road from a bridleway.

As with Amy's death, the family had an agonising wait.

"He didn't have much chance of surviving it," said his father Derek. "It was one of those things."

He told the Free Press at the time: "We have been so lucky and privileged to have had Lewis for all his 16 years.

"He leaves a gaping hole in our family that will heal but never be filled."

Lewis worked in The Polecat pub, Prestwood, where his sister Amy later worked to raise funds for her trip. He would have been 21 now.

Amy would have been 18 on September 7 and back in the upper sixth at Wycombe High School, thinking about which university to attend.

"Lots of people loved Amy Jane," said Derek. That was her name from the family, though the teenager insisted on Amy.

"She was excellent. There was never any trouble. We are lucky. We live out here. This is a beautiful place it seems so cruel.

"You bring them to this place and they grow up here. This village is a real village and we know hundreds of people here. It just seems so wrong."

He said some of Amy's friends will have heard of her death through the media and he feels guilty.

"When Lewis died the school was able to tell all his friends. But this is the holidays.

"I want to say sorry to all her friends that we couldn't tell them in time."

This week the family home at Bryants Bottom in Hughenden Valley is filling with flowers for the second time. Cards of sympathy sit on the mantelpiece incongruously next to cards of congratulations sent a few days earlier to celebrate Sam's graduation.