The cowshed Cinderella: She accused her parents of using her as a skivvy then cheating her out of a £7m inheritance. But here they reveal a very different story...

      

According to Eirian Davies (pictured), she spent the best years of her life as a modern-day Cinderella, working her fingers to the bone on her parents' Welsh dairy farm while her two other sisters went out dancing. At the Court of Appeal in London this week, where Eirian stood across a courtroom from her elderly parents, Mary and Tegwyn Davies (inset), a judge heard how she toiled away for years, caring for the family's Holstein Friesian cows for little reward. But evidence shown to the Mail by Eirian's beleaguered parents this week, including a burgundy-coloured 1985 diary which they say belonged to their teenage daughter, suggests a very different story indeed.