Twins who share more than just DNA

July 28, 2005 - 12:07AM

Identical twins share their DNA, but how many share everything - even the same bed? Dea Birkett meets people so alike they believe they might be one.

Karol and Karen Groom have never wanted to be anything but the same. Individually, they would be unremarkable: two cheery, shy, sensibly dressed women in blue flowery tops, grey pencil skirts (not too tight) and low-heeled black court shoes - the sort of clothes you have to shop around to find these days.

Their most extravagant item of clothing is a pair of small, gold hoop earrings. But far from being anonymous, they are exceptionally visible, because there are always two of them, wherever they go, dressed exactly the same.

Karol: "We always decide ... "

Karen: " ... the night before ... "

Karol: " ... what we're going to wear."

They dress the same "because we like it".

Karol: "If we go to Littlewoods, and they've only got one size 12, then we have to go to another Littlewoods, or we can't get it."

Thirty-eight-year-old Karol and Karen are identical twins, sharing not only their outer looks but their inner make-up. Created from the same egg, every drop of their DNA matches; there is not a single genetic difference between them. Almost one in 150 of the British population is an identical twin. Researchers at St Thomas's Hospital in London, and elsewhere, say this number is steadily increasing - although nobody yet knows why.

But while they are many, we still regard identical twins as odd, freakish even. "Which one are you?" is a question no singleton is ever asked. Our individual identity is clear. But with identical twins, confusion reigns.

The vast majority of schools still have a policy of placing twins in different classes, ostensibly for their own good. When we talk to and about twins, we create opposites from the tiniest differences. "The fat one or the thin one? The quiet one or the chatty one? The one who's good at art? Or the one who's good at maths?"

Karol and Karen consciously cultivate their similarity. They always have their hair cut on the same day, in the same style. They went to the same college, where they both took a business studies course, before both becoming civil servants - Karol at the Home Office, Karen with Inland Revenue. Their career paths and pattern of promotion are very similar, as if they have been reluctant to outdo one another. When I ask questions, they turn to each other.

Karen: "When did I leave my first job?"

Karol: "It's so long ago now ... "

Karen: "I can't remember."

Every fact has to be corroborated, as if without the other's confirmation it couldn't have happened. They both passed their driving test on the same day.

Karol: "But she passed in the morning."

Karen: "I passed in the morning ..."

Karol: "...and I did it in the afternoon."

In 1993, aged 27, they left home - together. They now share a small house in a London suburb, with a sitting room full of photographs of two little girls dressed exactly the same: in matching red tops and kilts in matching pink macs, each holding tiny matching baskets in long white socks in red furry slippers under the Christmas tree. In these photos, even they can't tell who is who.

"We are cute, we are cute," purrs Karen, leafing through the pictures. They love themselves very much, as they love each other, which is almost the same thing.

Their shared passions (they have no other kind) are the Nolan Sisters and travel. Taking it in turns, they tell me the places they've been, bouncing destinations back and forth between each other as if playing verbal ping-pong.

"New York!"

"Las Vegas!"





"Yes, Venice."


Pictures of them in front of major attractions - the Statue of Liberty, Sydney Opera House, St Mark's Square - always in identical outfits, are propped up in the sitting room, as if a running joke. Upstairs, they share a bedroom and one barely double bed. They lie down together there at exactly the same time, and wake up together.

One has never been out without the other - to a movie, restaurant or shopping. The only time they spend apart is at their jobs. Karol phones Karen every morning to let her know she's arrived at work. Then she phones again when she's ready to leave.

Karol: "We meet up on the platform at Hammersmith station every day."

Karen: "We always wait. Even if she's delayed. We always wait."

They continually chat to each other, laughing and smiling, enjoying each other's company. Do they even know what loneliness is?

Karol and Karen, together: "No."

Karol: "Even when she was in hospital for a night, I didn't feel lonely, because I knew she was coming home and I was going to see her the next day."

They smile, nod, chatter, pull down their sensible skirts, and proudly show me the photos of themselves with the Nolan Sisters, smiling. Karol and Karen are probably the happiest people I have ever met.

FOR twins who choose to be so close, friends can come only second. " Twins are a bit like a couple that are very much in love," says Professor Robert Plomin, of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London. He is conducting long-term research into all twins born in England between 1994 and 1996. "People feel excluded," he says. "It makes us feel slightly uncomfortable. But it's also wonderful."

Studies show that baby twins cry not when their mother leaves the room and waves goodbye, but when their twin does. In her seminal book Twins: From Foetus To Child, Alessandra Piontelli, visiting professor of child neuropsychiatry at Milan University, says the primary relationship for a singleton is vertical: with a parent. But the primary relationship for a twin is horizontal: with his or her twin. This pattern is established from birth.

JOE and Bill Harrison, 64, have wives and children of their own, but they still compare their relationship to a marriage.

Joe: "We celebrated our golden jubilee four years ago. That's a friendship going back 64 years. Very few people have that."

Bill: "Yes, that's right, and we're not divorced yet."

Joe: "That's right."

Joe, a baker's assistant at a department store, and Bill, who works nights for a homewares chain, share steel-grey eyes, a Manchester accent, a taste for fiercely ironed T-shirts, and most of their mannerisms. Both cradle their chins in their fingers and rub them. Both stick their tongues out of the corner of their mouths after they've cracked a corny joke, which is often. Both clasp their hands behind their backs when they stand.

Like many twins, Bill and Joe have found people dwelling on, or even fabricating, differences between them.

Bill: "They said he'd do well at school ..."

Joe: "... 'cause he was always doing nothing."

Bill: "And I wouldn't get anywhere. But we took the exams and we came out exactly the same."

They left Didsbury secondary modern at 16. Until the age of 23, they slept in one bed.

Joe: "That was normal."

Bill: "Normal, just normal."

Conversations between them are punctuated with inexplicable gulfs and gaps that I wonder what I'm not hearing.

They took different jobs, in different cities, and have lived apart for 40 years. But they've kept in constant touch, talking at least once a week, even though one works days and the other nights.

Joe: "It's a unique position to be in. I'm sure there's twins that fall out. But most twins will remain friends for the rest of their lives."

Bill: "We're the best of friends, always will be."

SARAH Richards is adamant: "We're not the same!" She swings back her long, straight, side-parted dark hair, crosses her long legs, and reaches over to eat from her sister Nicola's plate.

"We're completely different," echoes Nicola. She swings back her long, straight, side-parted dark hair. She crosses her long legs. She reaches over to eat from Sarah's plate. I can't tell the difference between them; few can.

But 23-year-old Sarah and Nicola can think of nothing better than being a twin.

Sarah: "Love it. I think it's cool."

Nicola: "It's cool 'cause you get recognised."

Sarah: "Most people know you."

Nicola: "Everyone knows us as the Richards twins."

Sarah: "People remember your name."

But it's only the last, shared name that people remember. No one remembers which one is which.

Twins can find separation very painful. Sarah and Nicola first lived apart when they went to university - Sarah to Leeds and Nicola to Exeter. "We'd shared a room all our life. We'd always fallen asleep talking to each other. Always," says Sarah.

By the second year, they were both suffering from depression. After the additional burden of a close friend dying, Nicola abandoned university and came back home.

"So I came home to look after her," says Sarah. "I don't know why, I just did. I never thought about it." Soon Sarah couldn't return to her studies, either. "I got depressed. I didn't handle seeing her like that. I didn't like seeing her - I thought it was kind of like my fault, because I hadn't called her enough."

They now believe they were suffering not from depression, but what they call "separation syndrome".

Sarah: "It wouldn't have happened if we'd been together."

Nicola: "... or if we'd not been twins. For 18 years, at the end of the day, you get everything off your chest ..."

Sarah: " ... things you wanted to say. And that was withdrawn ..."

Nicola: " ... and I'd have things that I never really got off my chest. We were always together. You always had this person to talk to, and you suddenly didn't. When we got back together, we were absolutely fine."

It's obvious they enjoy each other's company so much more than mine - or anyone else's, probably. "Sorry to interrupt you, but ..." I begin, but they continue their conversation about when they were young and always together, as if I wasn't there. At school, Nicola played the saxophone and Sarah the flute. But in Nicola's end-of-year report, the headmaster wrote, "Nicola plays the flute very well", when she had never played it at all, and in Sarah's, "Sarah plays the saxophone".

Nicola: "Mum went mad."

Sarah: "He didn't have a clue."

Nicola: "So mum complained."

Nicola once climbed into Sarah's boyfriend's bed as a joke, to see if he knew it wasn't Sarah. Sarah was once approached in a pub by a man with whom Nicola had had a one-night fling. "He came up to the bar and said, 'Sorry I didn't call you.' I was like, 'Oh, so it's OK, I understand. I had a lovely time.' Sometimes it's just too much trouble to say it's not me," Sarah says.

As they talked, sometimes they chorused each other, sometimes finished a sentence the other had started. Their voices were indistinguishable. If I shut my eyes, they sounded like one person holding a conversation with herself. (All the identical twins I met said even their parents couldn't tell them apart on the phone.)

I was determined to separate Sarah from Nicola otherwise, if I left the table for a moment, they could simply swap places before I returned. So I watched them, and as I watched, so absorbed with each other they barely noticed I was there, I began to notice small differences. Nicola's face was definitely fuller, a common difference which may be caused by environmental factors.

Nicola had a mole on her cheek, Sarah didn't. I may have been imagining it, or making mountains out of the tiniest molehill - a common temptation with twins, to exaggerate even a non-difference - but Nicola seemed a bit heavier. Sarah smokes (which will affect how she looks in 20 years), Nicola doesn't. After an hour in their company, I was beginning to think they weren't so physically similar after all.

NO TWINS are completely identical. "It's called the photocopying effect, as no photocopying process is perfect," says Professor Tim Spector, who heads the twin research unit at St Thomas's Hospital. "Eggs split at a very early stage and the cells multiply and multiply and multiply. Eventually you will find things are different, like photocopying 1000 times. The two books would not be perfect copies. Bits of some pages will be missing."

With identical twins, some physical traits will always be the same - eye and hair colour, for example - and others, like weight, may be different.

Moles and freckles co-relate only 90 per cent. In a quarter of identical twins, one is left-handed, one right-handed. The hair whirl can go in the opposite direction, so their partings will be on opposite sides.

At first, I couldn't find the smallest distinguishing characteristic in Karol and Karen. They sat in identical poses in their front room, side by side when others would naturally sit opposite each other. They instinctively tucked their skirts down over their knees, and as they did so I noticed that Karen had a bandage wound around her leg. Karen has arthritis, her sister doesn't. And even with Karol and Karen, the longer I spent with them the more I noticed the small physical permutations. Karol has a slightly chubbier face. Ironically, you can tell them apart only when they are together. Separated, they look the same.

Perhaps secretly, we all long to be twins. To the twins I met, it's the singleton situation that's odd and sad. Who could possibly think it's better to be alone?

The Guardian
