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My first novel was about identical twins, and now my ninth also has identical twin protagonists. So, you could be forgiven for asking if I’m just a little bit obsessed with twins. The fact is, I’ve made a study of them for the last thirty-three years, because I have my very own set of twins. My first-born children are identical twin daughters. Identical twins are an endless source of fascination, which is hardly surprising. It’s mind – bending to think that two individuals started life as the same person. My girls, and my protagonists, began as one egg. That egg then split and became two, creating two babies with the same DNA. The later the split, the more extreme the resemblance between the two will be. Occasionally, and often tragically, the split is so late that the babies can’t physically separate properly.
What has always interested me is that my girls have very different personalities, despite sharing their DNA and their upbringing. There are also many contradictions in their behaviour and attitude to their twinship: they are co-dependant, even as adults, speaking to each other daily; they still regard themselves as a circle of two, and yet at the same time continually struggle to be seen as separate individuals, and deeply resent being thought of as one entity, lumped together as ‘the twins’, and heaven help anyone who confuses one for the other. They forget how much they look alike, and when they spent a year at the same college but in different classes, they were both confused on occasion when greeted as a friend in corridors or in the canteen, by someone they didn’t know. They hadn’t thought to explain that they had an identical twin in the other class. When they were younger and shy about going to a party, I’d say, ‘But you’re not alone – you have each other.’ And they’d look at me in amazement. ‘That doesn’t count’, they’d say. To them, the other one wasn’t a companion, she was the other half of herself.
In my new novel, Identical, I have gone back to the familiarly and strangeness of having twin protagonists. The physical similarity combined with the emotional complexity of identical twins provides a rich fictional territory, and one I hope I’ve made the most of in my book. Of course, the final test will be giving it to my daughters to read.