It’s a twin thing

I’ve always been fascinated by twins and as a small child, I used to dream of being one. Having just one brother who was six years older than me, I craved the company and closeness of a sister – somebody I could talk to, play with and share secrets with. She’d be always by my side no matter what, through all the trials and tribulations of school life and beyond. We’d never be lonely because we’d have each other. There were twins in my class at school and I used to envy them. They were identical, and it took me years to tell them apart. When they’d laugh hysterically about something until tears ran down their faces, none of us could ever figure out what they were laughing at. It was a private joke. A twin thing. I remember thinking how cool it would be to have somebody that was so connected to me. Somebody that was my mirror image. The pranks I could play on people. The fun I could have.

But seeing as me being a twin wasn’t a possibility, I accepted my fate and the years rolled by. And then I was in my twenties, happily married and contemplating a family of my own. A family that would consist of at least one set of twins. I was sure of it. There were no twins in either of our families, but I’d be the trailblazer.

I remember being pregnant for the first time and sitting in the maternity hospital, waiting for my first scan. I closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like to see two little heartbeats instead of one. I know it sounds greedy and at the end of the day, a healthy baby is all that matters, but I still had my dreams. Just then, a young girl came out from a room and sat back down in the waiting area. She clutched her hands tightly together and bowed her head. I wasn’t sure what to do. Had she just been given some bad news? Should I go and comfort her? Before I had a chance to do anything, a midwife came out and kneeled beside her. ‘Are you okay?’ she said. ‘You’ve had a bit of a shock.’ I strained my ears to listen and then I saw the girl look up and smile. ‘It’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I’m having twins.’ I’m ashamed to say my heart broke a tiny bit. What were the chances of me going in next and discovering I was also pregnant with twins? But my beautiful baby boy arrived some months later and we were over the moon, all thoughts of twins firmly erased from my mind.

These days, twins seem to feature a lot in my life. My brother married an identical twin and even now in their fifties, they look exactly the same. I remember when my son, four years old at the time, saw my sister-in-law’s twin for the first time. His eyes lit up in wonder. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s another Denyse!’ I have a number of friends who are twins too and I love to hear their stories about knowing what each other is thinking or feeling each other’s pain. It’s not a proven scientific fact that this is a thing with twins, but I’ve heard enough to believe it can happen.

‘I believe punk rock helped the peace process’

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Tiny triggers: the real details that inspire fiction

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Poem of the week: Harvard Yard

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I suppose, being a writer, it was always inevitable that I’d write a book around twins, so when I was developing the characters for In Search of Us, Ronnie and Elizabeth Cunningham were born. I chose to go down the route of fraternal twins and I found them really interesting characters to write. The girls are completely different, both in looks and in personality, and I loved every minute of writing about them. When I think of twins, I always think of two people who have a very special bond – a closeness that nobody else can understand and a love that would endure anything. So I decided to flip my ideas around and take Ronnie and Elizabeth down a different route. Not only are they different in appearance, but their personalities are complete opposites. As children, they used to be inseparable but in recent years, they’ve grown apart. I’d even go so far as to say they don’t like each other very much. It goes against everything I want to believe about twins but of course, I have control of their fate, so I didn’t leave it there.

Their relationship is complex, and I enjoyed getting into their heads and trying to imagine what they were thinking. In a funny way, I almost got to be a twin for a few months. To think as they would think and to feel as they would feel. In the seven books I've written, Ronnie and Elizabeth were probably the most enjoyable characters to develop and I was sorry to say goodbye to them when I'd written the final words. My fascination of twins still remains and of course there's always the possibility of my children's children…
In Search of Us by Maria Duffy is published by Hachette Ireland