I was born in January 1946, with a hole in my heart, and spent six weeks in an incubator. I was brought up by my Mum and grandparents in Cambridge. My Mum married when I was five, and when I was six my new Dad adopted me. I then had a younger sister, Mary, and that was the family. We lived happily ever after!

Every year after Mum got married, one of our holidays was to go up to Cheshire to see my uncle Frank, on my Dad’s side. He was an optician and a Magic Circle magician. I loved going there, and uncle Frank did my eye tests from when I was 11.

Mum was the youngest of four siblings by quite a lot. One of her sisters lived round the corner and had two children basically my age. The eldest, my cousin Judith, decided to do her family tree and every time we would meet up she’d dish out the paperwork with what she’d discovered.

One day, an aunt of Judith’s said she’d overheard something when she was a teenager, that Christine (that’s me!) was a twin. Judith said no, that couldn’t be true.

But some time later, Judith went to visit her Mum’s best friend. She said, “Deb, you know my family really well. Was there anyone in the family who had twins?” Deb replied: “My lips are sealed on the matter,” which meant yes. So Judith went away thinking that there was something in this rumour.

After some time, Judith put my date of birth into an online ancestry site and up cropped ‘Patricia’ as well. Judith sat on that for a while, before she told anyone.

It was Judith’s younger sister’s birthday party, and Judith was sitting next to Mary, my little sister. A couple of days later I got a call from Mary saying she wanted to come and see me. I thought it was a good idea, as Mum had moved to a residential home and we had bags of things to look through.

So, Mary and I were sitting going through Mum’s photos and accounts when she suddenly stopped and said: “This is not what I came for.” 

“What do you mean,” I said. 

“Judith told me something she should have told you but didn’t. You were born a twin,” Mary said.

“Ok,” I said. I thought my twin had probably died at birth.

But my twin hadn’t. Mary had already managed to track her for six months after our birthday.

We sent for both Patricia’s and my birth certificate.

“Dad Unknown. Place of birth - Brocket Hall.”

The certificate said on it the time I was born. They only did that for twins, because you have to know who was the oldest.

We started talking and researching. We found an old post office book of Mum’s when she came out of the army, which tells you where she took money out. Mum left the army in November; we were born in January 1946 and Mum arrived with me at my grandparents’ in Cambridge that April. My grandparents brought me up while Mum went out to work.

I found out that we were both put up for adoption, but I wasn’t adopted.

I started to investigate. In November 2013 I eventually found an organisation called After Adoption and paid them to help me look for my twin sister. I was 66 at that point.

The following June, After Adoption said they’d discovered some information. They’d found some members of the family; a nephew and a sister-in-law; and that my twin didn’t have a GP, which meant she lived abroad, almost certainly in Australia, New Zealand, Canada or South Africa. 

When After Adoption contacted the nephew, he said: “I need to tell you that the twin knows she was adopted and she does know she’s a twin. But, when she found out, there was a huge family row.” He didn’t know whether my twin would want to hear from me.

After a long discussion, the lady from After Adoption offered to write a letter and the nephew’s niece offered to take it to Patricia, my twin. 

At first Patricia, who was called Jeannie by her adopted family, had thrown my letter away. It had the wrong date on it - not my date of birth but the one from my adoption certificate. But, she did know my name and that it was right, so she eventually emailed After Adoption back. By that point Jeannie’s Mum had passed away.

A counsellor talked to both of us and agreed that we were both grounded enough to cope with swapping email addresses.

And so my first email to her started: “Dear Jeannie, Long time, no see…”

From then on we emailed a lot, sharing stories about our families.

Then one day she said: “Do you know how I know?”. This is where it gets strange.

Jeannie’s story

Aged 12, Jeannie had her eyes examined at Stockport hospital. They sent her to a local optician in Cheadle Hume. The optician’s assistant jumped, looked flustered and went in to talk to the optician. 

The optician said to her: “I think I need to tell you I’m a magician and I’m going to do some magic. Is that ok? I’m going to guess your date of birth. 28 January? Yes, that’s right. Instead of testing your eyes I’m going to guess the lenses straight away.”

Now, Jeannie doesn’t know if he was exactly right, but he was close. She went home and told her parents, who thought it was just a bit of fun. The hospital must have sent the information on, they said.

Jeannie went back to collect her specs, and the optician showed her a film. Things were different then! He was always taking photos and Super 8 Cine home videos. He showed her a film and Jeannie said: “How did you do that? How did you get a picture of me in a boat with people I don’t know?”

He said: “That’s not you, that’s my niece Christine.” Naughty really, wasn’t he?

So Jeannie told her parents what happened and they went ballistic. Her Mum cried because she had wanted everyone to think that Jeannie was her birth daughter. Jeannie’s Mum had gone to London to collect a baby. She was offered twin girls but didn’t think they were well enough off to support twins. Then six weeks later, Jeannie’s Mum came back for a baby - that was Jeannie - and was not told she was a twin. 

Jeannie’s dad was furious. There was a row to beat all rows. Later I found out that the cousins sat on the stairs listening to the row.

The deal was that Jeannie would never look for me because it wouldn’t be good for me or family and no-one was ever to know. Everyone was sworn to secrecy, but I suspect my uncle told my Mum.

Uncle Frank, the magician optician, gave Jeannie a photo of my Mum, her birth Mum, which Jeannie never told parents she had. She had a very secure family life. 

Telling Mum

Jeannie and I started talking via email. I eventually asked whether she knew that my Mum was still alive? Would she like to come and visit?

Mary and I had prepared Mum carefully - by this time she had dementia so we had to be very sensitive.

We started by showing her the pictures of Brocket Hall. I said, “Do you remember the day you had the baby?”

“Oh yes,” she said.

“So you had me?” We waited. Nothing else came.

“What happened another hour later?” I asked.

“Another surprise,” she said. 

“What surprise?”

“Another baby,” Mum said.

“You had two babies?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Do you know what happened to the other baby?” I asked. Mum looked at her lap, like she was looking at the baby. 

She said, they told me a nurse came and she took the baby from my lap. “I said ‘you can’t do that’ but the nurse said, ‘it’ll be alright, and the baby will be well looked after.’”

Mary told Mum: “That’s what happened. The baby was adopted and everything was fine. We’re going to look for the baby. If we do, would you like to meet her?”

Mum said she certainly would.

Jeannie came to stay for a week in November 2014, met friends in church, our family and visited my Mum, her birth Mum. When my Mum and Patricia, now Jeannie, met, I told Mum that Jeannie had come all the way from Canada.

Jeannie said to Mum: “I’m so pleased to see you. You did the right thing by me.”

That week Jeannie visited Mum and showed her photos of where she lived.

I saw my Mum’s guilt of years washed away.

Sisters, reunited

I made the return visit to see Jeannie in June 2015, and we met in Cape Cod that October to celebrate our 70th birthdays. Since then, we’ve met twice and had planned to have our 75th birthdays together, although Covid-19 got in the way of that. We email every week.

What’s really strange, is that although we were separated for 67 years our mannerisms are the same. We both love sport, art galleries and the theatre, and neither of us is musical. 

We’re on the same wavelength.

Chris Tabor lives in Hillside, Rugby. She belongs to Dunchurch Baptist Church, led Dunchurch Crusader Group, and is a long-serving governor at the Dunchurch schools.