THIS ISSUE

The day I met my secret twin

They were kept apart for 26 years, but when Ulli Reichenbach, 39, finally met her twin sister, she was stunned by their spookily similar lives. She and her twin, Conny Holzbrecher, tell eve their amazing story

I woke up as soon as the sun hit my bedroom curtains then, jangling with nerves, I made my way towards the phone. My fingers shook as I dialled the number of a woman who could complete or devastate my life, a woman I’d never met, a woman who was my twin sister.

‘Conny?’ I asked, as a female voice answered the phone. ‘Yes,’ she replied. And that was all it took. Twenty-six years after we had been separated as babies, we had spoken to each other for the first time. We both broke down and sobbed for five minutes.

As long as I can remember, I had felt something was missing from my life. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I hated being alone as a child, howling if my parents were late collecting me from school, convinced I’d been abandoned. I’d even use dolls to bribe my little sister Claudia to sleep alongside me in bed. Now I know why this loneliness tugged at me – I was missing my twin. Perhaps I wanted Claudia to sleep next to me as it subconsciously reminded me of Conny’s body next to me inside our mother; apparently twins touch, play and even fight in the womb. I wasn’t meant to be alone and, somehow, I knew that.

Conny and I were born in Germany and left in a children’s home there when we were five months old.

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