Sisters Hayleigh and Lauren Durrant are often asked to show ID – but it’s usually to prove that they really are twins. For many people just don’t believe that the girls - one born white, the other black - could possibly have the same parents.
But even more amazingly, they also have younger twin sisters with the same varied colouring - making them all a one-in-a-million family.
Today, on the older sisters’ 18th birthday, they reveal how they are best friends, share the same clothes, still live in the same bedroom, hate being apart - and never get bored of people’s stunned reaction when they say they are twins.
In their first-ever exclusive interview, Hayleigh - who has dark skin and hair like her dad Dean – said, “Some people can be really rude. They’ll say, ‘You’re lying, you aren’t twins - prove it!’ So we’ll reel off the same address or pull our passports out. It’s nice to see the shock on people’s faces. When we went to college it was difficult because there were lots of groups of Asian, white and black kids. The black group were trying to integrate me and I was like, ‘This is my white twin sister.’ No one could believe it. People look at us like it’s some kind of miracle. I’m still amazed that we are twins.”
Lauren, who has her mother Alison Spooner’s green eyes and fair hair, said, “People just assume we’re best friends rather than sisters, let alone twins. I’m happy with that because she is my best friend. We are going to go out clubbing together. The bouncers are going to get a shock when they see we are related.”
The pair amazed doctors when they were born in early 2001 looking so different - at odds of just one in 500,000.
But in a further remarkable twist, seven years later they found their way into the Guinness World Records book when their younger twin sisters Leah and Miya, who are now ten, were also born with one white-skinned and the other with a darker complexion.
They remain the world’s only two sets of twins in one family with different skin tones.
Mum Alison, a 37-year-old office manager, said, “I can’t believe my miracle babies are turning 18. They are best friends and close in every way, apart from looking different. It took me some years to understand the science of how they could appear so different. All the time people say, ‘They are not twins’. One lady at the doctors once said, ‘I just assumed one was yours and the other was her friend’. They were never really bullied, though there were some nasty comments initially. Kids at school used to ask, ‘How come one of you is milk chocolate and the other is white chocolate?’ The girls used to say, ‘It doesn’t matter, we’re sisters and best friends’. I was so proud of them. They’re now more of a phenomenon with their friends. Their school used to have a big picture of them in biology class. No one could understand or believe it.”
It is rare enough for two sets of twins to be born to the same parents, but the chances of them inheriting different skin and hair colour from their mother and father are just one in a million.
The Sun
Add new comment