One Twin Remembers, the Other Doesn’t: Telling my Sister About Our Toddlerhood Trauma

 Should I tell Eve — my identical twin — what I have remembered?

In autumn 2016, a buried memory surfaced. I recalled seeing Mum’s brother in my bedroom rearing over me. He then did something despicable. Eve witnessed it. She was there too. For a few days, I carried knowledge she didn’t have. One twin knew something horrible; the other didn’t, just as I had for almost fifty years.

This split between us mirrored a split within myself. I have an ‘inner twin’ — a divided self. Half of me knew something horrible; the other half lived in denial. Now the burden pressed heavily. Should I tell her? Would the truth destroy her? Or was silence another form of harm?

Knowing Something My Identical Twin Doesn’t

Fragments of toddlerhood continue to surface. I remembered a dark‑haired man pushing Eve and me across the recreation ground in our wide blue pushchair. Muggy clouds hung low. Trees whispered. He had taken us out. Where was he taking us?

Another flicker‑memory: Eve and me in the bathroom around midday. Cold water. Echoing splashes. The same man kneeled over us. The water is cold, very cold. We were toddlers. Being twins, we stuck together like glue. She had seen him too.

I decided I had to tell her.

Taken from my book Mirror Image Shattered. My twin and me in our pram c1966.

Telling My Twin What My Inner Twin Knows

It didn’t go well. Eve’s face tightened with scepticism. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. She didn’t believe me. She couldn’t.

By this time, Mum was dying. Relatives we rarely saw began visiting. People connected to Mum’s brother resurfaced. Gatherings formed, photos were examined, and stories spilled out. Eve heard things about our toddlerhood she had never known. How Mum's brother used to creep about the house; him taking Dad out for drinks and teasing Nan. Details grew more unsettling — his behaviour, his inappropriate ‘jokes.’ the way he treated women and messed about with his ex-wife's sisters. I didn’t want to hear more. God, I couldn't bear it.

As weeks passed, Eve began asking questions. What were those disturbing drawings we churned out to as children? She had intrusive thoughts and dreams like me. Anorexia blighted her teens. She became rigid, robotic, obsessed with exercise and calories. Her fun vanished. I suffered dysmorphia — a distorted sense of self. We rowed often. She fell to six stone and nearly got hospitalisalised.

Throughout my twenties, I grieved for her old self. She had become withdrawn, brittle. At infant school, she sucked a red blanket and grizzled for hours. She struggled with learning and tantrums. Like me, she blamed everything on our parents' trouble marriage. Years of counselling did nothing.

With my revelation, she began to reflect. Memories started to surface. She saw a man on her bed. Rearing over her.

My Twin Remembered Before I Remembered

Almost forty years earlier, Eve had told Mum the same thing: ‘A man came on my bed,’ (she's said). Mum erupted, telling her never to say it again. I dismissed Eve was ‘being daft.’ What man? I thought.

Now, Eve re‑remembered that moment. She could see his face rearing over her. She had remembered — and I hadn’t. The opposite of what was happening now. She had doubted herself for being so young, pushed the memory away, and reverted to a life of oblivion.

After my revelation, Eve withdrew. She didn’t ring. We spoke less. She didn’t know who she was anymore. She admitted she would never have realised the truth without me telling her. She would have forgotten her disclosure and lived out her days in oblivion.

As the dust settled, a dialogue began. Eve told me Dad used to take us to nearby woods. In a clearing, her nerves jangled. She had been there before — but not with Dad. The same unease swept over me in these woods. We shared the memory of being pushed across the recreation ground by a big, strange man. He had taken us to a patch of woods.

Twins Fractured by a Dark Family Secret

I asked Eve if she remembered Mum's brother in the bathroom with us. ‘Yes,’ she said. Her memory had faded into the background like wallpaper, just as mine had. She called it a ‘fang memory’ because of the biting cold of the water.

  
I asked about our bedroom, the spare room. She had impressions of smothering, a man’s big face overshadowing her. They made no sense, so she had pushed them away. ‘I don’t remember anything else,’ she said, ‘but I’m beginning to feel bad about it.’

Eve finally shut down. She didn’t want to know anymore. She wanted to return to oblivion, to her previous belief system, to childhood innocence. She wished I had never told her about our uncle. I couldn’t blame her.

After months of feeling alone, I began my research. And I wrote my books.

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