Twin sisters born minutes apart discover at 49 that they have different fathers
Lavinia and Michelle Osbourne might be biological twins, but quite bizarrely, they don't share the same father.
Now 49 years old, the non-identical pair caught up with The Guardian to discuss making this startling discovery five years ago, having been told by their late mother that she'd had them with a wantaway man named James.
"[James] was my mum's boyfriend, I suppose," said Lavinia. "From what I was told, when my mum got pregnant, he wasn't happy."
Michelle, who was welcomed into the world just minutes apart from Lavinia, added: "He always had one foot out the door. I think his mother used to whisper in his ear, 'Those girls aren't yours.'"
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Interestingly, it was Michelle who always questioned the validity of James' fatherly link to the girls, which led her to eventually purchasing one of Ancestry's genealogy kits.
Lavinia followed suit in the end, albeit reluctantly, and this is when they first encountered the term 'heteropaternal superfecundation' - a rare occurence that means they're technically half-sisters - never before recorded in British history.
Heteropaternal superfecundation happens when a woman releases more than one egg (and beds more than one partner) in the same menstrual cycle.
Then, more than one egg must be fertilised by two separate blokes, leading to the embryos successfully transforming into babies.
Less than 20 documented cases are out there on a global scale - that's how insane this all is.
Michelle went on to reflect: "When Mummy became unwell and wasn't able to formulate any sensible responses to my questions, I saw a picture of James. I hadn't seen him for a very long time. And I just thought, you don't look anything like me. There's no similarity there. I'm not going to have this. So I bought myself a kit.
"I was, like, I want to dispose of this whole concept that this man is my father because, deep down, I don't believe he is. And then it occurred to me that Lavinia will also learn this man isn't our father."
Naturally, Lavinia was taken aback by her sister's defiant move.
"I was irritated by it," she admitted. "Why are we going to dispute what our mother said?
"I think also part of me didn't want to go down that rabbit hole because we knew there was sexual abuse in my mother's childhood. And she was dying."
When the reality of their different dads seeped in, Michelle, who was conceived by a man called Alex, seemed indifferent about the whole thing. It wasn't a shock to her.
"We're so different. I'm still in amazement that this can actually happen – it's super weird, super odd, super rare – but, if I apply it to myself, it makes sense."
Lavinia was much more emotionally tortured by the revelation, though.
"For about a month, I couldn't stop crying," she said. "[Michelle] was the one thing that belonged to me. The one thing I was sure of. And then she wasn't."
Dan Seddon