Plan B Forum

One has straight ginger hair, a fair complexion and deep blue eyes. The other has masses of curls, far darker skin and her eyes are a sparkling brown.

With such opposing looks it’s hard to believe this striking pair are sisters. But they are much more than that – they are twins. The girls were born with radically different colouring thanks to a quirk of their mixed-race parentage







Lucy and Maria Aylmer’s mother Donna is half Jamaican and their father Vince is white, and together they managed to produce one white twin and one black twin. The girls were born in January 1997. Their mother was astonished when she first saw the twins, as nothing on the scans had prepared her for their different skin tones. Fair-haired Lucy, who lives with her family in Gloucester, said: ‘It was such a shock for her because things like skin colour don’t show up on scans before birth. 'So she had no idea that we were so different. When the midwife handed us both to her she was just speechless.’

Their mother, who is 47 and a warehouse worker, and their 53-year-old father, who works as a scaffolder, split up after the twins were born.