Maren and her sister Kris were so close they barely needed words to communicate. So when Kris was diagnosed with incurable cancer the knowledge that they would never grow old together was almost too much to bear…

I am out on a run one chilly February day when I receive a text from my twin sister Kris, asking if I’m at home. I have made a life post-university in Cornwall, where I am a garden designer.

Kris is back home in Northampton and has recently returned from a seven-month trip to China.

I tell her I’ll be back soon and, ten minutes later, I’m sitting on my sofa as she tells me she has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. We’re only 23. My world freezes momentarily and then my mind drifts to unthinkable places. 

A week later, Kris is told that her breast cancer has already spread to her spine and is therefore stage four and incurable. This time I am with her, in Northampton, to hear the news.

We’re told in a tiny room in the hospital and she has to lie on the bed to stop herself from collapsing to the ground. My heart starts to thump out of my chest. 

We twins inhabit a world with a permanent other half. We arrive together and have an unspoken belief that we will leave together. This feels wholly beyond the natural order of things, and I am determined to stay by her side throughout whatever she has to endure.

That was 2009 and – defying the statistics – Kris lived for another 15 years. 

Together we formed the breast cancer awareness charity, CoppaFeel!, which not only gave us purpose but also, after our brief spell of independence in our early 20s, brought us back into each other’s lives.

Mum knew she was expecting us before the scan confirmed it. Twins have skipped generations in our family and it was my parents’ turn to bring some double fun into the family lineage.

In a diary entry from 1986, Mum noted the day Kris and I discovered each other for the first time: ‘They lay on the changing table grinning and “talking” to each other.’ That ‘talking’ was of course just cooing and gurgling, but the language in which we communicated throughout our lives never really required words.

Some said that our togetherness was impenetrable. Our big sister, who was only 22 months old when we came along, would likely testify that our double act stole her limelight.

Because we had a big sister, we largely wore hand-me-downs and therefore were rarely dressed in the same clothes – which was probably for the best, as even I struggle to tell us apart in family photos.

We grew up in northern Germany – our father is German; mother English – and started school aged seven in the same class with the same teacher and the same friends.

Our twinhood was the best and safest space for us. Within it, we could do, think, say and feel whatever we wanted. Of course, I was not fully aware of this until we grew older.

Our first attempt at defining our own likes and identities was probably when we staked a claim on our favourite animals. I opted for the penguin and Kris the polar bear, which felt like a dramatic sundering since they live on opposite sides of the world.

We would painstakingly cut out pictures of these polar creatures from magazines and collect ornaments to fill every inch of shelf space in our shared bedroom, and then spend hours making up fantasy worlds, losing ourselves in our magical twindom.

After our parents divorced, our mother took us back to England and, aged ten, our reliance on each other stepped up a notch.

Entering a new school in a new country, wearing a uniform – it all felt new and scary, and yet there was huge comfort in knowing we were going through it together.

People often assume that the joy of being a twin manifests at school in pranks such as class swapping, teacher tricking and homework blagging. By the time we were teenagers, alas, people no longer muddled us up – though we both had blonde hair, Kris chose to wear hers differently to mine, often in a ponytail. She was also the first to dabble in highlights and bravely try a sweeping fringe.

Boys and hormones started to interrupt our twin party, too, though we still shared plenty of nights out (and a Ford Fiesta). We first tasted Bacardi Breezers together and once kissed the same boy on the same night, which surely left him on cloud nine.

After A-levels, we took a gap year in Australia together, and I’m certain I wouldn’t have gone on this far-flung adventure on my own. Yet we grew into ourselves while we were there and, on reflection, this is probably why glimmers of resentment and friction started to mount between us. It felt like the start of us longing to really work out who we were outside the twinship.

On our return, I decided to move to Cornwall and do a degree in garden design at Falmouth University, while Kris stayed at home in Northamptonshire with our mum as she figured out the next chapter.

Then came Kris’s diagnosis – followed by 15 years of treatment and a renewed togetherness that made us cherish life as twins more intensely than ever.

Before she was told she had cancer, Kris had little ambition or sense of self-worth. I was often labelled the more sensible twin and she the more hedonistic one. Somehow in her early 20s she had come adrift, and I hoped one day she would find something to ignite her. Cancer was that something.

In the July after diagnosis, we were invited to a twin party hosted by the twin research department at King’s College London. This was a huge event in the twin calendar.

The organisers decided to segregate the ‘identicals’ from the ‘non-identicals’. We were in the former camp – though at this point chemo had already claimed Kris’s hair, so in fact we looked starkly different.

That day, we delighted in sharing stories and hearing from others about what made life as a twin so unique and special.

A set of elderly male twins stole our hearts. Dressed in identical clothes, finishing each other’s sentences, they were what we’d hoped our future would look like, too. The realisation that we would never grow old together like them was hard to bear.

Yet Kris threw herself into CoppaFeel! while going through targeted treatments and, for a while, seemed to beat all the odds. There were moments of reprieve when her cancer was stable and we built the charity up, employing a team of ten staff and developing life-saving campaigns alongside huge brands.

We sought celebrities to back us – among them our first patrons, presenters Fearne Cotton and Dermot O’Leary, as well as the author and podcaster Giovanna Fletcher, and Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards. We successfully lobbied ministers to get age-appropriate lessons on cancer on to the secondary school curriculum alongside sex education.

Though Kris’s cancer was not linked to genetics, as her identical twin I had to face the fact that I stood a higher chance of getting it, so I started having annual MRI scans.

While the job with CoppaFeel! was certainly not done, in 2016 Kris and I felt a calling to exist as sisters again and focus on our lives together. Aged 30, she moved to Cornwall to be closer to me and we pulled back from the day-to-day running of the charity.

In one of our many fantasy worlds, we owned a cafe, and our next adventure took the shape of a vintage French van, which we named Beyonce (because the actual Beyonce was expecting twins). We honed our baking skills so we could provide German-inspired cakes and pastries alongside speciality coffee. We took our wares to festivals, cycling trails and weddings.

It was a simple business, and exactly what our minds and our relationship needed.

Since I wasn’t rushing back and forth to CoppaFeel!’s headquarters in London, I also spent more time with my husband, Graham, whom I’d married the previous year. He knew Kris before cancer and had lived through all of these changes with me, so he understood how important it was for me to be with her.

For her tenth ‘cancerversary’, we threw a cat-themed party in the Eden Project’s Mediterranean Biome, surrounded by colour and life. Little did I know, as Kris danced the night away, that I had a new life growing inside me that night.

Later that year, we welcomed my son into our twinhood, knowing that his presence would not only shake up our dynamic but also offer us a new perspective.

For Kris, he represented the assurance that beyond her was life and love.

In late 2022, her cancer progressed, finding its way to new parts of her body – her bones, her liver, her brain. I felt every scan result with her, every new symptom and every new pain.

A year before she died, as the cancer outsmarted the treatments, her world started to get smaller. She wanted to celebrate her life with her friends and family in a way that truly reflected who she was.

Having never married or had children of her own, she hadn’t had an opportunity to organise an event like this, and so she called this celebratory day her FUNeral.

It took place in Truro Cathedral on a warm day in June. I’ve never known dread and adrenaline like it. It was the most incredible day, featuring Dawn French ‘officiating’ as the Vicar of Dibley, a eulogy in the form of a rap, a massive glitter ball, friends sharing memories and dancing to an orchestral band, and tequila being sipped from skull shot glasses. It was perfectly Kris.

In the final weeks of her life, I became her full-time carer. As her cognitive health declined and communication became difficult, I was her voice. Decisions made on her behalf came from a deep and trusted understanding of her needs. She died in May 2024, aged 38, at home in Newquay, with me by her side.

It’s hard to convey in words what it feels like to lose a twin. And for those who weren’t born a twin it is impossible to fully comprehend it. Half of your sense of self is provided and sustained by your sibling.

Perhaps it is fitting that the word ‘twin’ is held within the word ‘entwined’, as my life, even now, feels so interwoven with Kris and her story.

As I try to untether myself and work out who I am now I’m no longer a twin, without the safety and comfort that bond provides, I’m learning a great deal about myself and what I am capable of.

Kris was my crutch and also my veil in many ways. Sometimes we hid behind each other and our double act, but we always knew what the other needed without ever having to say it. There’s a belonging in twinship that is hard to replicate in other relationships. It is a unique kind of grief.

While her physical being is no longer here, I feel Kris with me all the time, and in decisions I make about my life – from huge existential ones to what to have for dinner.

A week after her death, the Northern Lights lit up the skies in England in the identical colours that she had chosen for her FUNeral. Everyone I know who saw them messaged me and said, ‘It’s her’. I agreed that it was.

Her wise, mischievous smile is now so prominent in my son’s face. I’m constantly surrounded by things, people and places that remind me of her and our time together.

Even though my twin is no longer here, I carry with me the knowledge that I was lucky to experience a love so pure, so instinctive and so deeply human. I miss my twin beyond words, but I will forever be grateful that I – we – got to feel a bond that so few feel.

The new edition of Glittering a Turd by Kris Hallenga, with extra material written by Maren Sheldon and a foreword by Dawn French, is out now (£10.99, HQ)