‘We knew we’d have parallel lives’
‘Being a twin means always having your best friend around you’
Andy Daly and Tracy Tredoux, 54, live in London and are non-identical.
Andy says: Growing up in South Africa, Tracy and I went to the same school and were best friends. Although I moved to London first, in 1993, and she stayed in South Africa, we spoke on the phone every day. No matter where we are, we will make time to speak to each other daily.
We both ended up becoming lawyers. In 1991, I joined the firm where Tracy worked and we were made partners around the same time. However, we were in different departments, so we didn’t see each other at work as much as we’d have liked to. We both married lawyers, too, but I think that’s more to do with the intense nature of the job and the fact that you tend to mainly socialise with other lawyers. We used to spend a lot of our free time going out with our now husbands and friends as a big group.
Our mum passed on her interest in healthy eating to us, so I’m not surprised that we both ended up changing career and becoming nutritionists. My daughter Olivia, 16, was diagnosed with Asperger’s and Tracy’s husband became ill with Lyme disease. We swapped advice on how we could help them through food, which made us wonder whether we could do it as a job.
We both went back to studying together in 2014 at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in Richmond. When things got hard for me at home and I struggled with the course, Tracy would give me advice and I’d do the same for her.
We’ve always supported each other. That’s the way we’ve succeeded, because when we’re going through a crisis and one of us can’t cope, the other is encouraging. It’s incredible being able to count on each other like that.
Tracy says: When people ask me what being a twin is like, I tell them it means always having your best friend around you. When I dropped off my daughter Nicola, who is now 18, on her first day of school, I was mortified to realise that she had to be on her own. It makes me feel secure knowing Andy is always there for me.
I emigrated from South Africa in 1997 with Jacques, who is now my husband. There was no doubt that I would live in the same country as Andy, and Jacques knew that – I always wanted to be as close to my twin sister as possible. Now we are both based in north-west London and our daughters go to the same school – they’re good friends. Jacques was diagnosed with Lyme disease a few years ago, and I began reading and researching about how diet could help. It made me want to switch careers to something nutrition-based, so I enrolled on the same course as Andy.
We now run our own nutrition practices. We are often asked to give talks on nutrition together and having her there before I make a difficult presentation is very calming.
People might think it strange that we have such parallel lives, but I think we always knew we would go on to do the same things. We’ve always had similar interests and the same approach to life, so it feels right.