Twins

Twins are a recurring family pattern in the novel, joining the remembered childhood of Rowena and Charlie to the next generation when Sophie’s pregnancy reveals two babies. The motif carries both continuity and uncertainty: Edwina’s photograph holds her children together in a moment of family life, while the later ultrasound makes the family pattern newly visible to Sophie, who has no known history of twins to report.

Rowena and Charlie in Edwina’s memory

A photograph of the family on the beach shows Ollie Treadaway with Rowena on his lap as Charlie reaches toward the sea, clinging to Edwina. The image preserves the twins within a shared family scene, but Edwina’s recollection is sharpened by what followed: she had always feared Charlie would drown and says she knew, deep down, that she would lose him. Her sense of his being only a visitor, never someone she could keep, makes the childhood image tender and painful at once.

The photograph does not merely record the children side by side; it becomes a frame through which Edwina understands the loss that divided her family. Charlie’s later imprisonment and damaged return did not restore the earlier closeness, and Rowena eventually had to get away from him. The twins’ shared beginning therefore stands in contrast to the separations and grief that marked their adult lives.

A pattern carried into Sophie’s pregnancy

When Sophie is expecting her first baby, her obstetrician asks whether there is a history of twins in the family. Sophie laughs and says she knows of none, turning to her mother for confirmation. The question changes meaning when the scan shows two separate but shared heartbeats: twins are not only part of the family’s past but an unexpected prospect in its future.

Sophie’s lack of knowledge matters to the motif. The pattern returns without being consciously transmitted as family history; it appears first as a medical question and then as visible evidence on the screen. The scene links generations while preserving Sophie’s surprise and the limits of what she has been told.

Kinship, memory, and recurrence

The novel places the twins motif alongside other, less secure forms of family belonging. Edwina remembers being a dutiful stepmother to Lucas, but felt that she was acting a part; Lucas was Barbara’s son, and he and Edwina shared no DNA. Her recollection of Barbara and Lucas as closely entwined emphasizes the contrast between biological and stepfamily ties without making biological kinship a guarantee of affection or safety.

Near the end, Lucas admits that he arranged the theft of Edwina’s jewelry box, prompting her to challenge him over blame. He does not want another cycle of accusation, revenge, and guilt. Against that conflict, Sophie’s two heartbeats offer a recurrence rather than a resolution: the family pattern continues, but the new generation enters it without full knowledge of what came before. Twins thus connect inheritance, memory, and loss, while leaving the meaning of that inheritance open.