Twin sisters Marcia and Millie Biggs are a pair in a million. Born within minutes of each other, the Birmingham youngsters have just celebrated their first birthday.
The big difference between Marcia and Millie, when compared with other twins, is plain for all to see.
While Millie bears all the traits of having a white mother and Jamaican father, twin sister Marcia now boasts a fair complexion, strawberry blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes.
For parents Amanda, aged 39, and Michael, aged 40, who live off Summer Road, in Erdington, their daughters were always going to be special.
Michael, a panel beater and car mechanic, and Amanda, who used to work at Argos in Birmingham city centre, have been partners for ten years.
The long-awaited offspring were only conceived after Amanda underwent IVF treatment.
Even then things went less than smoothly, and Marcia and Millie were born by Caesarean section at Good Hope Hospital, in Sutton Coldfield. The parents, who each have twins in their family, were expecting their own twosome after Amanda underwent her seven-week scan.
She said yesterday: "They weren't identical twins, but they looked alike when they were born. It was only when they were a few weeks old that you started to notice the differences between them. Millie started getting darker skinned, much more like her dad, particularly on her legs.
"At more or less the same time, Marcia also started to develop a lighter complexion and her hair also began to get blonder and curlier.
"It's one of those unusual things to do with the genes - a one in a million chance."
* Their story appears in the current issue of Love It magazine.
