‘I know how it feels when your twin takes their own life'

When Caroline Flack took her own life a year ago, she left behind her twin Jody. Nancy Power talks about the unique pain of losing your twin

- CHARLOTTE LYTTON

Where twins are concerned, there’s usually a quiet one and a loud one – a rebel and a reserved type. That was the case for myself and Jane. Born 15 minutes apart, I never imagined that the other half of me would be gone before we’d even reached 21.

Losing your twin is a particular kind of agony that’s near impossible to describe – when I heard that Jody Flack had gone through the same with Caroline, and worse, having to identify her beloved sister’s body, it brought the heartbreak rushing back. Not that it ever really goes away – time doesn’t heal the pain, you just get used to living with it.

I have for more than 30 years, learning of Jane’s death by suicide on a foggy October evening in 1986. I was a student in Nottingham and, having just found out I’d been awarded a work placement in Italy, was having an impromptu celebration with my flatmate. There was wine, loud music and the feeling that finally my career in fashion was finding its feet. That would all come tumbling down when the phone began to ring. It was my mother, asking how to get into my flat. I went downstairs to open the door and saw my parents – who had by then been divorced for years – approaching in the mist from a payphone, there to tell me that Jane had finally succeeded in taking her life.

Like Jody and Caroline, Jane and I had diverged. Caroline’s twin Jody has three children and never engaged with the spotlight, while the presenter’s glamorous life was regularly featured on social media and in the press.