Griotte and Luffy, two small-sized dogs, barked their heads off in the stairwell of an Art Deco building located at Rue de Queuleu, in Metz. The two small creatures stood watch outside the first-floor door, where 78-year-old twin sisters Danièle Chodorge and Marie-Claude Lesprit (known as "Marie") share a flat. Danièle was elegantly dressed, so was Marie. Marie had removed all her jewelry under her sister's critical watch a few minutes before we arrived. Earrings, necklaces, rings, it was a bit too much: "It's no longer fashionable!" It only took a few seconds to get a feel for their relationship. Here, complicity and spats have coexisted for 14 years.

In this apartment, everything comes in doubles: Each one has her own room at the end of the hallway, her own soap dish near the sink, her own dog under her arm. The table had been set for us. Earlier in the day, the phone rang: As our appointment was scheduled for around noon, they had planned to have a "snack," which actually turned out to be a feast. Sausage, liver pâté, mortadella, ham... "Would you like some butter?" Lunch began with a presentation of the family tree, as if we were checking in on long-lost relatives. Danièle and Marie have two sons each as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren for one. No one was forgotten. Their voices are so similar you can't always tell who's talking.

After writing down the birth dates of their entire lineage, we finally came to theirs, in July 1945. Their father was a soldier who got involved in the Resistance and was then taken prisoner by the Germans: The Second World War kept the couple – who were already parents of teenagers – at a distance. Their reunion was a "rumpy pumpy party," Danièle reckoned. On seeing their mother's protruding belly, the doctors predicted she would give birth to a "big kid, a boy."

Seven months later, as they were moving to Baden-Baden, a German town close to the French border, the family had to stop at the maternity hospital in Toul (eastern France), not far from Nancy, for an emergency delivery. Surprise: Not one, but two babies, both girls. Danièle went head first, and the name that was meant for a boy was feminized. "She wouldn't let me out. I turned blue!" interjected Marie, commenting, "With twins, there's always a dominant one." And "As you get older, it gets worse and worse!" Her big sister Françoise came up with her name: "Let's call her after my girlfriend: Marie-Claude."

'Miss Cream Puff and Miss Coffee'

"Here, have a drink! It'll do you good!" said Marie to her elder sister before pouring her a few drops of rosé from Provence. Much to Danièle's astonishment, her sister's choice of wine was not a stiff one. They continued their story while eating a few slices of sausage. The family set off again for Germany. Their father was a gendarme in the French occupation troops headquartered in Baden-Baden, where they lived until the age of 7. Two little girls as alike as they were different. One knitts, the other loves tinkering. "When we were little, they gave us tricycles, so I started pedaling. I turn around and what's this one doing? She's taking the whole thing apart with a screwdriver!" laughed Danièle. In return, Marie described her twin as "Mum's walking stick," always behind her skirt. "That's why she knows how to cook."

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