The taxi driver took a minute to think about the address I'd given him before telling me it wouldn't be cheap.
"No matter," I smiled, "I reckon it'll be worth it."
He nodded and swung out into the traffic of central London.
"First time in London is it?"
"Yeah I'm going to find my sister."
"Why, is she lost?"
So I told him about how we'd been separated at birth and adopted by two different couples and how, now that we were eighteen, I'd made it my aim in life to find her.
"So this address, is that where she lives?"
"Yes I think so; I hope so."
"I can see where you're coming from, but what if she doesn't want to know you?"
"Well I'd be disappointed obviously, but at least I'd know that she's alive and well."
"True."
We chatted about this and that until finally he pulled up at the end of a small cul-de-sac. "There you go mate, that'll be thirty nine pounds."
I gave him fifty and thanked him warmly.
"Good luck mate." he said cheerfully as he drove off leaving me to walk a few yards to the house where I hoped to find my sister.
A small thin woman answered the door after my second impatient knock and asked me what I wanted.
"My name's John Carson, I'm hoping I can meet my sister today."
"There's nobody by the name of Carson here."
"Mrs. Sharpe," I said after a deep breath. "I know that your adopted daughter Cherry is my twin sister, I know she lives here. I've come almost two hundred miles to see her. I've waited eighteen years to see her and I'm not leaving until I do."
"She doesn't want to meet you," she said and tried to shut the door, but I'd already anticipated that and placed my foot in the way.
"I don't believe you. But if Cherry tells me that herself, I'll gladly leave and you'll never see me again."
"You're not seeing her," she said and pushed the door again to no avail. "I'll call the police."
"Please do." I held my phone out to her, "We're both over eighteen Mrs. Sharpe. We're officially adults and you can't stop us seeing each other."
"Just go away," and this time in order to save amputation, I withdrew my foot from the door way.
I turned and walked down the path just as a new mini pulled into the driveway. The front door opened behind me and I saw Mrs. Sharpe gesticulating to the car driver.
"Hurry up," she urged, "Cherry hurry up and come in."
"For Christ's sake," I muttered to myself as the driver turned towards me, her face a picture of confusion. She looked scared as I took two steps across the lawn to the car.
"Cherry," I said softly, "I think you're my sister."
"Show me your right arm," she said firmly without getting out of the car.
I smiled at her as I took my jacket off and held my arm out, she looked at the birth mark and then down at her own arm, she had an identical mark in exactly the same place as mine.
"Cherry come in the house this instance, he's trouble."
"Trouble mum? Trouble? He's my twin brother."
She looked back up at me with the biggest, bluest eyes in the world and smiled showing perfect teeth, perfect that is but for a tiny gap in her top row just like me.
"You'd better get in," she smiled again, "You can buy me a drink."
She reversed quickly down the driveway into the road and roared off leaving her adopted mother staring after us.
"She said you didn't want to meet me," I said and she looked round at me puzzled.
"I wrote to you."
"I never got any letter from you. She must have intercepted it."
"She threatened to call the police."
"She's paranoid, she always has been."
"There's a pub look."
"I know, but that's the first place they'd look."
"They?"
"Oh she'll have phoned dad at his office, he'll be on his way home already," Cherry answered.
"I didn't intend any aggravation."
"How did you find me?"
"I hired a private detective, or an enquiry agent as they prefer to be known nowadays. He went to the national archives in London and searched for our birth using our mothers name."
"So how did you know you're a twin."
"Easy," I laughed, "My adoptive parents told me."
"The only thing I was told was that I had a twin but it died."
"No, he's very much alive."
"So I see," she grinned as she pulled into another pub car park out in the country.
"I'll just have a coke please, I'm driving."
We spent two hours just talking, catching up. I told her about my life with the nice people I called mum and dad. About how I worked for myself as a motor bike courier until I won the money that allowed me to look for her. About how I'd got myself a lovely little flat, but most of all I told her about the obsession I had of finding my twin sister.
"So have you come to take me away?"
"No," I laughed, "Unless you want me to."
"Yes please."
"You can't be serious."
"I'm deadly serious John."
"Why?"
"They're smothering me. I'm eighteen and I've never had a boy friend. There's an enquiry if I'm out after ten at night. I'm not allowed to wear mini skirts, I have to wear granny panties, although I was allowed half a pint of shandy on my eighteenth birthday."