Twins separated by five years

WHEN little Reuben Blake went back to school after Christmas, he left his twin sister Floren behind — and she will not join him for five years.

The siblings were conceived from the same batch of embryos, but were born five years apart to Jody and Simon Blake.

Mr Blake, 45, and his 38-year-old wife had been trying to start a family without success and began fertility treatment in 2005.

During the process, five embryos were created and two implanted in Ms Blake, which resulted in Reuben’s birth on December 9, 2006.

The remaining three embryos were frozen until the couple, from Gloucestershire in Britain, decided to try for another child last year.

Floren arrived on November 16, 2011, five years after Reuben.

“I tell everybody I can,” said Mr Blake.

“Just in kind of mundane settings where people take an interest in a newborn baby and with Reuben around as well, I find it very difficult to resist the temptation to say ‘Oh and by the way, they are twins’. It’s almost just to see people’s response. They are really amazed and surprised.”

Reuben, who had been a little unsure about having a sister, has quickly settled into his role as older brother.

“Since the day Floren was born, he’s been really tender and loving with her,” said Mr Blake, a business and economics lecturer at University College Birmingham.

Even at his young age, Reuben is aware of the special relationship he has with his seven-week-old sister.

“He knows that she’s been in the freezer — he likes to say she has been in the freezer with the chips and the chicken — so he is sort of aware that she is his twin, but obviously he doesn’t really understand how it’s all worked really,” his mother said.