He was indefinitely refused permission to leave the USSR as he had served as an officer in the army during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was considered to hold State secrets. It was 1988 and I was living in Russia at the time, having gone out to work as a nanny for the British Embassy and inconveniently fallen in love with, and then married, a Muscovite. It’s not every day you get to meet conjoined twins, so as I made my way up to the room where 38‑year‑old Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova were waiting for me in Moscow’s Dental Hospital, I was just a little bit jittery.
Juliet Butler explains how she came to write a novel based on the lives of the conjoined twins
