WHEN Cherald Shaw started school she immediately struck up a friendship with Hazel Cox, despite being two years younger.

Other pupils at Hastings Secondary Modern School would even joke that they looked alike as they spent more and more time together.

Then, after almost a year of sharing secrets, clothes and homework, Cherald discovered a shocking secret that was to destroy the friendship - Hazel was really her sister.

Cherald was so shocked that she felt she could never speak to Hazel again.

But now, after more than 36 years apart, Hazel Overfield and Cherald Dalton, as they are now, are planning to meet up again.

Cherald, of Ninfield, near Battle, said: "When I started at secondary school, people always asked me if I knew Hazel but I had no idea who she was.

"We met and became friends because it was like, 'Oh, you're the girl people say I look like' and we got on really well."

Cherald had been adopted when she was two weeks old, but was unaware of it.

Her adoptive parents went on to have four other children.

Meanwhile Hazel had stayed with their natural mother.

Cherald said: "My parents got a bit suspicious of Hazel. They thought she probably was my sister and decided the time had come to tell me that I was adopted and that I had another sibling.

"It came as such a bombshell that I blocked it out. I couldn't cope with the fact my best friend was in fact my older sister and I just refused to talk to her.

"We were in the same school, in the same town and I am sure we bumped into each other, but I can't remember. I wasn't really curious about her. It was such a shock and my parents were really upset, so I just ignored it."

Now 47, Cherald is married to Jack, the operations manager of a civil engineering firm, and has two children, Matthew, 14, and Rebecca, seven.

She said: "I have no regrets from that time. I don't dwell on the past. I had a really happy childhood and my brothers and sisters and parents I grew up with are my family. Finding Hazel again is like a bonus."

Hazel, 49, emigrated to New Zealand when she was 20 and then moved again to Australia two years later, where she now lives with her husband, Trevor, and children, Rosemary, 20, and Leon, 18.

Her story is quite different. She knew Cherald was her sister when they met at school for the first time but decided to keep it a secret.

Speaking to the Argus from her home in Brisbane, she said: "It was really strange, but my mother knew Cherald had been adopted in the same area as we lived and there was a chance we might meet at school. She told me about her so I would be prepared.

"When she actually did come to my school it was mind-blowing. Kids were saying to us, 'Are you sisters?' and I would be saying no. It was a really, really difficult time for me. I just knew it was something I should never tell anyone.

"That we became friends was inevitable, we had a lot in common and we are the same flesh and blood.

"I don't remember being rejected by her, but I do remember we weren't friends anymore. That was heartbreaking."

Hazel, who now works as a teacher's aid, did not tell anyone she had a sister until earlier this year.

She said: "I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it just seemed that that had to be the way it was. If I told someone, I would have to explain how it happened and I couldn't face that. It seemed easier to tell people I was an only child."

But last March Hazel was driven by a need to find Cherald and placed newspaper adverts.

She said: "We are both getting older and I wanted to know if she would talk to me. My children are leaving home and it was a selfish thing, I wanted someone who was my family."

Cherald telephoned her sister almost straight after seeing the advert. Both women accept that time is a great healer.

Cherald said: "It was amazing. She was so overwhelmed that I had got in touch and we had so much to talk about. It was good to find out we still have things in common, however little, like I can't swim and neither can she and we are both cautious drivers."

Hazel admits to bursting into tears when she heard her sister's voice on the other end of the telephone.

She said: "I remember my son answered the phone and he said, 'Your sister's on the phone'. I told him not to be stupid but he said, 'No, it really is'."

The sisters have been in regular contact since March, but they didn't hold out much hope of seeing one another again until Cherald entered a competition, run by Eurobell Telecommunications and Southern FM.

She was asked who she would like to be reunited with for the millennium and nominated Hazel.

As winners, Cherald and her family will be flown out to

Australia to meet her sister in the new year.

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