AFTER 30 years apart, a South Woodford Waitrose worker has told of her shock in discovering the uncanny similarities between her and her long lost sister.

Carla Westburgh, 41, of Washington Road, South Woodford, has worked at Waitrose in the High Road for eight years, unaware that just six miles away in Canary Wharf, her missing sister was employed by the same super market chain.

Carla met her half sister Lisa Fretwell, 45, for the first time when she was just eight years old, but the pair lost contact when their dad moved to Australia.

Carla said: “When we were younger my dad took us out on a Sunday and I met Lisa, but I didn’t realise at first that she was my half-sister.

“I never stopped thinking about her and I decided to try and find her by setting up a family tree online.

“About one month later Lisa contacted me saying ‘I think I’m your sister’.

"I’ve also been in contact with other relatives I didn’t know I had.”

Through social networking website Friends Reunited, the sisters were able to chat to each other via email.

Carla said: “We were emailing each other for about a month before we met up.

"We decided to meet at Bethnal Green tube station and when Lisa pulled up in her car she said she knew straight away that it was me.”

She added: “We had lunch and a couple of glasses of wine and there was lots of tears and laughter.

"When Lisa first told me she had just applied for a job at the Canary Wharf branch of Waitrose I couldn’t believe it.

“Who would have thought we'd work at the same place.”

Two years before Carla set out on her quest, Lisa had also tried to track down her lost sibling by putting an advert in her local paper, but the appeal never reached South Woodford.

When asked what it was like meeting her sister again after 30 years, Carla said: “We just couldn’t stop talking - It was really weird.

“Now we don’t go a day without speaking to each other, even if it’s just a text.”

The pair have discovered however that they share more in common than just working for the same company.

Carla said: “We have the same sense of humour and we both suffer from migraines, neither of us like lifts and we both hate flying."

She added: “We had a photoshoot about three months ago for Waitrose and the photographer said he’d never met two people who giggled so much.”

By Kerry Magorian