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enthusiastic.
    All made-up and ready to record the screen test, I dashed into the Channel 9 loos for a nervous pee, and realised Libbi was in the next cubicle.
    â€˜How long do you think we’ll last?’ she asked.
    â€˜A week, a month, who knows?’ I responded. We giggled. It would be a great adventure, if nothing else. It was our running joke for the next five months. ‘Still here!’ we’d laugh disbelievingly.
    The day we shot the screen test I was uncomfortable with the subject matter chosen for debate. Libbi and I had both suggested various political issues that could be debated, but the view from the production side was that politics was generally a turn-off. It was deemed boring for women at home. We had a half-hearted attempt at discussing the coup in Fiji, which was plastered all over the front pages that day, but none of us knew very much about what was going on in Suva, and there was certainly no time for research to help us discuss it. It worked against our push for more serious content.
    In the end we talked about fashion, discussing how men and women have a different view about what clothes make a woman look good (I had no view on this) and the drug habit of some rock star whose name was totally unfamiliar to me.
    After the screen test I emailed Libbi:
    For me it was a struggle to think of much to say about any of the topics – it was over before it began. It felt like a lot of 30-second grabs – not a proper conversation.

    
Anyway, when I got home I just sat on the floor and cuddled Isabella (sprung from hospital this afternoon) and remembered that real life is more important than the superficial stuff of women’s magazines.
    She responded :
    I know – it was all a little light on, though in terms of chemistry I thought we were comfy (or at least getting there). Life is more than women’s magazines, though great editors know how to tell important stories through the peephole of someone’s life.

    
I wonder if we will get the chance?

    
And will we get the chance all together?

    
Anyway. It was fun to trot round the paddock and lovely to meet you. It did feel better for you than last time, didn’t it? It’s such an emotional rollercoaster, this business.
    With the show’s future in the lap of the gods, I negotiated a period in which to disappear. I felt an urgent need to spend time with my older sister, Margaret, especially if I was soon to be tied down by a twelve-month contract. David and the family agreed that I should spend Christmas away from home – the first time I had ever done so – and with mixed feelings about what the following year might bring, I jumped on a plane bound for Canada, where my sister and brother-in-law live.

9
    Since 2005 the amount of time I can spare for my village house in France has been greatly reduced, because I have a new priority and a new destination in my life. Every year, several times if I can manage it, I travel to beautiful Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia, where Margaret and her husband, Ken, have a farm.
    My sister and I were separated for more than five decades, and reconnected by chance after my first memoir,
Au Revoir
, was published. During an interview on ABC’s
Life Matters
on Radio National, Geraldine Doogue questioned me about this aspect of my story; I told her that I knew Margaret was in Canada, and worked at a university, but I had been unable to track her down. Later that day a former colleague of Margaret’s contacted the radio station to say that she knew my sister and had a current address for her. When that call came through, I sat at my desk and sobbed for half an hour, shaking all over.
    I can’t really explain why finding Margaret was so important to me. Thousands of people have estranged siblings – especially half-brothers and -sisters – and they don’t necessarily feel this