Dr Sue Kirby (left), 81, a retired health-services researcher, and author Blanche d’Alpuget, 81, met as eight-year-olds. It was partly because of Sue’s father that Blanche and former PM Bob Hawke got together.

Blanche: I remember seeing Sue in the classroom [at SCEGGS in Sydney’s Darlinghurst] and being immediately drawn to her. She had a sparkle. The school was quite strict and we were naughty together. There was no chance either of us would ever be a prefect.

We lost touch but met up again when I moved from Jakarta to Canberra in the mid-1970s with Tony [Pratt, d’Alpuget’s diplomat first husband]. It was all dinner parties and visiting each ­other’s houses, and Sue was still wild. She was statuesque and it was the days of tight jeans and high heels. At one of the parties, a man who wa

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