HOW WE MET

MICHELE ROBERTS AND SARAH DUNANT

MICHELE ROBERTS: In 1973, I got my first proper adult job as a librarian, working at the British Council in Bangkok. I felt very rootless, and I didn't fit in with the white expatriate people working over there.

That's when Sarah turned up. She was travelling, and had been put in touch with me by a friend from Oxford. When I first met her, I thought she was bubbling with vitality. She used lots of hippy-type language and wore the kind of clothes you can only wear if you're a traveller. She stayed at my flat and we quickly became friends.

Then, the classic thing happened: we both went through each other's clothes secretly as a way of discovering more about one another. I looked in her rucksack, and really liked her stuff. At that time, I was getting into all sorts of trouble for wearing long flowing skirts, cheesecloth shirts and beads at the Council. So it was a great relief to find that Sarah's clothes matched my wild side. As a result I sort of came out, I suppose, as a wilder woman than I'd been before. I think that was the real seal of the friendship.

I had also started this very passionate affair. What was so nice was that Sarah felt comfortable about that - she didn't feel excluded from us as a couple - and the three of us became really good friends.

After several weeks, Sarah and I went off travelling together. When you make friends, there's a sort of honeymoon period, and ours was travelling through Thailand. There were certain nerve-racking moments: one night we checked into a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, only to discover that it was the local brothel. All the rooms had swinging doors like in Western saloons and we could hear all these comings and goings, highly audible, throughout the night. Another time, Sarah was wearing a short skirt in this Malaysian village - she was more daring than me - and these boys threw stones at us.

I look back at our time in Thailand as being so relaxed. Being on holiday at all was amazing for someone like me, who had always worked very hard. Up until then, I'd been training and working as a librarian. Sarah taught me how to unwind and let go - she was really into pleasure and hedonism. My friendships with other women had always been very much bound up with- being a dedicated feminist - going on demonstrations, being involved in across-the-board feminist issues around sexuality, women's health and housing. But while I was travelling, I gave up worrying and just enjoyed myself with Sarah. She probably helped me find the fun-loving side of my personality.

Soon after I got back from my trip to south-east Asia, we lived together in a communal house which I had discovered in Peckham, south London. I have a strong memory of Sarah and her friend Jude living on the top floor. They were like the kind of frothing, bubbling, pleasure-experiencing part of the house.

I rather admired her getting what I called in those days a "straight job", and doing so well at it. She was working at the BBC, and I envied how she could take on the real world and manoeuvre within it. She's got a real skill for not being overwhelmed by systems and structures. I still saw myself as someone who was on the outside - an exile and a rebel.

After about two years, the house broke up and we lost touch for a while; when I began writing poetry it was kind of like going into a cave. But I did hear news of her through mutual friends.

About three years later, I agreed to appear on The Late Show and we met up again. I can remember how impressed I was with Sarah's professionalism, and the way she managed to chair a passionate discussion on Sylvia Plath. I remember experiencing that wonderful feeling of seeing someone who hadn't changed a bit. As writers, we've both got a lot in common now. Like her, I'm very committed to my work. There's always so much to talk about - she's very intelligent and reads a great deal.

I live near her now, so there's this marvellous feeling of having a real neighbour. We don't go out with each other much because it's so easy to visit each other at home. Quite often it's just for a cup of tea, because that means you can be tete-a-tete.

Recently, she's come out again as that person I first knew. Although she's always been very brilliant and sparkly to the outside world, I think there was a time when she was a bit swamped by motherhood and domesticity. She's also come out of a difficult time splitting up with her partner and I'm relieved to see that the worst of the pain is over.

I get on very well with her daughters. I made the choice not to have children. I can't say I regret it, because I did get the books written and lived the life I wanted. So it's been a pleasure to come round and see these two small girls running about.

Sarah's not this hard person the media make her out to be - that does make me very angry. I think she's extremely vulnerable. Some people have been stupidly cruel because a good-looking, clever woman presents The Late Show. She was caricatured, which, in a way, was quite hurtful.

But I've really noticed a difference in her recently. She's much more lively: absolutely back in touch with the wild child of 21 years old who let her hair down and had adventures.

SARAH DUNANT: I had been living in Japan in 1973 for six months, working as a nightclub hostess and teaching English, and was just starting a trip overland through south-east Asia. I was given Michele's number and called her from the airport.

All I remember is becoming close friends very quickly. She'd been doing this very straight job for the British Council and reached the point where she decided it wasn't for her. So I arrived at a rather fortuitous moment. I was footloose and fancy-free, on my own with a ticket to nowhere.

One thing we both did early on was look through each other's clothes. She has this really interesting combination of very straight stuff she wore as a librarian, and other clothes that were completely the opposite.

When we started travelling, there was one incident that really summed her up for me. On the way down through Malaysia, I got an ear infection. By the time we reached Singapore, I was in such exquisite pain. We were staying on somebody's floor and I can remember waking up one night. I was crying silently, trying not to wake anyone else up. But Michele did get up and just put her arm around me. She sat with me, not saying much, until the painkillers kicked in. It was such a loving thing to do. She's very perceptive about how other people are feeling.

It was one of those friendships that was typical of early feminism. We were in our twenties; two young women on the road. When we rock 'n' rolled, we had a really good time. Our relationship was emotionally articulate, because that's what women were doing at that time. I remember being cocooned by optimism, sitting in hotel rooms with her and her boyfriend.

Up until then we'd been, academically speaking, quite good girls. But we were entering this era when it was just fine to be not so good - we were both bad together. None the less, I think we were temperamentally different. At that period of my life, I was much looser and easier. She had a kind of intensity, and there was some pain in her that I think was released when she started writing.

After about six weeks in Bali I stayed on and Michele came home. When I returned to England, she was living in Peckham, and I moved in on the top floor. It was around that time that I got a very straight job producing Kaleidoscope for Radio 4, although I wasn't living a straight life. We were both doing odd things like abortion counselling; it was an extreme feminist household that could be quite fierce - and a lot of my male friends were petrified of coming round.

It was that cauldron time of feminism when everything was up for discussion. I look back on it as a really vibrant time. Michele and I would be in and out of each other's rooms or in this squalid kitchen analysing our emotions - there was a lot of navel-gazing. At that point, she was getting into writing through women's groups, so our paths began to move apart slightly. Then, when I was in my late twenties, I left the house, because I met a man. For quite a long time we lost contact.

Then, about three years later, I suggested her as an interview for The Late Show. We tracked her down, and that's when I realised that she lived round the corner. After the show, she came back to my house and we chatted until 3am - it was just like the old times.

I remember watching her writing career with interest and admiration. In the years we were apart, I began to realise what an extraordinary analytical intellect she had. Nobody deserves her success more than she does. Now, at last, this passionate, intense, feminist writing is being recognised by the establishment. I suspect that the things I like about her writing are the things that I like about her. She has a great greediness for life: for all the things that are essentially seen as female, but she invests them with such intensity. For a long time when I was starting to write, I used to think, "I'll never be as good as Michele."

I think as Michele's got older, something in her has steadied; she's got a slightly stiller centre. She doesn't need to be as giving to everybody. She's learnt when to hold it in. One of the most attractive things is that she's willing to take emotional chances. She was always defiant about freelancing when there wasn't a lot of money in it, especially in the Eighties, when everyone was defining themselves through what they owned.

Nowadays, though, it's a different sort of friendship. Both she and I have in our own small ways become public figures. So it's really valuable to know someone who has a plumb line to who you were 20 years ago. I find it really helpful in grounding me. !

Michele Roberts, 46, was born in Hertfordshire. She has written seven novels, including Daughters of the House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize and also won the WH Smith Literary Award. She lives between houses in north London and southern Normandy with her husband Jim.

Sarah Dunant, 44, was born in London. Since the mid-Seventies, she has worked in television and radio, among other things presenting BBC2's The Late Show, producing Radio 4's Kaleidoscope, and reporting for the World Service. She has written five thrillers. She lives in London with her two daughters. Zoe, 7, and Georgia, 4.