If I was shipwrecked on a deserted island, or lost in a foreign land, or in any sort of crisis, I would not be scared if my brother, Bill, was with me. Reminding myself of that has been a comfort in the last few days.

Bill has always been my hero, the perfect brother, my protector and my protagonist; he was even my apologist on occasions, like when I was five and split a boy’s head  open when playing with stones on the way home from school, and Bill took me to the boy’s mother and said, “I apologise on Sally ‘s behalf – it was an accident.” (I never threw stones again.) Whenever I cried it was Bill who used to console me and try to cheer me up in our tree-house. He could walk on his hands, build canoes out of scrap corrugated iron, fix bicycles, and later, cars and boats; and now he can fix houses, and build sheds and boat-houses.

And now that we are adults with grown families of our own, and we live on different sides of the globe, I still feel that special bond that comes of a lifetime of being a much-loved little sister. All we younger siblings feel it.

The “world’s worst typhoon”, according to some reports, hit the Philippines a few days ago and Bill, his wife, his mother-in-law and his eldest son were on holiday in that region at the time; I have been telling myself that they will be alright – with Bill at the helm. This morning we heard news reports of 12,000 dead souls as a result of “Yolanda”……. and then received news from Australia – Bill and his family are safe. I cried…..