Second paragraph of third section of the French half:

The apartment was on the top floor. Its two thick-walled rooms were like rooms I’d visited in dreams. They contained a few essential things, chairs, a table, a big, high bed that jutted from an alcove in the main room — my search for somewhere to live had taught me that in France ‘furnished’ was only a label used to evict tenants without a fuss. The kitchen had hexagonal tiles on the floor, uneven with use and a soft, blurry red. There was a shower stall there, in a corner, and a round-shouldered fridge. The toilet was a cubicle at the top of steps that corkscrewed up from the landing. It had a small window above head height, a wooden seat, and an enamel W.C. sign on the door. Not so long ago it must have served the whole building, but Monsieur Laval said that it would be for my exclusive use. The other apartments had their own toilets inside.

Second paragraph of third section of the Australian half:

People like us will never be invisible, so we have to make a stupendous effort to fit in. Chanel grasped this much sooner than I did — as I said, I merely follow her lead. Take our names: we haven’t always been Chanel and Lyle. Chanel chose new names for us as soon as our application to immigrate was approved. They’re not so far from our original names, which we can hardly remember now. Chanel explained that the way forward was to forget everything we were leaving. She said, `Don’t look back. That’s not the Australian way. It’s a modern country that looks to the future.’ I didn’t appreciate the force of her advice until my second trip back home.

Interestingly in the old double format; literally a book of two halves. I liked the non-sf bit more than the sf bit; young lust in France in 1980 vs fascist near-future Australia. The Australia bits seemed to me more about the setting than the plot. You can get it here.