Candidates divided by a junta Fascinating contest: Michelle Bachelet, the left-leaning former president who is running for the job again. They were childhood playmates who went to the same school; their families not only lived across the road from one another but were also enduring friends. Then, in the turmoil that followed Augusto Pinochet's military coup, their fathers found them selves on opposite sides - one effectively tortured to death by the junta in which the other was a senior figure. Now Chile is fascinated at the prospect that the two little girls are about to go head to head as the two leading candidates in November's presidential election. Michelle Bachelet, now 61, is the left-leaning former president who stepped down after her first term in office with sky-high approval ratings. She is seizing her first chance under Chile's constitution to run again. Her father, Alberto Bachelet, died in 1974, six months after the coup, having never recovered from the torture to which he was subjected. Evelyn Matthei, 59, is the unexpected candidate of the right-wing coalition now in power, after the man expected to run stepped aside, suffering from depression. Her father, Fernando Matthei, held a senior role at the military academy in whose basement his former friend was detained and abused. Last week a crusading human rights lawyer launched a renewed attempt to bring charges against him over the death. "My conscience is absolutely clear," the 88-year-old Matthei said, speaking from his home in Santiago. It's in the hands of the justice system. But I know I conducted myself well. It was in 1958 that Captain Fernando Matthei, then 32, moved in to a house on the Cerro Moreno airbase, a military camp in the desert 1400 kilometres north of Santiago. With him was his family - his wife, Elda Fornet, and their three children, Fernando, 6; Evelyn, 4; and Roberto, 1. Another family moved into the house opposite: Captain Alberto Bachelet, 34, with his wife Angela Jeria and their two children Alberto, 11, and Michelle, 6. "There weren't many people on the base," Angela Jeria said. Michelle and Evelyn played together, and their fathers were close friends. By the mid-1960s both families were living back in the capital. The Bachelets' home was surrounded by olive trees, much admired by Matthei. When Matthei built his own home nearby, Bachelet presented him with two olive trees and a flowering cherry. The trees were planted in front of the living room of the house, where Evelyn Matthei lives to this day. Bachelet's widow still lives in the same district, in a flat that he bought in the 1970s, naming Matthei as the legal guardian in case of his absence. By then their daughters had drifted apart. Michelle Bachelet studied to be a paediatrician, while Evelyn Matthei began a business degree, working part-time for the banking company of Sebastian Pinera, the billionaire who is Chile's president. But their fathers, by this time both air force generals, would still meet at the ministry of defence. In 1971 Matthei was sent to Britain. Back in Chile, Salvador Allende had just been elected president, putting the left into power. Bachelet was head of the air force's finance division. In 1973 Gustavo Leigh, the head of the air force, forced Bachelet to step down. On September 11 came the coup. That night Bachelet was detained. In a letter to his son Alberto, who lived in Australia, he wrote: "I was detained incommunicado for 26 days. I was subjected to torture for 30 hours and finally sent to the Air Force Hospital. They destroyed me inside. Soon after the coup, Matthei returned from Britain to be made head of the Academy of Aerial Warfare. And it was in its underground chambers that Bachelet was being detained. Matthei claims he raised his friend's treatment with General Leigh. "He told me not to get involved in issues which were none of my business," Matthei said in 2009. I confess that I never went to see [Bachelet] in the basement of the academy, nor in prison; something which I am ashamed of. Alberto Bachelet died in March 1974. Meanwhile, his daughter Michelle and her mother Angela Jeria were taken to the infamous Villa Grimaldi detention centre, where they too were tortured, before being forced into exile in East Germany. Four years later, Matthei replaced Leigh as head of the air force, and at his insistence Pinochet allowed the surviving Bachelet family to return. In an emotional meeting soon after, Matthei confessed to Angela Jeria his anguish at the death of her husband. Last year a human rights lawyer Eduardo Contreras, tried to bring Matthei to trial over the case. Remarkably Angela Jeria defended Matthei. "General Matthei has always been a friend of ours," she said. I am certain that he wasn't in the War Academy at the time my husband was held there. Matthei, at least, is sure of what he thinks, especially of his daughter. I taught my daughter the importance of dignity, and of flying solo without getting distracted.