Weal people, weal storieth

Caro stared at the day’s paper with thinly disguised contempt. They’d had to lead with some old crap about Leigh Montanga suffering a season ending knee injury that threatened his career just as it hovered on the cusp of greatness.

Borwing, borwing, borwing.

“Liam,” she called across the newsroom, “Can you come over here pweath?”

The new reporter strolled confidently across the office. He’d gotten the inside goss about the severity of Montanga’s injury from a contact inside the Sainters inner sanctum that he’d been cultivating for weeks. It had been worth it – he’d got the story.

“What’th thith sthit?” Caroline demanded, waving the sport section of the paper like a drunken bag lady trying to flag down an invisible taxi.

“Ummmm,” what asked Liam, genuinely perplexed.

“Thith cwap about Weigh bwoody Wasagane or whoever he ith. Who giveth a sthit about hith knee? Go and find me weal storieth! What are you working on now?” she shouted.

“Umm, well, I’m getting word out of Arden Street that Daniel Wells injury is worse than they are letting on it, that it might be OP. And I’ve got a profile piece with that kid Lockheed who they reckon will go number one in the draft,” he said.

Caroline dismissed these ideas with a wave of her scaly claw.

“Who wanth to wead that thtuff? What about thome human interesth thtuff? Weal people, weal storieth?”

Liam thought for a second. The old witch was hard to please.

“Here’s one. You know that koala that got burned in the bushfires, the one with the picture where the firefighter is giving it water? It seems that Paddy Ryder has been funding its recovery – actually a whole koala hospital worth – so that might work.”

Caroline considered the idea for a moment.

“Ith he rooting the koalath?”

Liam shook his head in disgust. This wasn’t what he’d gotten into journalism for. He’d done the hard yards. He’d gone to training sessions, kept stats at VFL games, worked hard at uni.

Now, once he’d finally achieved his dream of working on the footy desk at a major broadsheet, all they wanted him to do was beat up tenuous stories with animal sex links.

“No boss, he’s not rooting the koalas,” he finally replied.

Caro looked genuinely disappointed. Sam would have been able to get the koala rooting angle, she knew that. How she missed Sam.

She glanced at her watch. It had only been a week since Sam had been jailed. But under Victoria’s tough new sentencing laws, a sentence of eight years meant you would serve at least three weeks.

Not long to ago now, thought Caro, not long at all.