Soon, Mein Liebling, Soon

Once she was sure she was not being watched by any of the other inmates, Sam clutched Caro's article to her chest, rubbed the news print on her grim prison issue smock.

It was the Caroline she knew and loved. She savoured every unsourced claim, allowed the opinion dressed up as fact to drop from the page and roll gently down her waiting tongue. Ooooooh, she thought to herself, this will make a brilliant deposit in the Wank Bank.

Sam considered frigging one off right there and then, illuminated only by the watery morning twilight of Deer Park.

But she knew she couldn't. If the other girls caught her, she'd lose face. And that could be deadly here in the Roberta Moran Centre For Female Corrections.

She'd known they'd try it on with her on her first few days inside, and had prepared herself accordingly.

It had come swift, on her second night. They'd been watching Rove in the recreation room when a tough little thing with a sharpie haircut and a tattoo of a magpie on her cheek confronted her.

"You're that dumb moll journalist what made up all that bullshit about the dingos getting rooted that meant my cousin Alan got eaten by that fat prick from Hawthron aren't ya?"

Sam knew what she had to do. She'd been pissing on the floor of her cell and scraping her prison issue toothbrush into the puddle to create a sharp edge since she'd arrived. Now she used it.

"So what if I am?" Sam snarled back, before raining blows upon the unfortunate woman.

By the time they heard the screws moving, the sharpie lay broken and bloodied at Sam's feet.

Sam sat down and looked around the room. Nobody had seen anything, she knew that for sure. And she hadn't had any trouble since.

Now, just a few days short of her release date, Sam felt an inner confidence.

Yes, she'd see Caroline.

But there were also a few other people she needed to visit. Some other issues to sort out.

Starting with that slag Rebecca.

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.