Wanting to get back as soon as possible, she decided on a cab and made her way to the rank on the corner. It wasn’t late enough yet for the drunken revellers to be making their way back and so it shouldn’t be too long a wait to get a taxi back home. There were none there when she arrived, so she sat on a bench and waited. Going through her handbag, she took out her cigarettes and tried to light one. Once again her gold lighter wouldn’t work. It had always been unreliable, but she’d kept it for sentimental reasons. It’s shortcomings were reminiscent of the person who had given it to her. That too was when she was at Wentworth.

Wentworth, it all seemed so long ago. Those women had been a nuisance and a lost cause most of the time. However there had been a few that she had fond memories of. Birdsworth for instance, giving her the soap from buy up for her birthday and the chats they had shared after old Edie had died. And then of course there was her.

She was digging around in her bag for another light when she heard the click of a lighter next to her. Her eyes took in its owner as the flame licked her cigarette. She’d been right about the laugh earlier. She was face to face with the very person she’d just been thinking of. With her eyebrows raised cockily under greasy blond hair. A cigarette held behind her ear.  Franky Doyle, after all these years.

‘Well well, G’day Vera’

Franky was dressed in a green t shirt with ‘POWER’ written on the front. The sleeves had been cut off to show off her arms. She stood with her hands in the pockets of her jeans. head tilted back.

‘Doyle’ Vera replied curtly, not wanting to look at her but magnetised, moth like, to Franky’s base energy.

‘Aww come on Vera, I’m not inside anymore, you don’t have to be so formal, call me Franky’

Vera looked down the street to see if a cab was coming yet.

Franky continued, unswayed, ‘I thought I saw you in the bar a minute ago, I was a bit surprised to see you in a place like that, I guess you know what kind of bar it is don’t ya?