The prisons get a few volunteers who turn up to teach things. She’s heard it’s the same in the male prison. The place is crawling with Christians trying to make a convert. They spend hours with women who want to repent, want a place in heaven and then when they get out they can have them up in the front pews a nice example of what Jesus can do. The worst of it is, it can be infectious, one minute a woman can be quite reasonable and interesting even to work alongside and the next minute she’s full of half baked ideas about religion. Religion is as addictive as P and poppies and nicotine thinks Stella. She looks up at the banners on the wall that the women have hung. The 12 Steps says one banner. She reads the steps – there it is on the third line ‘God’ with a capital G and there it is three more times along with a few Hims with a capital H. Great, it’s a visit from the god squad. She stares at the drawings and statements these women and others before them have decorated and hung on the wall and tunes out the god squad and the brainwashed soon-to-be-grads. On the wall the little hand of the clock does slow rotations but she’s learnt to find ways to pass the time.

In her mind she walks up to her Holden. It’s the powder blue HT. She lifts the door handle feeling a slight pull half way through as the lever engages. The door opens, red vinyl interior smells pleasantly sun warmed. Eases herself into the seat and clicks the engine over. The petrol gauge is showing nearly full.

My name is Liz and I’m an alcoholic

She lifts the gear stick up into reverse and eases out the clutch. The rear view shows a clear patch of tarmac with velvet grass at the sides. The car slides onto the road and she moves it into first gear and perfectly balances the clutch and accelerator to glide down the road gradually moving the revs up and slotting into second. She nurses the steering wheel down the the left and takes the corner the speed never wavering and moves seemlessy down the back road then lifts her foot and looks for traffic moving down the merging gorge road. Nothing there. Her foot goes down the engine powers up and the HT moves faster getting up to 51k as she gains the road and then slightly eases off to turn and take the bridge out of town.

And so I got a sponsor and she told me 90 meetings in 90 days and ring me every day and I…

As soon as she’s  over the bridge her foot goes down and now she’s switching to third and the engines opened up and the HT starts eating up long stretch. Then she’s buttoning back to turn onto the beach gorge and onto that beautiful straight. She guns it through the willows and poplars, all filtered light like Cybil Sheppard might be in this scene the way they always shot her to look soft and dreamy and the HT just cuts through it she can get up around 130 ks here and it doesn’t even judder that 186 motor is just so sweet.

….funny but it took till I was in jail again and I thought maybe there is some kind of connection between my drinking and getting into trouble but I never saw it before…

She pulls her foot off and lets the HT glide and slow, then kisses the brakes and takes the first turn of the gorge, concentrating and leaning in to each corner, accelerating out again. She glances in the rear view mirror doesn’t want anything to think she doesn’t know this road like the back of her hand. The HT rocks round the bends almost like she knows them too and some nights she’s practically driven herself back home poor baby – there’s that one scratch where for a second she’d connected with the wire catcher on the inside bank that time.

…. and you know what it’s like when he’s giving you the bash and you’re driving?

In fact Vicky had talked about that. How Shane had laid in to her a few times when she was taking the Cortina over the beach gorge and how she couldn’t duck or move because she didn’t want to crash the car there.

When the last tight turns were taken care of that was when you saw the beach – a great stretch of sparking blue like there were 50 surfers parked out there in sunnies reflecting the light back and making you squint. You just had to glance at it because there were still a few corners to take and then finally it was on to the downhill stretch and there, like a jewel on the sand, was the beach pub. She slowed and turned right, took the little bridge and stayed in second to glide down the road and then went  into first turning onto the gravel, that soft crunching sound of gravel under the tires, and pulled up by the back door of the garden bar.

‘Stella? Stella? Are you with us? Do you want to share?’

‘I’m alright at this time thanks.’

‘OK, we’ll end the meeting with the serenity prayer linking hands.’