Two coffees, one not long after the other, and I was feeling the effects. I left Pearl at the roadhouse to make her phone call and Frankie waiting to cross the highway and wandered up to my churchyard bench. Intense as it was, the smell of Con’s pies had whetted my appetite and despite the chips I’d scoffed at the roadhouse I stopped by the bakery for a sausage roll and a vanilla slice. The morning had taken an unexpected turn and although I didn’t anticipate meeting Pearl and Frankie again, I warmed to them both, as unlikely as that seemed to another part of me. They were the sort of women my adoptive parents, the upright Mr and Mrs Forster, would have found horrifying.
Frankie was a bush-loving hippie with a punk haircut, and I didn’t much care for the armpit hair. There was a metallic
