Amy's Last Chance

Chapter Three

   Amy’s head fell to the side, bumping against the window rhythmically along with the motion of the bus.  The past few weeks had passed in a blur of confusion, horror and grief, and now a sense of overwhelming aloneness.  It seemed only yesterday that she was having lunch with her best friend Clare, and making plans to meet again for their usual supper of hot Milo before bed, after Clare’s pub night. 

Ordinarily they would both be going to the pub, right next door to their university college, Tyson. Amy had decided not to join the others at Hobbo’s that night as she hadn’t completed an essay that was due the following day.  It was her final Community Medicine project – the Mickey Mouse subject that every University course included.  This one wasn’t difficult, but it still had to be completed, and preferably not after midnight.  She reflected on her time at Medical School.  Melbourne University Medicine – she always felt a thrill of excitement at the memory of receiving the offer of the University place. 

   Amy was a western suburbs girl. Her parents both worked in factories and didn’t place much store in education.   At the end of Year 5 she had won a scholarship for Trevally Secondary College, a prestigious Eastern Suburbs Private School.  There was no way she would have been able to afford to go there without the scholarship, her parents preferring to spend the bulk of their income on alcohol and cigarettes.  Even the long trip by train into the city, changing at Flinders St Station and then out to the Eastern side of town, that unfamiliar other world, morning and night, didn’t deter her.  Amy was determined to gain her education and break out of the path set by generations of her family before her.

Amy had always known that her life would be different.  Even as a young child left alone at home while her parents went to their local pub for hours at a time, she vowed that she would leave this paltry existence and live a life more like those she saw on the magazine covers at the newsagent’s.  She would wear nice clothing, and leather shoes and go to work every day in her own smart car.  Amy had vowed that she would fight the scourge of alcohol that had blighted the lives of the parents she loved.  She studied hard at school and when Year 12 drew to a close she applied to medical school.  Amy wanted to be a doctor so she could convince people to take care of their bodies and their children. 

   Clare had attended Tyson Residential College also, but had very different origins.  She came from a very long line of Melbourne lawyers and was following in their footsteps by studying law.  The residential college was a tradition in Clare’s family - she was the fourth generation of Stedman to attend the college, but the first female.  Clare’s father had used his success in law as a stepping stone to a political career, becoming a Member of Parliament the previous year.  Reputation was everything to the Stedmans, as they reminded Clare every time they met.  While not rebellious by nature, Clare followed the principle of “What they don’t know can’t hurt them” and really, what happened in college tended to stay in college.  Clare enjoyed the relative anonymity of the environment and had experimented just a little, in a way previously not possible.

   Amy and Clare met at the Fresher’s welcome night – the conservative name for a night of drinking and public shaming that was to mark the beginning of the university year for all the new students.  The senior college students led drinking games and at the end of the night all freshers were thrown in the college pond, a dunking symbolic of their baptism into the life of Tyson.  The girls met at the barbecue prior to the games and decided to stick together, which meant they later shared a tandem shower to ward off the late night chill left by their ritual dunking.  Even though it was early March, the air was fresh and their wet clothes clung chillingly.  Neither had consumed much alcohol, feeling safer by remaining sober, and so began their habit of nocturnal Milo before bed.  

   Amy’s reverie was broken as her head hit the window with greater force.  She started, remembering where she was and to where she was being taken.  She shuddered as once again her eyes filled with tears and her arms hugged her body with the force of a toddler not wanting mother to leave.  The knowledge hit her as if out of the blue.  Clare was dead. Amy was in a prison bus, having been charged with manslaughter.  She was being taken to Beeches Women’s Prison, where she was to serve 15 years.  She would not graduate from Medical School.