Unchained Melanie

by Judy Astley

  Mel slid into the seat opposite Neil’s companion, who was looking bemused. She was an attractive woman, mid-thirties Mel would guess, with chin-length blonde hair so flat and straight it looked as if someone had carefully ironed it. She wore a black suit that Sarah was blatantly pricing up and clearly guessing between Whistles and Joseph.

  ‘And are you friends of Neil from work?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Oh no!’ Sarah began. ‘We know him from . . .’

  ‘Actually, Charlotte,’ he cut in, rather rudely, Mel thought, ‘these are two of the students I used to teach a long, long time ago. We ran into each other at a reunion not long ago.’

  ‘You used to teach them? So how old are you?’ Charlotte’s question was addressed not to Neil but to Sarah, who blinked hard and looked stumped for an answer.

  ‘It was his first job.’ Sarah wasn’t about to part with a number, not unless someone pulled out all her perfectly manicured nails first. ‘He was newly qualified, just a babe in arms. Putty in our hands,’ Sarah told her with a suggestive smirk.

  ‘Two spritzers?’ the barman arrived. Mel felt uncomfortable and started gulping her drink. She’d quite like to leave, escape to some fresh air.

  ‘Putty!’ Charlotte pouted her slicked lips at Neil. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was the right word for you, darling.’

  Sarah narrowed her eyes. ‘Neil, you haven’t properly introduced us to your friend. I’m Sarah,’ she said, not giving him a chance to make up for his bad manners, ‘and this is Melanie . . . and you are . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’m Charlotte. Didn’t he mention me at your “reunion”? I’m his wife.’

  Oh right, thought Mel, of course you are. Silly me – no wonder he didn’t leave a phone number.

  ‘Time to go, sweetie,’ Charlotte purred to Neil. ‘Pick up the kids . . .’

  ‘Ah. So I take it that dinner tonight is now off?’ Melanie said calmly to Neil.

  It was hard to make a dignified exit, encumbered by a coat and by having to squeeze through the crowd, but as she took a deep breath on the pavement she didn’t regret what she’d said.

  ‘Ooh, that was brave!’ Sarah squealed as she caught up with Mel outside Matches.

  ‘No it wasn’t. It was spiteful and childish,’ Mel told her. ‘But I don’t in the slightest bit care.’

  Well, the day couldn’t get much worse, Mel thought as she drove home. At least Dying For It was now safely in the post to Dennis. There was nothing more she could do with Tina Keen for the moment, except hope she and her latest case would get a completely fabulous reception from the people who mattered.

  There were lights on in her house as she drove up. It meant Max was still there, which was good, though she couldn’t imagine what he was still finding to do. Perhaps he’d had a tricky time planting the bamboos and spent many an hour arranging and rearranging them. Or maybe his newly fixed wall had fallen down. Whatever it was, she would be very happy to see him.

  The sound of raised, angry voices could be heard as she approached the front door. One was a woman, high-pitched and shrieky. A slow, male tone seemed to be doing its best to be calming. Don’t tell me, Melanie thought as she pushed the key into the door, that Max too has a wife and she’s shown up to see what was keeping him on a job that should have only taken a fortnight at the most . . .

  But it was Patty at the bottom of the stairs, yelling at her son, who was standing on the landing above her. Max was beside Patty and was clearly preventing her from racing up and clouting someone. Ben was shielding Lee-Ann from next door – not very effectively, given that she was twice his width and looking beautifully pink and round-limbed in only her purple bra and thong.

  ‘And when I’ve told that little tart’s mother what was going on . . . !’ Patty was yelling, then, as Melanie appeared behind her, she turned her attention to her. ‘And you! I blame you! Letting young boys come in here and use your place like a knocking shop! Do you know how old he is?’

  Melanie did. What she didn’t know was what had been going on while she’d been in Richmond, though she was catching on fast.

  ‘Why don’t we go into the kitchen . . .’ Mel took Patty’s arm and tried to shift her away from the hallway.

  ‘And what? Have a nice cup of tea?’ Patty was almost spitting with rage. Behind her back, Max shrugged at Mel and mouthed, ‘Sorry!’ though Mel didn’t know yet what for.

  ‘Yes. A nice cup of tea. I want one even if you don’t; so come on.’ Then to Max she whispered, ‘Get those two sorted out,’ pointing up the stairs. He nodded.

  She pushed Patty into the kitchen and almost hurled her into a chair. ‘Now, what’s happened?’

  ‘What’s happened? It’s obvious what’s happened! I came round here looking for Ben. He said he had some work to do, he said he’d got some French to finish . . .’ She stopped and muttered, ‘Yeah, I bet he was laughing at me as he said that. Very funny. Very droll!’

  ‘So you found him . . .’

  ‘Your gardener friend let me in. And brazen as you like he says, “Oh yes, Ben’s here, he’s upstairs with that girl from next door!”’

  Melanie tried hard not to laugh. Poor Patty, discovering her adored baby boy in the fleshy clutches of Lee-Ann. She heard scuffling in the hallway, the front door opened and some muffled goodbyes were said. Max and Ben came into the kitchen. Ben looked sheepish, pink in the face, and had clearly dressed in a tearing hurry.

  ‘We’d better go home,’ Patty said dejectedly. ‘I need hardly say he won’t be coming here to do his homework again. Like I said, I blame you . . .’ She pointed at Mel.

  ‘’S not Mel’s fault,’ Ben protested, bravely, Mel thought. ‘It’s nothing to do with her. She didn’t even know.’

  ‘Allowing the premises to be used for . . .’

  ‘That’s when it’s drugs,’ Max said, opening the fridge and taking out a beer. ‘Anyone else fancy a drink?’ he asked. Patty ignored him. Mel nodded and he handed her a second can. ‘You can hardly be prosecuted, or even slightly told off, if a pair of perfectly legally aged people have a spot of nookie in your house.’ Max was also trying not to laugh. Ben snorted and started a deep, uncontrollable fit of chortling.

  ‘Out of here, Ben. Now,’ Patty said, standing up and poking her son hard in the shoulder. They left, Patty still furious, Ben still giggling.

  ‘Well, that was fun. What happened?’ Mel swigged the beer straight from the can and glanced into the fridge to see what there might be for supper, now that she wasn’t to be wined and dined and wooed and pampered by adulterous Neil. It looked as if it was going to be a combination of cheese, pasta and mushrooms that were a bit past their best. Never mind.

  ‘Dunno. Lee-Ann came in through the fence gate and met Ben. A bit later Patty arrived and as they weren’t anywhere downstairs, I told her they must be upstairs. Perfectly logical. So up she goes, taking the stairs two at a time, and catches them at it.’

  ‘Poor kids, I hope it doesn’t have a permanent effect on their sex lives,’ Mel commented.

  ‘And then she came down again as fast as she went up. I was just making a cup of tea.’ He looked at Mel, his face breaking into a grin. ‘I did offer her one.’

  ‘One?’

  ‘Tea, you daft tart, tea.’

  ‘Why did Patty come looking for him, do you think?’ Mel wondered aloud. ‘She could have just called his mobile.’

  Max looked hard at her for a few moments. ‘Because she wanted to catch him at it,’ he said.

  ‘With Lee-Ann? Poor kids.’

  ‘No, not with Lee-Ann. You might have forgotten what she was on about the other night when she was pissed, but it was still on her mind. To her you’re one of the weird brigade – an attractive woman, happily existing by yourself. She thought she was going to catch her darling son at it with you.’

  Sixteen

  It was the last day of the university term. Roger had volunteered to go and fetch Rosa and some of her belongings home from Plymouth. Leonora was sulky
about this and complained, ‘That’s one day less from your annual leave. What about me? I’ll need you to take time off for me when the baby arrives.’ ‘Well, I’ll do that, when the time comes,’ he told her. ‘Today I’m taking time off for my other child, OK?’

  He wasn’t going to change his mind, however much Leonora gave him the silent, pouting treatment. He missed Rosa – it was a long time since he’d played a real, active role in her life. Obviously part of that was because she was more or less a grown-up now – things were bound to be more distant. It occurred to him that he’d only really known her in the casual, relaxed day-to-day way, when he’d been part of the Roger-Melanie couple. When you live on the premises with someone, you can have periods when you share the space but take little notice of each other. Since he’d left, time together with Rosa meant time in enforced conversation, oddly synthetic. If they’d separated when she was a young child, he’d have been used to being with her by herself. Even if he’d only been a very part-time, alternate-weekends type of father, they’d have had lots of practice at being on their own together. They’d have evolved their own father-daughter code, there’d be just-the-two-of-them running jokes. Now, since he’d left, he seemed to have to work at how to be her father.

  She hadn’t come home once during this first term. He and Melanie had agreed that was a good sign – she must be having a terrific time. The ones to worry about were those who kept turning up back home, clutching bags of laundry and pretending they just fancied a proper meal. They weren’t out of touch entirely; sometimes Rosa would send him a cheery e-mail at work. He was flattered that he was even on her list of friends for forwarding silly jokes. He’d send replies, though he didn’t really have her generation’s easy way with that form of communication. His messages always sounded slightly stilted, as if they should end with ‘yours sincerely’. If he wrote something that was supposed to be funny he felt he had to add half a dozen exclamation marks, in case it might be taken the wrong way.

  The journey home from Plymouth would be a good chance for a bit of new bonding. He hoped Rosa would be ready to leave – they could have lunch on the way back, do some proper, intense catching up, just the two of them. Then he’d hand her over to Melanie and go home to wonder why he still didn’t know what she wanted for Christmas. He’d hope it was because they’d talked too much about other things, that it just hadn’t had time to crop up.

  Leonora had grown a lot bigger in the past couple of weeks. Her face had filled out so that her stark cheekbones had gone soft, and she spent every evening lying on the larger of the two sofas with her swollen feet propped up on the arm. She’d taken off her wedding ring and put it back in its little velvet bag in the drawer where she kept her best underwear, for her hands had swelled up and it was now too tight. On her finger where the ring should have been there was a faint pale line, contrasting with the remains of her honeymoon tan. ‘It’s just a bit of water retention,’ she told him when he started mentioning blood pressure and pre-eclampsia. ‘All this extra weight will come off again once this thing is out of me.’

  It wasn’t her weight Roger was worried about. If she’d read even one from the heap of guide-to-pregnancy books that lay unopened on the table beside the bed, she might have had a clue about what was happening to her body. She was due for another check-up on Christmas Eve so perhaps someone, at last, would get her to understand that there were hazards in being pregnant, even for a woman as young and fit and oblivious to complications as Leonora.

  He set off for Plymouth before it was fully light, leaving Leonora still snuggled deep into the duvet. There were only six more weeks to go till the baby was born, and he could hardly begin to imagine how he was going to cope with the lack of proper sleep that was coming his way. It was just one of the many aspects of baby-life that he’d long ago deleted from his memory. And he’d been comparatively young the last time – now he tended to wake slowly, feeling slightly confused. He hoped he had the energy for this. Leonora had hinted that she expected a large degree of parental input from him – even though she wasn’t the one who then had to get up before seven and put in a profitable day’s work. A nanny would be a good idea – Leonora had dropped a few heavy hints about that, too. More expense. More complications. Sometimes he almost envied Melanie, living all alone with few responsibilities and no-one to please but herself.

  She shouldn’t have left it so late. After an initial flurry of hyper-efficiency in which Melanie had convinced herself that she was well ahead with Christmas shopping and there was no need to panic, she now had less than a couple of weeks left and most of the important people still to buy for. In the days following the despatch of Dying For It she had bought, written and sent all her Christmas cards, ordered ham, a small turkey (just for the treat of having it cold on Boxing Day, with fried potatoes and spicy red cabbage), and made a couple of dozen mince pies. She had also been to three parties, a carol-singing fundraising event, Sarah’s children’s school carol service and had bought lots of edible goodies, massive bunches of lavender and overpriced, overscented soap at the annual French market in the pub car park. Now, before Rosa got back late that afternoon, she found herself buffeted about in the crowds in Harrods, wondering what on earth in that huge emporium would suit her finicky sister. Having a hangover didn’t help – her mouth felt dry and her head was threatening to explode out of its paracetamol-induced fuzziness back into full-scale hammer and throb mode.

  The party the night before had been conveniently nearby, just across the road within tottering distance of home. It was one of those gatherings of neighbours and friends where everyone lives close enough to be able to chat to each other on an almost daily basis, with no real need to have let’s-catch-up conversations. Instead, Melanie found she was exchanging with the guests, almost word for word, information that had come up at the same party the year before and the year before that, with only slight alterations to allow for A-level results, holiday venues and the new, sad absence of Mrs Jenkins. It was the third party she’d been to in a fortnight, and she felt as if she could simply have printed out a general list of answers to Most Frequently Asked questions and passed it round. This time she’d also spent much of the evening reminding those who got drunk enough to ask where he was, that Roger really had permanently gone, he was not working late, working away or otherwise temporarily occupied. She’d have thought they’d have got the idea from her Christmas cards, signed simply: ‘Melanie and Rosa’. Almost all the ones she’d received so far had been addressed, either in hope or ignorance, to ‘Mr and Mrs’.

  There had been two distinct reactions from those to whom it was news that she was divorced: the women tended to say, ‘Oh, we must find you someone new at once,’ just as Sarah had. They looked glittery and excited as they said it, as if it was a challenge they’d enjoy, almost as if they were window-shopping for their own requirements. Perhaps they were, Melanie thought, looking at the greying, waist-expanded specimens that they were living with. Or they might have considered her a prowling and predatory threat to their own marriages and be keen to see her safely shackled again. She felt like pinning notices to all the trees in the road, like people do with lost cats, stating that ‘Melanie Patterson is happy living alone and is not looking for a man. Thank you.’

  Most of the men, and just a few women who might have been wondering about being in the same situation as her, simply asked, ‘Isn’t it a bit lonely on your own?’ Adding, as a sort of more politically correct afterthought, ‘Now that Rosa’s gone as well?’

  In truth, as Melanie was going home alone feeling more than slightly drunk, she had thought for the first time that it was all a little bleak. She had had one of those ‘Is this it?’ moments, when the future spread ahead like a long, dark tunnel with too many hazards in it that she’d have to deal with by herself. She put it down to drinking champagne, which some people said was guaranteed to lead to gloom, and to the bleakness of the house next door, which had been packed up, stripped out, emptied and scrubbed thor
oughly, ready for sale in less than a week. Mel had never thought she’d miss the yapping of that orange poodle, and she certainly missed Mrs Jenkins yelling her age by way of a greeting over the fence. She wondered how the old lady was getting on, if she was spending Christmas with Brian and his nervy wife or if she’d already been handed over to the care home. Mel imagined her informing a roomful of aged folks that she was eighty-two. That might be comparatively young: she could well be rewarded with an unimpressed chorus of ‘So what?’ Or perhaps they all did it, calling out their ages at varying times of the day like badly synchronized clocks chiming at all the wrong moments.

  Jeremy Paxman was asleep across her duvet and had kept the bed warm for her, but for once she felt it would have been comfortable to have someone there, just to pick over the evening with, someone to say, ‘Did you see Marcia’s incredible cleavage? That wasn’t there last Christmas.’ Silly things like that. And in the morning, it would have been nice not to be the one who padded down to the kitchen and searched every cupboard and drawer for the last of the Paracetamol. She missed having Max on the premises for these small moments. He was always handy with the kettle in the mornings, and knew just when restorative tea was required. And in the late afternoons, if she wandered into the kitchen looking tired, he was equally handy with a corkscrew, knowing, and not commenting with either judgement or sarcasm, that her body clock was decreeing it was time for a drink. Mel knew that these were the reasons why she was battling round Knightsbridge, getting on with things. She was running away from the niggly and unwelcome thoughts.

  Rosa would be home later that afternoon. Melanie had bought presents for her already – something gorgeous and warming from the Brora cashmere catalogue, and a small television for her room at the college. She’d sounded a bit glum in her e-mails recently. There’d been hints along the lines of whether the course was really what she wanted or not, as if she was asking for her mother’s collusion in a decision to change. She’d started mentioning art and drama, how she missed having a broader range of studies. Melanie wasn’t particularly surprised about that: the course was Marine Science, and Rosa’s interest in the sea, so far in her life, had extended to admiring it from a comfortable lounger on a holiday beach, glimpsed over the top of a magazine. A bit of early childhood paddling and fishing in rock pools didn’t really seem a lot on which to base one of life’s major decisions. It would work out, one way or another, Mel thought, as she shoved her way through the perfume hall and almost choked on the clashing scents, it would work out.