Unchained Melanie (2 page)

Paul had finished his speech. Dutifully, for she had no intention of making any kind of scene, Rosa stood along with everyone else and raised her glass to the happy couple. Roger grinned at the assembled staring throng, put his arm round Leonora and kissed her. For far too long, oh God, and quite obviously with
tongues
. Rosa put her hand over her face. People were fidgeting, murmuring, trying not to look. Wait till she told her mum, she’d howl!

‘Shit! How
embarrassing
.’ Rosa stared down at the now-shredded daisies that she’d somehow crumpled and scattered across the remains of her crème brûlée. Her fourteen-year-old cousin Joel sniggered awkwardly beside her and she gave him a sharp dig in the ribs.

‘Sorry,’ he chortled. ‘But wrinklies, snogging. Worse for you, being your dad, I suppose.’

‘Yes it fucking is,’ she hissed, feeling fat tears welling up unexpectedly. She didn’t want this. Everyone would think she was mourning the loss of something – a stable family life perhaps (huh!), her parents’ togetherness (huh! again). Everyone would feel sorry for her, nudge each other and look at her, poor little only child, the lonely victim of divorce, having to hand over her dear daddy to a woman who was young enough to be her not-that-much-older sister. It wasn’t anything like that. What she was really missing, now that Alex had dumped her, was being kissed in that way, by someone who looked into her eyes and wanted his mouth on hers at that moment more than anything else on the whole planet. It would be a long time before all that happened again for her. She was
about to leave for university, the very next day. Alex (the bastard) had already said his goodbyes and made it more than clear that although it had been ‘nice’ (and how shaming to have wasted all those months on someone whose vocabulary was so inadequate), he wouldn’t be expecting her to rush up to Oxford to see him every weekend, nor should she be expecting him to use his own student railcard in the direction of Plymouth.

‘I’ll always be
your
grandma you know, this doesn’t change anything for us.’ Rosa felt a soft patting on her shoulder and tried to shake her tears away out of sight.

‘Er, like I know?’ Rosa immediately felt sorry for her aggressive tone. Her gran was only trying to be kind.

‘Yes, of course you do.’ Helen Patterson’s tone sharpened. ‘What I meant was . . .’

‘Sorry Gran, yes I know what you meant, it’s all right.’ Rosa gave her the kind of smile that had always so pleased older people when she was small. It didn’t feel quite right, a bit stiff, but her grandmother looked a touch happier.

‘And of course Leonora’s really rather sweet, when you get to know her,’ Helen went on. ‘She’ll make a jolly good little mother, I’m sure. From what she’s said, it seems to be all she’s ever wanted.’

‘Not like Mum, you mean.’ Rosa hadn’t intended to say it but the words slid out like a cat through a suddenly opened window.

‘Well, your mother . . . she always had other interests of course, her work. Not a bad thing,’ Helen added hastily. ‘Not in this day and age.’

‘I expect Leonora will go back to work after a few months,’ Rosa teased.

‘Oh I don’t think so! She’ll want to look after the baby . . .’

‘Properly?’ Rosa supplied for her, smiling to take the edge off the word.

‘Oh, you were brought up properly enough. It’s the best anyone can hope for, in the end,’ Helen conceded with only half a smile. Then she brightened. ‘Now, that dress you’ve got on. Very pretty. I like to see you young girls in frocks with a bit of a flounce to them. You should wear that sort of thing more often with your lovely slim figure. All those baggy trousers you hide yourself away in, you won’t get the boys interested going round like that.’ Helen wagged a finger at her, its nail varnish in Belisha beacon orange to match the flowers on her broad-brimmed egg-yellow hat.

‘I borrowed it, Gran. Me and Charmian and Gracie have one posh dress each for sharing out at stuff like this.’

‘Oh. Couldn’t you have worn your own?’

‘Well I was going to, but it’s black. Mum didn’t think it would have been very appropriate. She said I’d look like I was making some kind of protest.’

‘Yes, for once I have to agree with her. It would have been most unsuitable.’

The restaurant was gradually emptying. The tables were a depressing bombsite of crumbs, wine stains and abandoned boulders of fruitcake. Even grown-ups only ate the icing on wedding cake, Rosa realized, though surely it was the fruity bit that was for good luck, for fertility. Perhaps in this case they thought there wasn’t much point even pretending to eat it. Fertility (if a bump on the front of Leonora ever actually appeared) had been tested and proved. The floor was a mass of party-popper streamers, dropped napkins and dollops
of food deposited by Leonora’s brother’s three unruly small children. They’d be getting a new cousin soon; Rosa would be getting a half-something. It was a strange term, half-sister, half-brother, as if it was the new little person who wasn’t quite complete, not the relationship. She wondered what she’d think of it, this little half-creature, whether she’d love it to bits and regret that she’d been blighted to be an only child all this time, or whether it would be removed enough to be of little interest. Either way, there’d be babysitting money in it for her, that was for sure. Leonora was only twenty-four, there was no way, however mumsywumsy Gran reckoned she was, that she’d be staying in every night for evermore. Dad would get what was coming to him: one way or another, at his age he was going to be permanently knackered.

When you’re a grown-up it is permissible to ignore a ringing doorbell if you feel like it. It could be sheer bad manners. It might be a huge mistake if it’s the man from the Premium Bonds with your cheque for one million pounds and an offer of counselling, but it is an option. Melanie thought of this as she picked her way past Rosa’s supermarket boxes of university-ready baggage in the hallway, opened the front door and wished she hadn’t. Sarah (whose favourite phrase was ‘I’m your best friend’, words with which she excused an alarming number of frank personal remarks) stood there brandishing a bottle of champagne (God, another one), a couple of takeout bags from The Good Earth and a sickening sympathetic smile plastered on like too much drunkenly applied lipstick.

‘Er, I was just going out.’ Melanie really didn’t want to see anyone. There was still some of the Bollinger, a
whole tube of cheese and onion Pringles to be got through without guilt, and for later she’d been looking forward to a whopping great soft fluffy omelette stuffed with crisp little flecks of bacon and some squelchy butter-sizzled mushrooms. It was too late now. Sarah had pushed past her in a flurry of long lion-tinted hair and a waft of Opium and was already in the kitchen, while Mel stood with the door still open as if expecting a retinue of Sarah’s elfin helpers to file in after her.

‘You can’t fool me, you know.’ Sarah’s head was slightly on one side and the grin now went rather strangely from north-east to south-west. ‘I know you must be suffering inside. You’re doing Brave Face.’

Melanie felt herself scowling like a cross child. ‘No, I’m not doing Brave Face, I’m doing Very Happy Face. I’ve just won fifty-six quid on the gee-gees and I was going out to collect my winnings. If Second Honeymoon hadn’t been such an idle nag I’d have netted over a hundred. Still, it was an outsider, it’s what you get.’

‘Second Honeymoon?’ Sarah raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrows and pursed her lips. ‘There you are. You
were
thinking about him. You’re all alone and wallowing in misery while your Roger’s swanning about out there getting married to his little back-office slapper. I knew it. Hug?’

Sarah’s flabless arms (Melanie couldn’t help thinking of a wingspan, Sarah was so like a long pale bird, an ibis or crane perhaps) stretched all the way from the dishwasher right past the microwave. It was hard to move out of reach, but Mel didn’t fancy a hug. She wasn’t in the slightest need of sympathy so she ducked out of the way and opened the fridge, murmuring, ‘He’s not
my
Roger. Hasn’t been for ages. In fact I don’t think
he’s capable of being anyone’s, not properly. Leonora will find out in time – he’s one of those men who always has one foot out of the door.’

As there was no chance of Sarah leaving without sustenance, and the smell of the classy Chinese takeout was too tempting, she might as well be hospitable. ‘Here, put your bottle in the ledge thing, I’ve already got one open.’ She unstoppered the Bollinger, poured a glass for Sarah and topped up her own.

‘And drinking alone? That’s not a good sign.’ Sarah reached up to the rack beside the sink and took down a couple of plates.

‘It’s a perfectly good sign. How insecure and pathetic do you have to be to need the permission of other people’s company when you fancy a glass of something?’ Melanie rummaged in the cutlery drawer. ‘I hope you’ve got some of those sickly little lemon chicken things in that bag.’

‘Of course I have. I’ve got the duck and pancakes and the prawn toasts and the pak choi thing with the gloopy sauce. I’m your best friend, I know all your favourites. So what were you doing? Drowning your sorrows?’

‘Joining in. If I couldn’t go to the wedding and have a gander at all the frocks and stomp about being the Bad Luck Fairy and upsetting people, I could at least have my share of the booze. I had sweeties instead of cake. Anyway I do wish them well. Now that he’s finally gone and done it he won’t be coming round here every five minutes asking me if he’s doing the right thing, wondering where it all went wrong or if his blue cashmere sweater might still be in the back of the wardrobe.’

‘Is that what he was doing? You know that could
have been a cry for help, he probably wanted to come back. If you’d played your cards right, Mel, you could have got him back.’

Mel snorted into her drink. ‘Back? What would I want him back for?’

‘Company now that Rosa’s going? Your old age? Sex? To buy you nice little bits and pieces and to go on holiday with and . . .’

‘Enough!’ Melanie laughed. ‘All irrelevant, has been for some time, probably since way before Luscious Leonora was on the scene. No, I’m on my own and happy. I’m going to be fine. I’ve done my bit as half a couple. Rosa’s off to university tomorrow so I reckon I’ve also done my bit as the downtrodden parent. From now on I’m going to celebrate being the Whole, Sole,
Me
.’

‘Absolutely.’ Sarah stabbed her fork into a piece of duck. ‘But you won’t want to be the whole sole you for long, you’ll get bored, frustrated and lonely. So now all we have to do is find you some nice new man. I’ll start shopping around for one for you
right now
.’

When Melanie woke up the next morning she stretched out starfish-style in her kingsize steel-framed bed and looked at the telephone on the table beside her. She didn’t need to unplug it at night any more for fear of hearing ‘Hello sweetie, small problem . . .’ from Roger with something on his mind at six in the morning. Time after bloody time she’d told him it was a) too early and b) nothing to do with her any more, but neither message had penetrated his brain. He was so much a creature of habit it still amazed her that he’d broken out of his neat routines (and so frequently too) in order to go about the business of adultery.

It was now twenty-four hours since his last call. Then he’d been a worried divorcé, still thinking it was a good idea to rely on his ex-wife to get things right for him. Now it was just bliss to know he was safely on his honeymoon a whole continent away, and enormously unlikely to find an excuse to phone. Of course, it could be quite funny (for her, but not for the new Mrs Patterson) if he did: she could just imagine Leonora on the last day of the holiday, scanning the itemized phone calls listed under ‘Extras’ and realizing he’d
called his ex-wife on a daily basis. Probably, though, given the age gap, Leonora’s sweet blond little head wouldn’t be allowed to be troubled by the sight of a bill, and she certainly wouldn’t be asked an opinion on whether it would be a better deal to pay with Visa or Amex, as Mel had been over the honeymoon booking.

Roger’s call on the morning of the wedding had been to ask Melanie if you were supposed to give a present to the young woman acting as Matron of Honour even when it was just a registry office wedding and supposed to be completely informal, and if you were, would a silver yo-yo from Tiffany be all right or should it be something less frivolous, seeing as a wedding was supposed to be quite a serious event. That had been only the last of a constant stream of doubts and questions he’d presented her with ever since he’d moved out all those months ago. She’d been hugely amused by the bit about a wedding being ‘serious’, given that he’d taken a determinedly flighty attitude towards marriage itself. Still, she’d been outstandingly patient with him and his phone calls, even the time he’d phoned late at night (and more than a bit drunk) to ask whether it was usual for pregnant women to feel sick in the evenings instead of the mornings. She’d pointed out at the time that as a way of informing her that his new girlfriend was pregnant it lacked a certain something in the subtlety-and-sensitivity department. His genuinely bemused response of ‘Oh does it? Sorry,’ scuppered any final doubts as to whether she might be better off with rather than without him.

Sarah really hadn’t got it entirely wrong. Possibly if Melanie had made all the right moves Roger might be lying next to her at this moment under the goosedown
duvet. He’d be doing that thing with his foot, the thing she hated, running his calloused sole up and down her calf as if checking how efficient her last leg-waxing had been. He was one of those men who took no notice at all if you mentioned that something annoyed you and would they please stop, which in itself was way up on the List of Annoying Things, possibly at number one. He refused to keep any telephone numbers stored in his head either, even frequently asking Mel, phone already in his hand, for his own mother’s number, as if it was entirely her responsibility to keep track of that sort of thing.
Her
mother had been completely on his side when she’d grumbled about that one, coming out with her famed, ‘Well, men have so much to think about . . .’ as if it was a wife’s job to scoop up all the sundry bits of domestic information that men couldn’t be bothered to file in their memories and have them ready for instant reference, like an in-brain Psion. Men, of course, had to keep their intellects free for the kind of work that earned the household money.