Unchained Melanie by Judy Astley

that different from me, in fact, Mel admitted guiltily to herself.
    ‘What’s wrong with home?’ she asked slyly. Please God, let it be possible that Perfect Patty was not entirely faultless as a mum? Could a woman who’d single-handedly cooked twenty-five Victoria sponges for the local retirement home jubilee party have failings? Mel hoped so: for Patty was also a woman who could barely bite back a request for guests to remove their shoes at the door for fear of a grain of mud sullying the textured cream Berber, and really did need her devil side exposed.
    ‘They’re always
on
at me. Well Mum is, Dad just grins at me like it’s sympathy, but he’s just being lazy and scared of her. She goes, “Haven’t you got any homework, Ben?” and, “It’s so important to
read round
a subject, Ben.”’ Mel laughed at Ben’s too-accurate mimicry of Patty’s deceptively soft-spoken tone of benign but determined dictatorship.
    ‘Come on now, she’s only got your best interests at heart.’
    ‘That’s something else she always says. And she says it in that way like she’s just a bit
disappointed
.’ Ben looked despondent, suspecting he was travelling with a closer ally of his mother than he’d assumed. It didn’t stop him continuing, though, he was in full grumble mode.
    ‘And she’s always on my case about the computer. She’s made me put it downstairs in the kitchen so she can make sure I’m not getting into porny chat rooms and then
she
chats all through my work. Yak yak sodding yak. Can’t wait to leave.’
    ‘What, school or home?’
    ‘Bloody both. Soon as.’ Ben sighed so deeply Mel feared for the total collapse of his lungs.
    ‘Rosa’s computer is still in her room – she’s using the university ones. You could come and use it if you want.’ What the hell had made her say that? What was she thinking of, volunteering to have another rangy, permanently starving teenager hanging about and making the house reek of unsavoury trainers? What happened to delighting in all that blissful personal space and time?
    Ben’s face whipped round to study hers, to see if she meant it. She smiled at him, and marvelled at the way a teenage mood could lift so instantly. ‘Could I? Really? What, like any time?’
    Mel hesitated, wondering what she’d let herself in for. Perhaps he
would
want to spend hours searching out Internet totty, tapping out his life in chat rooms and e-mails like Rosa did. Perhaps he’d want to know what she had in
her
computer, maybe think it was OK to wander in and out of her study asking her how far she’d got with Tina Keen’s new case or, worse, read stuff over her shoulder. On the other hand he seemed so miserable, and she had offered. She’d just have to make a few ground rules.
    ‘Yes, but phone first – and it’s only for work, no hours on the Internet.’
    ‘Cool. I’ll be round tomorrow – I’ve got this French lit. essay to finish. All I get at home is Mum twittering on about when
she
was doing André Gide at school.’
    Melanie dropped Ben off at the school gates, where a couple of his mates were leaning against the wall waiting for him. As she pulled out to drive back into the main road she could hear their over-loud male laughter. She glanced in her mirror at them; the twowho weren’t Ben were gazing back at her, grinning and doing that kind of poorly co-ordinated shuffle that joshing boys did when they were being dirty-minded and jocular. Ben was striding away from them. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see whether he was distancing himself from their comments. He probably was, she thought, though whether out of horror at the very idea of his middle-aged neighbour as schoolboy fantasy fodder, she’d never know.
    Sarah’s Freelander was in the gym car park – close to the door, so she must have arrived early again. Melanie hadn’t spoken to her after the Neil-in-the-staffroom incident. When she had ventured back to the main hall – rather shaky on her