Unchained Melanie by Judy Astley Page A

feet, and mentally, and quite possibly physically, rather dishevelled, Sarah had been ensconced in the centre of a group that Mel identified from the safe distance of the doorway as most of the star hockey team from their fourth-form days. As just about anyone could have predicted, they’d grown into a sturdy bunch of broad-shouldered women with no-fuss haircuts. One or two, who were standing with their feet planted solidly far apart, looked as if they still pounded up and down a pitch most weekends. She would hazard a guess that they in their turn had become games teachers and married the kind of men who enjoyed having their lives run for them like a fixture list. Mel had baulked at the idea of joining the group, especially as she’d hardly got her breath back from the brief but intense exertions. Instead, she’d caught Sarah’s eye across the group, mimed what she hoped was a convincing oncoming migraine and waved a quick goodbye. A fast escape was better than facing Sarah saying archly – and far too loudly – ‘And where did
you
get to all this time?’
    In fact, as she drove slowly into the car park, she wasn’t sure she could even face it now. Sarah would be flexing away on the cross-trainer, watching her skinny but muscular frame in the mirror. She’d see Mel and shriek, ‘Bone to pick with you, sweetie!’ and every head in the room would turn and stare as Sarah leapt off the machine and hustled her out to the locker room. And she’d have to tell her – Sarah would pull that ‘I’m your best friend’ number and out it would all come. She wouldn’t be able to lie, either – people who’ve known you since before your first period tend to notice when you’re telling whoppers. It wouldn’t be like telling the cat – Sarah wouldn’t just ignore her and go in search of a coffee and a bun. She’d want to know all sorts of gruesomely intimate details. She’d ask questions. Her eyes would be shimmering with eagerness to be Told All. For a woman who would far rather, as she’d once put it, have a facial than a fuck, Sarah’s interest in other people’s sex lives seemed almost fetishistic.
    Melanie turned the Golf round and headed back to the road. She didn’t want to go straight home again, either. That would seem so pointless, and besides, it would only depress her if she got there and Max hadn’t turned up yet with the new York stone slabs for the garden (without which, according to him, no further progress was possible). She’d forgotten to bring her mobile phone, but Cherry wouldn’t mind an unheralded visit. She always said that her kind of meticulous painting was the one art form where you really could do two things at once – listen to the radio, make mental shopping lists – be lied to by your ‘oldest’ friend.
* * *
    Roger stopped the car at the end of the road and parked in the residents-only section at the end of the small row of shops. He noticed the laundrette had closed down, and felt a small tingle of surprise that it could have happened without him being around to know. Not that it
should
have been a surprise – this was hardly bedsit-land; most houses in the area had what Mel called a futility room, fully equipped. The shop doorway was boarded up, paint-flaked and shabby, and its windows were covered with posters warning the world not to stick up other posters. Between the smart deli with its £30-a-litre olive oil and authentic French rustic bread, and the chic greengrocer who sold organic herbs by the fresh-picked bunch, it looked like a grumpy vagrant who had strayed into the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.
    Roger bought a parking ticket from the machine outside the delicatessen. It still seemed a strange thing to do – for so many years he’d had a residents’ permit. It had actually been the last bit of his connection with the area to go and he’d almost been inclined to renew it secretly the last time it expired. He didn’t need one at the shiny new Esher house – with