Unchained Melanie Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’re allowed to go now. I’ll be fine.’
    Melanie didn’t doubt it. Rosa allowed herself to be hugged but Mel could feel her eagerness to get to know her flatmates, to move in properly to her room and her new independent life.
    ‘Shall I come down and wave you off?’ Rosa offered.
    ‘No, stay here and meet the others. Give me a call soon, I expect there’ll be something you’ve forgotten.’
    Melanie went back down the stairs to the small car park in front of the building, calculating that she’d just have time for that riverside walk if she put her foot down a bit on the A38. Her car was blocked in by a black Range Rover.
    ‘Bugger!’ she muttered, looking round for the owner. A tall man with a light blue sweater emerged from the building behind her, carrying an empty supermarket box.
    ‘Sorry, I’ll move it. Elly’s stuff’s taking forever to unload. She makes me carry all the boxes of books.’
    ‘Sounds studious! I think mine’s only brought a few novels.’
    ‘Oh, I expect these are only for colouring in!’ the man laughed. His eyes were the same smoky Gitanes-blue shade as his sweater. His hair was short and spiky and blond. Mel felt ludicrously fluttery. He was just the sort she’d fancy if she was . . . well, what? How much more available could anyone be than she was? No husband, no child at home – she even had what Rosa and her friends used to call a Free House.
He
wouldn’t be available, though. There was sure to be a Mrs Spiky-blond-hair-and-blue-sweater. She was probably up there settling daughter Elly into her room, checking the cupboard space in the big airy shared kitchen and admiring (as Mel had) the new microwave, the cooker, the pair of fridge-freezers.
    ‘So where’ve you come from?’ Spiky asked, seemingly in no real hurry to move the car. The afternoon was still hot and sunny. Mel was anxious to get going.
    ‘Richmond. And you?’ she asked. Jeez, he was delicious-looking. What a smile, just enough of a tan, big elegant hands, bare brown feet in scuffed docksiders.
    ‘Oxford. Are you staying over or going back?’ It was only conversation, not an invitation. But still . . .
    ‘Er . . . I’m staying over. A place on Dartmoor.’ So why not let him know, she thought, her fantasies leaping way ahead, the theme going: she told him where, he said oh yes, might see you later, she
did
see him later, an awful, thrilling lot of him and . . .
    ‘Not the Inn on The Edge?’ He grinned at her,unlocking his car. She grinned back, nodded. Perhaps there was a God.
    ‘We stayed there when Elly was down for her interview. Food’s gone right off, the wife got food poisoning. We wouldn’t go back.’ He climbed into his car, then added, ‘Though perhaps it was just a bad day. Hope you have more luck!’
    Oh me too, thought Melanie, feeling more than slightly foolish. Me too.

Three
    Gwen Thomas hadn’t been inside a church since Vanessa’s boy William’s christening, but took it for granted that God was someone with whom she had an ongoing working relationship. Her personal mental portrait had him down as male (well of course), close to an Englishman’s retirement age, thin and tall but slightly stooping beneath the burden of his responsibilities. Her God was dressed in a proper suit with a starched white shirt, just like the manager from the Barclays bank she’d wheeled Vanessa and Melanie to in their double pushchair, back in the days when you weren’t separated from the counter staff by bulletproof glass and your signature didn’t need to be backed up by a plastic card. God chronicled the world’s fateful progress in massive ledgers using a black Parker pen and indelible darkest blue ink. He had a slow, solemn hand – what was written had been carefully considered, for life, death and the judgement of souls were not matters for haste or frivolity.
    In the same way that she felt humbly apologetic for taking up his time if she ever needed the attention of her doctor, Gwen