Unchained Melanie by Judy Astley Read Free Book Online

in the bar, maybe had dinner with him . . .’ Melanie watched, amused, as Cherry screwed up her face in concentration, forcing her imagination to take the scenario to its luscious and wicked conclusion.
    ‘Go on, Cherry, don’t stop now. We’ve had all this marvellous food, now what?’ Mel prompted. ‘Do I getoffered another drink? Spot of brandy? Bit more champagne? Do we have it in the bar or take it up to the room? And are we heading for his room or mine?’
    ‘Yes but you wouldn’t have, not really,’ Cherry decreed, sipping quickly at rapidly cooling coffee. ‘Would you?’
    ‘I might have. What’s so wonderful is that there’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t.’
    ‘Apart from nasty infections, guilty conscience, a sort of shabby, used feeling the next morning?’
    Melanie laughed. ‘No chance. For one thing, to deal with the first there’s condoms.’ She hesitated for a moment, for she didn’t actually carry a supply of those around with her. There’d been no reason why she should, so far, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a few in the supermarket, distribute them around her handbag collection. ‘And as for the rest of the list, well – I’m a free woman. I can do whatever, or whoever, takes my fancy. I have this awful feeling I’m going to end up like a car that spends all its time in the garage. The least I can do is rev it up now and then and take it out for a quick run, make sure the engine still ticks over.’
    ‘And to hell with the consequences.’
    ‘There wouldn’t be any consequences.’
    ‘There’s always bloody consequences.’
    Cherry had been bitter and bereft for too long, Melanie considered, as she poured more coffee. What was it now, six years since Nathan, her partner of fifteen years, had gone to visit his brother in Australia – ‘Just a couple of weeks, Chezzie, I’ll be right back,’ – had met an irresistible stewardess on the plane and married her in Hong Kong a month later. Cherry had wept and wailed tumultuously for over a year, givingherself up completely to sorrow, betrayal and anguish. Melanie and Sarah and many others had worried about her, concerned that she was turning her grief into her life’s work. She couldn’t have felt worse if Nathan had died, in fact she once told Mel after too much gin that she’d feel better if he had: ‘At least that way I wouldn’t feel so
rejected
.’ After a hefty legacy from her grandmother, she’d given up her job as a legal adviser and devoted herself to the solitary life of a slightly tragic widow, all kitted out with a pair of Siamese cats, life membership of the National Trust and Friend status at the Royal Academy, the Tate Gallery and the Royal Horticultural Society. She filled the hours that might have potential for loneliness with painting meticulous, highly detailed studies of small wild animals, every claw and whisker in disconcertingly perfect place. They sold well as greetings cards and she was starting to get illustration commissions. Cherry obviously now thought of Mel as being in the same boat as herself – or at least alone on a raft that made up life’s flotilla of solitary souls. It wasn’t like that at all. Mel was delighted to be alone; she’d chosen it. She was happy that she and Roger no longer had to play along with the roles allotted them in their long-ago wedding ceremony. Leonora could do all that stuff now. See if
she
liked being expected to function as a walking Filofax.
    The doorbell rang again, breaking an edgy silence. ‘Oooh, my horny-handed man of the soil at last!’ Mel leapt up and raced to the door. She didn’t want to glance back and see Cherry making that familiar pinched face. It was enough that she could see it in her head as she went down the hallway: the glum, disapproving look, the determination never ever to consideras an option, not even just slightly, anything to do with sex, love or involvement with a man ever again. Mel wasn’t exactly looking for