Unchained Melanie by Judy Astley

takeout pizzas: ‘I could go on
Record Breakers
, if it was still going,’ she’d complained. ‘I could tell you what it was and where it came from and its fancy menu-name blindfold.’
    ‘She got quite plump at the time,’ Sarah reminisced,not without a note of sly pleasure.
    ‘Mmm,’ Mel agreed, giving her own left thigh a testing squeeze. It felt too soft. One week without the car meant no trips to the gym. She could have cycled, her conscience told her, or taken a bus (lined up at the bus stop with Ben and his schoolmates – would he speak to her if she did? Or just skulk and glower, praying fervently that she wouldn’t single him out?) But that would have taken half the morning, time when she could be writing . . . or having coffee with Sarah.
    ‘So you’re coming tomorrow night? To this reunion?’ Sarah reminded her.
    ‘Yeah, OK. What do we wear?’ Mel giggled ‘Old school hat? Do you remember those straw boaters? They made good frisbees.’
    ‘They did. I remember boys at the bus stop nicking them off our heads and whizzing them into the road under cars.’
    ‘And all the goody-goody girls kept theirs on with elastic under their chins.’
    ‘Do you think they’ll all be there? All the smug ones, the ones who never rolled their waistbands over so their skirts were up to their knickers?’
    ‘Sure to be. They’re just the sort who’d be bound to turn up. It’ll be a sea of Jaeger and Country Casuals and clever ways with scarves.’
    Sarah downed the last of her coffee. ‘It’s really the old members of staff I want to see.’
    ‘Most of them are probably dead. Or at least as old as dinosaurs.’
    ‘Not all of them. I wonder if that cow who taught us maths is still alive, the one who said one day that I was so hopeless I’d never get a job in a bank.’ Sarah giggled. ‘I got detention for asking her if that was a promise.And what about . . .’ she hesitated. Mel watched a frown of concentration collecting across her face. She knew what Sarah was thinking. She’d already thought it herself: what about Mr Nicholson (geography), passion fodder for just about every girl who’d read past page forty-six (and studied the accompanying photos carefully) in the school’s biology textbook.
    Sarah snapped her fingers, making Mel jump. ‘Mr Nicholson – geography. Mr Knickers-off. He looked a bit like a cross between Jim Morrison and that bloke off
Magpie
, all long curls and leather. We all fancied him. I think some girls even got lucky, so rumour had it.’
    Mel sipped her coffee and avoided Sarah’s eyes. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be there, but if he is at least he won’t be a dinosaur. He wasn’t much older than us, not really. If you think, we were what, sixteen, when he arrived? It must have been our O-level year. He can’t have been more than twenty-three.’
    ‘You’re right, that’s barely any difference. Poor bastard, newly qualified, far too good-looking and thrown in to face being adored by seven hundred adolescent girls. He liked you, Mel, I remember that. Did you and he ever . . .’
    ‘He gave me a lift home sometimes – it was only because he was going that way, no special reason.’
    She’d lied a bit, because if she’d told the truth Sarah would ooh and aah and demand to know a) full details and b) why she’d kept it a secret from her very best friend for so long. She wasn’t sure herself – at the time it was because it was so delicious (and Neil had said essential) to keep it a secret, and since then . . . well, it had simply never come up. Till now.
    Sarah sighed. ‘I remember he had a nice car, a red MG – we could hope for no greater sophistication backthen. Such a tragic waste – him, not the car. He could have given us all far more of an education than just teaching us about contour maps and the exports of Argentina. Do you think perhaps he was gay?’
    ‘Couldn’t tell you.’ (Almost true,
wouldn’t
was closer.) ‘He won’t be there though, I bet.