Unchained Melanie by Judy Astley Page A

He could be anywhere by now. He could be working at Roedean and still being adored.’
    Sarah laughed. ‘No, he’ll be bald, paunchy and depressed about the State of Education Today. And he’ll have a saggy wife who’s not a bit like all that luscious teen crumpet that we were.’
    ‘What a terrible fate. Poor sod,’ Melanie sighed.
    ‘Yeah. Poor sod.’
    The nice ginger sergeant was on the answerphone when Mel got home. ‘Your vehicle has been located in an undamaged condition,’ he said in that mechanical, stilted way, like police being interviewed on TV. Mel felt rather disappointed: she’d seen a cute little Audi in the car showroom round the corner and had been planning to call in and chat to the sales staff. She’d never bought an absolutely brand new car, one that smelled only of fresh, clean, unsullied upholstery. Every car she’d ever driven had carried beneath the over-lavish air freshener a history of the fast food and cigarettes and sweat and particles of life from the previous owner. Roger had been one of those people who (like her mother – again) considered the depreciation during a car’s first year was so enormous that it made far better sense to go for something which was – in his words – ‘slightly used’. An unfortunate, sordid little term, she thought now, reminding her of the time they’d spent the night in a bed and breakfast in LymeRegis, and she’d been more than suspicious that the sheets hadn’t been changed since the previous occupant. He was probably right though, boringly, sensibly right, she conceded, as she looked up the number of the police station in her Psion: a new car was surely a piece of wanton extravagance. Nice, though. It would have been fun to look through a brochure, to be offered options like leather seats (in pink? purple?), a sunroof, alloy wheels (whatever difference they made) and an unfathomable choice of in-car entertainment systems.
    The Golf had been found tidily parked in a cul-de-sac near Basingstoke. Nothing had been taken from it, according to Sergeant Ginger, who was keen to assure her that even her packet of Everton mints was still untouched in the door pocket.
    ‘And are the cassettes still there?’ It was hard to believe that anyone willing to nick a car wouldn’t think to pilfer the contents.
    ‘In the glove compartment? There’s about a dozen of them listed here. Were there any more than that, in a bag or something?’
    There weren’t. Her taste for the Beach Boys’ greatest hits, vintage Hancock comedy shows and the complete works of Duran Duran had been scorned. Rosa would have been in full agreement with the car thieves, she thought, wondering as she often did about the Youth of Today. A more fitting, dramatic finale for the faithful Golf would have been for it to end up a gloriously burned-out shell, abandoned at a skewed and dangerous angle (possibly upside down) in a lay-by somewhere way up near Carlisle. It should have had a thrilling adventure as the unwilling but speedy and reliable accomplice to a stunning bank raid. Investigating officers could perhaps have found a fewsuspicious bloodstains, traces of cordite . . . It was all the fault of the books she wrote, she thought, as she went up the stairs to have a good look in her wardrobe and see if it suddenly and magically contained an outfit that would make her the envy of all those ex-contemporaries from her schooldays. Deciding what to wear was going to be almost as tricky as working out how Tina Keen was going to pinpoint the murderer.
    ‘I didn’t think there’d be this many,’ Sarah whispered to Melanie as they went in through their old school’s main door and followed the sound of high-pitched, exclusively female conversation to the hall. Melanie hesitated by the door, reluctant to launch herself into this chattering and colourful throng. Dress-code-wise, the majority seemed to have gone for the smart, bright, on-the-knee suit. There were no scarves that Mel could