The Truth About Melody Browne Read Free Page B

you,’ she said, half meaning it.
    ‘Yes. It will.’ He smiled. ‘There must be a better way for me to release all my pent-up energy than battering a little rubber ball into submission.’
    There followed a short but intense silence. Melody took a large sip of wine and tried to damp down her sense of rising panic. She’d known this was a mistake, right from the outset. She clearly had nothing in common with this clean, cotton-faced man. Her shiny new shoes twinkled at her, mocking her for her stupidity.
    ‘So,’ said Ben, breaking through the silence. ‘You work in a school? What do you do – teaching?’
    Melody grimaced. She could either lie, or she could give him the bottom line and see what he did with it. ‘No,’ she said, bluntly. ‘I’m a kitchen assistant. Or, a dinner lady, in other words.’
    ‘No!’ Ben smiled. ‘Are you really?’
    She nodded. ‘Yup, nylon overalls, hairnet, that’s me.’
    ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘that’s unbelievable! I didn’t know dinner ladies could look like you. They certainly didn’t in my day.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure they did, but as far as kids are concerned, anyone over twenty is an old git, we all sort of merge together, into one mass of sadness . Anyway, how about you? You’re a … sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember exactly …’
    ‘I’m a quantity surveyor. You don’t need to remember. It’s very dull, I can assure you.’
    ‘And do you enjoy it?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to say that I do. I don’t know what that says about me as a person. Maybe I should lie and say it bores me to death and I’d secretly like to give it all up and become a … a rock star .’ He laughed. ‘But, no, I enjoy it. It pays the rent. And half my ex-wife’s rent.’ He laughed again. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Have you always lived in London?’
    Melody shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I was brought up in Kent. Near Canterbury.’
    ‘So what brought you to London?’
    She paused for a moment, unsure whether now was the time to launch into the Story of Her Misspent Youth. He must have worked out by now that she really wasn’t his type. Melody could picture Ben’s type: she was blonde, she was cute, she was sporty and she was probably called Isabel. This was just an experiment for Ben, something to make him feel better about the fact that his wife had gone off with a bloke with piercings; a small act of rebellion to balance out the scales (‘well, I went out on a date with a dinner lady , so there’). She had nothing to lose, she reasoned, so she may as well set the whole sorry picture out on the table and she may as well lay it on thick.
    ‘I ran away from home,’ she said, deadpan, ‘when I was fifteen. I was lured here by drugs, alcohol and an Irish gypsy called Tiff, and then I got pregnant and Tiff buggered off and my parents didn’t want to know. Well, they would have if I’d agreed to go back home and have an abortion, but I didn’t want to and that was that. I was put on an emergency list, lived in a hostel for a while, then got given a flat when I was nine months pregnant.’
    Ben stared at her for a second.
    ‘Are you shocked?’ she asked.
    ‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘not, not shocked. Just surprised. You seem so – well, conventional. And what about your parents? Do you see them any more?’
    She shrugged. ‘Not for years, since I left home. I spoke to them on the phone a couple of times after Ed was born, but that was it.’
    ‘That’s a shame.’
    ‘Do you think?’ Melody glanced at him, questioningly.
    ‘Yeah. I mean, you’ve got a son. Such a shame for him not to know his grandparents.’
    She shrugged again. ‘I never really thought about it like that. I mean, in a way, they never really felt like my parents, they always felt like kindly strangers who’d taken me in off the streets. I was more than happy to leave them behind. Truly.’
    Ben stared at her. ‘Wow,’ was all he could say.
    And Melody knew then that