Melanie Campbell

Melanie can have something of a perfectionist attitude — both in respect of herself and of others that she deals with — is well-travelled, and educated well enough to feel that she can almost always be assured to be in the right; woe betide anyone who chooses to disagree with her. While at times she may appear compassionate to some (namely those that she relates to), she is not highly capable of dealing with her own emotions, most of which are either suppressed, or let out as irritability or anger.

She met James whilst at a college party and they got engaged after her graduation, marrying not long after. He was quick to secure a high enough paying job that Melanie had no need to have a job of her own after leaving college and settling into their married home — giving up the, albeit only part-time, work as a transcriptionist that she'd taken up whilst studying.

Her marriage had largely broken down by the time that James died, the two of them simply having grown apart over the years. Melanie, however, did nothing to publicise this fact, nor did she do anything more than quash down the thought of any potential infidelity on his part. Having no intention of leaving the man in spite of their differences, she kept up the facade of a perfectly happy marriage until stepping into the role of grieving widow, following James' sudden stroke.

Family is very important to Melanie. She grew up in a relatively well-off one, and has a positive relationship with her parents, whom she still lives in the same city as. She has a more distant one with her sibling who moved away to go to college on the other side of the country and never had any intentions of returning. Melanie had always intended to leave herself too. Her dream had been that upon her husband's early retirement, with James no longer tied there by his job, they would leave the city that they grew up in for good. Not far — she'd still want to be near to her parents — but enough to get away from the crime-filled, busy city streets. His death put a stop to that plan, Melanie inheriting the house and little else. She might've picked back up some of the work that she once did but any plans of getting away from the city are far off now.