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Guest Character Profiles > Justin Buke Mick O'Malley

After starting work as legal secretary to Toadie Rebecchi, Melanie Pearson began a relationship with him, and decided that she should go part-time, so they weren't spending quite so much time together. When she started looking for other work to cover the shortfall, Melanie's colleague Mackenzie was surprised to see that she'd left a lot of information out of her CV and offered to help her to rewrite it. Though reluctant, Melanie agreed to this, and Mackenzie was surprised when she saw that Mel had left out a previous job - executive assistant to Justin Buke, a well-respected lawyer. When Mackenzie returned the CV with this information added, Mel promptly threw it away, clearly reluctant to revisit her employment with Justin. Worried for Toadie, Karl and Susan Kennedy decided to do some digging and try to find out what Melanie was hiding, and, aware that Justin's wife Anna was a doctor, he did some asking around at work and found out that the Bukes' marriage had been in trouble after he had an affair with his PA and that things got very public and messy in the aftermath. As word spread about Melanie's past indiscretion, local gossip Sheila Canning did some digging and got Mel to admit that she'd once had a restraining order taken out against her, leading Susan to fix up a meeting with Anna. Believing that Susan wanted to discuss her MS treatment, Anna was shocked when Melanie's name came up, with Erinsborough High principal Susan claiming that she was thinking about hiring her as a receptionist at the school.

Anna quickly warned Susan off, explaining that, after her affair with Justin was revealed, Melanie continued to stalk him, turning up outside the Buke house, constantly driving down their street and even turning up at the next table when they were out for dinner. When Anna then asked Melanie to back off, she broke into Anna's car and hid a bag of prawns under the seat, leading to the restraining order. Armed with this new information, Karl and Susan decided to keep their nose out of Toadie and Melanie's relationship, while Sheila was determined to find out what Susan had been told by Anna, and contacted her herself, claiming that she wanted to hire Melanie at the Waterhole. Confused by two mentions of Melanie's name in one week, Anna finally snapped when she found out that Mel had included her employment with Justin on the CV - which in actual fact had been Mackenzie's work, thinking that she was doing Mel a favour by sending her full CV to every legal firm in Melbourne. Convinced that Melanie was trying to worm her way back into Justin's life, Anna tracked her down and confronted her, with Mel confused about what was going on. Anna promptly reminded her that the restraining order was still in place and that she would contact the police if the harassment continued. Upset with Mackenzie for going behind her back, and particularly with Susan and Sheila for their snooping, Mel was then forced to tell Toadie the whole shameful story about Justin.

A few weeks later, with Toadie and Melanie's relationship facing further trouble after he found out that Justin wasn't the only married boss that Melanie had been involved with, rival Rose Walker was sniffing around, trying to get Toadie for herself. As Anna had vandalised Rose's car the week before, wrongly believing that it was Melanie's, Rose saw an opportunity and contacted Justin. She explained that, if he got in touch with Mel and asked to meet up for a chat, she would drop the vandalism charges against Anna. Justin agreed and, as he and Mel met up, Rose made sure that she and Toadie were nearby and witnessed the meeting from a distance, with Rose suggesting to Toadie that maybe Mel and Justin were rekindling their affair.

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Biography by Steve

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